BESA CORNER
In our regular feature highlighting the work of members of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, Education Today this month hears from ALEX HURLE, Head of Education at B Squared; while MANDI UDEN, Deputy Headteacher at Rivermead School, discusses how SchooliP has been integral in creating a successful performance management process for Rivermead and why they ‘love it’.
Recording and sharing the student
journey is more important than ever The changing education landscape
Alex Hurle
Over the last 7 years, the UK education sector has been under substantial pressure to adapt to many political whims and fancies. This has included new programmes of study for schools in England, new curriculums for Wales and Scotland, changes to assessment in England and Scotland, the expansion of academies and free schools, changes to the EYFS Framework, and the reformation of a whole range of qualifications. All of this has come on top of real-term budget cuts, changes to teachers’ pay and conditions, and a national staffing crisis.
Most recently, The Rochford Review made recommendations which were designed to support the assessment of pupils working below the standard of National Curriculum tests at KS1 and KS2. Somewhat surprisingly, I feel that these recommendations appear to be well thought out and of value to the children they are designed to help.
Demonstrating progress
If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t look forward to the task of evidencing children’s achievements. I found it to be laborious and, in many cases, underappreciated and underutilised. Evidence is often stored in a variety of systems and different locations: written work stored in workbooks, post-it notes in folders and photographs on walls or the school server.
Working in a special school meant that many children didn’t create a large quantity of written work. Therefore my TAs and I spent a great deal of time taking photographs and recordings to help make judgements of current ability and to enable us to plan for next steps of learning. Sometimes evidence of extra-curricular experiences was shared with parents, but academic evidence had to remain in school, just in case OFSTED wanted to see it – they never did! Recordings were then copied onto DVDs and photographs were printed out and then cut and stuck into folders where they remained, sometimes never to be looked at again. What frustrated me most, was the fact that so much time and effort went in to creating and presenting these records and the payoff was very limited!
Increased parental engagement with children’s learning massively improves their educational outcomes. How many parents would have liked to see their child’s cognitive, social and emotional endeavours?
At B Squared, we speak to many frustrated teachers with the same issues. We knew that we needed to give staff the ability to view their evidence in a variety of ways that would allow them to showcase accomplishments, develop family engagement by sharing achievements and give staff powerful moderation capabilities to help them back up their judgements.
Evisense –manage your evidence the easy way
To address the above needs, we have developed Evisense, a new web-based platform that can help you meet the ongoing challenge of reliably evidencing children’s progress.
Evisense enables staff to ‘Tell the Story’ of a child’s time in education. It has been designed to showcase and share a child’s achievements and progress through photos, videos, audio files and documents. You can easily capture, securely store and selectively share evidence. This helps children, families and staff to track the learning journey from Early Years through Primary, Secondary and on to Further education. Evidence is managed and can be linked to curriculum areas and assessment points, as well as filtered by group, child, subject or ability. This enables staff to make comparisons to support academic judgements for moderation purposes. Children can be empowered to add their own evidence, review and reflect on their work, and give feedback to their peers. Settings can choose to share evidence with families electronically or as a printed report.
www.evisense.com 8
www.education-today.co.uk
How to create a successful performance
management process Rivermead previously had a paper based system which Mandi states was “very difficult to get a whole school overview of performance and see how this linked to school improvement. Everything was very disjointed.” Mandi also commented
Mandi Uden
on the staff perception of their previous system – “Staff felt like they only did performance management ‘because they had to’ rather than being actively engaged in their performance throughout the year. Mandi decided to look for a way to improve the process and perception of performance management for Rivermead and this is when she discovered SchooliP. Mandi says that she was attracted to SchooliP because it “allowed all staff to take complete ownership of their performance management. Staff can upload evidence throughout the year, removing the last-minute panic! We have now used SchooliP for two cycles and have found that people are really engaged with uploading their evidence, and the evidence that they do upload is more purposeful.”
Mandi also likes the fact that SchooliP can be used for all staff at Rivermead: “We use SchooliP for site staff, canteen staff, TAs – all the way through the school up to the headteacher! Absolutely everyone is on SchooliP for their performance management.”
Mandi states that as a result of implementing SchooliP that: “99% of staff passed their review! As all evidence is there, automatically linked to their objectives, it makes everything very easy when it comes to pay reviews. It’s clear to see what evidence is there and that it is sufficient, plus all line manager comments are there too! It’s an ideal system for ensuring accountability and having an evidence trail showing how you have been supporting staff. All information and evidence is available in one place, plus you can access information from previous years without having piles of paper around.”
Mandi has this to say for any other schools considering SchooliP: “SchooliP is worth the investment. It saves time, saves paperwork, it makes processes slicker plus the mobile app means that you don’t even have to be at a computer! It’s an all in one package that really does suit all your needs and we love it!” SchooliP by Derventio Education is a simple way to effectively manage professional development. SchooliP engages and empowers school staff in their own development to positively impact teaching and learning. The SchooliP software also links professional development with effective self-evaluation and improvement planning for all types of schools, academies and trusts.
To find out more visit
www.derventioeducation.com/schooliP March 2017
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