CPD, performance management and development planning may be ‘backroom’ processes but they are crucial to student achievement.
It’s a big concern, then, that
many schools still lack the means to intelligently track and manage these
crucial processes.
But the processes that support
staff performance, such as performance management, school development planning,
self evaluation and CPD, aren’t given the same level of scrutiny in many
schools.
This is surprising given what
we already know about the impact these processes have on pupil performance. TheTeacher Development Trust for example points to a New
Zealand study showing that classes whose teachers had taken
part in high-quality professional development improved twice as fast as those
in other classes. It also showed that the 20 per cent of pupils deemed ‘least
able’ made improvements up to six times
faster than their peers in other classes.
The chief reason these
processes aren’t given the level of attention that, say, pupil attainment
receives is that it is difficult and time consuming to track and manage them in
a meaningful way on a lever arch file of paper or in an Excel spreadsheet.
Another is that there are no significant repercussions for not ‘working the
plan’ or producing real evidence of connectivity between these processes.
This
needs to change. Ofsted today wants schools to give full account of the
improvement processes that ultimately have a huge impact upon pupil attainment.
It wants evidence that the SLT knows the school’s strengths and weaknesses,
that leaders are fully involved in self-evaluation and that development plans
are focused on improving teaching and raising achievement.
If lever arch files and
spreadsheets sounds like your school’s approach then your admin will need to be
at its best to produce the joined up, rich information that you will need to
meet the demands of Ofsted and, as importantly, help staff make the biggest
impact they can on pupil achievement . But this approach is just not
sustainable for most schools.
In order to generate worthwhile
information, the systems you use must be intelligent. They must do as much
automatic administration as possible and produce the information you need.
Your system should be
responsive to the information that is fed into it. Remember that your
colleagues are much more likely to engage when they know that the information
they put in actually leads to changes in the way things are done in your school.
Also, everyone should see the value of the time they put in not only in the
school context but also in terms of their own career development.
It is also a good idea to think
about the actual school improvement ‘jigsaw’ and what you need to do to make
the pieces work together.
Any school improvement process
will include priority planning which in turn should lead to action plans which
are owned by individual staff members. Their progress and activity should be
tracked and evaluated for effectiveness. Any areas of improvement that are
identified from this evaluation should in turn inform staff professional development.
Once you are clear about the
process, consider exactly how and where you will record it and manage it in a
way that is retrievable and meaningful?
Ideally, you should record this
information in a way which works for you and this often means using a purpose
built ICT system. This will cost you in the short term but over time you will
justify the investment by producing information of a far higher quality.
Making information work for a
range of contexts is also an important consideration. Imagine a colleague
working on aspects of leadership within a team project, perhaps aimed at improving
boys’ behaviour. So many elements of this work will contribute directly to this
person’s career development as well as meeting a development need for the
school. It makes sense that these contributions should feed more than one area
of accountability without the need for hours of work duplicating information
for different reports - and the risk of lost evidence.
With increasing school
collaboration, for example in federations, academy chains, trusts and teaching
school alliances, the issue of performance evaluation becomes even more
complicated. In these situations a school will have responsibility for driving
improvement in other schools. If these schools fail to get a proper hold on the
management of school improvement processes this could compromise the ability of
several schools to continue improving.
As the UK education system
fragments there is now an even greater need for schools to manage themselves as
effectively as possible. Paper and spreadsheets might produce data about their
school improvement processes, but this won’t be intelligent because it will be
so difficult to manipulate.
It really is time for schools
to get a clear, intelligent view of school improvement processes so that they
can meet the demands of accountability – and help staff help pupils achieve.
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