The International Angle
Let’s be honest, high
performance isn’t an issue for many British international schools.
But it will be much more
difficult for these institutions to maintain their quality standards in the
future if they don’t effectively manage school improvement processes –
activities such as staff CPD, performance appraisal and development planning that help
individual staff members perform to the best of their abilities.
No school leader would argue
that the tracking and management of school improvement processes
which help staff to help aren’t just as important as tracking pupil progress.
If school leaders have a clear view of what’s happening
in these areas they can make sure everybody plays a part in reaching school development targets.
It also means that leaders can identify which staff
members need more professional support and everyone
gets recognition for their contribution. The result is a better run school in
which pupils prosper.
This is the ideal but many schools simply don’t
have the means to track and manage these improvement processes in ways that
make it easy for them to use the information and act on it. The fact is, many
leaders think they have that ‘clear view’ but when compared with schools that
use modern day tools, there is a yawning gap.
Many schools
still follow the standard information gathering approach, which is usually a
‘homebrew’ solution that involves hyperlinked Word documents, over-complicated
computer spreadsheets or lever arch files that are ultimately destined to sit
on an office shelf.
Cost, time and complexity are the main reasons
why this approach still persists in many schools. It’s too tricky to get that
intelligent view with a PC spreadsheet because it takes too much time to mine
the data, interpret it in various ways and link it to evidence.
It’s a complex problem for one school, let
alone a group, yet we are moving into an era where schools are increasingly
likely to be part of a group of other schools. This might be a formal
arrangement, such as a chain, or as a collaboration. The complex challenges of school improvement planning are
multiplied.
Recently I’ve been working with
a large education provider operating schools across the Middle East, the UK and
the United States
The challenge for this
particular group of schools was that a range of homemade systems had sprung up
over time in different schools. These were time consuming to use and it meant
that there was little consistency from school to school in the type of
information that was gathered.
It meant that head office
didn’t have a complete view of how its schools were doing and wasn’t able to target
support to schools that needed it precisely or quickly enough. This problem was
exacerbated by the geographical spread of its schools; regular support or
inspection visits were impractical. A standardised, online school improvement
planning system across all schools meant that all schools were tracking the
same processes in the same way so it became easier for head office to target
support more precisely to schools that needed it.
Schools and school groups that have a homebrew approach to school improvement
may also be missing out on opportunities to collaborate more widely with
schools around the world. Sharing school improvement best practice
is a proven way to drive improvement for all concerned.
Schools often talk about collaboration with others but when you dig
deeper into the reality of how this happens it’s often little more than
occasional meetings and telephone calls.
But collaboration really begins to mean something when schools adopt
common systems and structures which enable them to share best practice in areas
like teacher development and school development planning. With the same systems
presenting information in the same way teachers can form mentoring partnerships
that become long lasting arrangements which can draw on hard data.
