An Outstanding school overcoming Performance Management paperwork

An Outstanding school overcoming Performance Management paperwork

Deputy headteacher Jeff Miller had one overarching reason to choose an online school improvement planning system.

“Quite simply, I didn’t want to do staff performance management on paper,” says Jeff, who is deputy head at the ‘outstanding’ 1,000 pupil Oakwood Park Grammar School in Maidstone, Kent.

“As the person charged with performance management my head comes to me and asks me how staff are doing in their performance appraisals and I can use an online system to give him an instant picture. Without an online system it was a case of me roaming around the school for a couple of weeks collecting pieces of paper.”

After demoing a number of systems Jeff chose Bluewave.SWIFT School Edition. This is an online system that connects information and documents across self-evaluation, school inspection reports, strategic planning, professional development and performance appraisal. Schools can then drive improvement processes and keep ahead of ever-changing accountability and inspection requirements while saving time and cutting costs. The school has been using the system since May 2008.

Jeff is using the performance management element of the system at the moment although he does have ambitions to use other functions in the future.

The performance management element of Bluewave.SWIFT School Edition allows Jeff and his headteacher to see where each of the 120 Oakwood staff members are in the performance appraisal cycle. Jeff can see information such as whether the headteacher has approved appraisals, details of lesson observations of each staff member, when the next interim reviews are scheduled and how each staff member is doing against the teacher professional standards. Staff members can see their individual appraisal records and feed their observations and evidence into them.

The recent change in the teacher professional standards in September 2012, when the number of standards were drastically reduced, could have created an enormous extra workload for Jeff and his team. However, with the Bluewave system the evidence that staff built up against the previous standards were automatically mapped to the new standards, so there was no need to start again.

“The system has been very good with tracking the changing teacher standards,” says Jeff. “It has made it easy to link the teaching standards to the objectives that you are setting staff.”

“It does what Bluewave.SWIFT says it does very well,” he says. “I also like it that when I give them feedback about the system, the company takes things on board. The product doesn’t stand still - it is always in evolution.”

“Very simply I made the best choice based on price and functionality.”

For further information, please visit our website – www.bluewaveswift.co.uk or contact us on 0845 4900 447, info@bluewaveswift.com