The International Angle

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.