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

Empowering staff through Performance Appraisal

Empowering staff through Performance Appraisal

Thorpepark Primary School serves the large Orchard Park council estate on the northern outskirts of Hull. It is a community facing serious social and economic challenges – a factor that drives headteacher Simon Witham and his colleagues to provide the very best education they can for the school’s 380 pupils.

Staff professional development and performance management is vital to the school’s mission. If there’s one word that characterises Simon’s approach to this area it’s “empowerment.”

“One thing I persistently believe in is developing my staff. I want to help them to make a difference,” he says.

“Every member of staff is a leader. A teacher is in fact a leader of 30 children. CPD is about empowering people to want to make that difference.”

Bluewave.SWIFT school edition has been playing a crucial role in that empowerment process at Thorpepark for the past three years. It is an online system that helps schools link together and drive improvement processes including self-evaluation, school inspection reports, strategic planning, professional development and performance appraisals. The system also helps schools keep ahead of ever-changing accountability and inspection requirements while saving time and cutting costs.

“CPD is a key function of the system for Thorpepark”, says Simon.  “I am interested in how CPD impacts upon teaching and learning,” he says. “There is an expectation here that any CPD in the school should justify itself by making a real impact.”

“If CPD is identified through performance management or appraisals then staff will attend CPD.”

“When they go on a course the record is updated and then they will self review against the course. This process tells us whether the CPD was worthwhile and whether it is making an impact in the school.”

This feedback – linking CPD to actual improvements in practice - can then influence future CPD planning decisions and help the school arrive at a point where all its CPD has an integral part to play in school improvement.

The school development plan provides the starting point for school improvement. Simon uses Bluewave.SWIFT to write the plan, which then drives staff development objectives.

Following a performance management objective setting meeting, staff write their personal development plans and review their performance against the plan using the current teachers’ standards. These are built into the system by Bluewave.SWIFT and updated as soon as there are any changes.

“It gives us a tight structure,” says Simon. “It means that when a colleague reviews their performance, for example, they only do it once. We never lose anything.”

Giving individual staff members the ability to input into the system in this way means that their individual efforts and achievements feed directly into the development plan. Everyone can see the part they play in moving the school forward.

Bluewave.SWIFT has also helped Thorpepark in its adoption of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC).

“In the last academic year we realised that our curriculum was not broad enough so we brought in the International Primary Curriculum,” explains Simon.

“We set up curriculum teams that met once every half term to use coaching to develop the IPC curriculum.  Staff wrote action plans using Bluewave.SWIFT, and reviewed their progress against the new teaching standards using the system.”

The school is also using Bluewave.SWIFT personal edition - a career development portfolio for everyone from student teacher to executive head – alongside the school edition.

“It means that any new member of staff coming in can then take a record of their professional development at our school to another school,” says Simon.

“It’s particularly useful for student teachers that come into school. We get them to review where they are, using the teaching standards, then we can monitor and see what impact we are having on them when they are on placement with us. It helps us analyse whether we are doing what we should be doing in bringing along trainee and new teachers.”

Simon adds: “I want to stop CPD from creating a feeling in staff of ‘it’s that time again, let’s go through that hoop’. I want it to be a worthwhile system that enhances the school. CPD is not about having something done to them. It should make a proper contribution to career development and Bluewave.SWIFT certainly helps in this.”

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

The Journey out of Special Measures

The Journey out of Special Measures

When the Manor Academy in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire was placed in special measures in autumn 2011, Ofsted inspectors said ‘the school needed to rigorously monitor and evaluate the quality of teaching and trends in the school’s performance data.’

It was an area that the leadership team were determined to tackle. This prompted a search for a management information system that would provide the rigour needed. “That was where the decision to buy Bluewave.SWIFT came in,” explains deputy headteacher Donna Casey.

Bluewave.SWIFT School Edition 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, keep ahead of ever-changing accountability and inspection requirements while saving time and cutting costs.

“I had used another system at my previous school – that was for performance management and review,” says Donna. “Bluewave was a step up which gave you performance management and review as well as a whole host of other things. It did all the things that we needed to do and now provides the foundation for all of our quality assurance work.”

In December 2012, just 14 months after the school was put into special measures, the inspectors made their third monitoring visit and lifted the school out of category, telling a delighted leadership team that the school could be ‘outstanding’ within 18 months.

The school’s management and tracking of school improvement processes such as performance management, development planning and CPD, were singled out for praise by the inspectors. Donna believes that Bluewave.SWIFT has played a crucial role in the school’s journey out of special measures.

“The inspectors were clear that our new performance management review procedure, done through Bluewave.SWIFT was robust, and linked heavily to our development plan and the new professional standards. It provided a firm backbone for the safeguarding of standards throughout the institution,” says Donna.

“They also commented on the transparency and clarity of our development planning, again done through Bluewave.SWIFT. They loved the fact that our school development plan was directly linked to faculty development plans, which then linked to performance management reviews and informed our CPD schedule, all of which was viewed at the click of the mouse. The lesson observation information, linked to performance management, enables all leadership members to have a view of every area within our large institution anywhere and at any time.

“Ofsted also said that our quality assurance systems were rigorous with an emphasis on accountability and attention to detail.”

Although The Manor Academy has only been using the system since the start of the 2012-13 academic year it is already making full use of most of the elements of Bluewave.SWIFT and all 250 staff members use the system on an almost daily basis.

“I was advised that we should implement Bluewave.SWIFT with a phased approach but we have done it all in one go,” Donna says. “In July we spent two twilight sessions training the leadership team and in September training was delivered for all staff.”

Donna acted as the lead advocate for the system – supporting staff and putting together bespoke ‘how to’ guides so that colleagues could quickly get up to speed with how to use the system.

The reports element allows leaders to create bespoke evaluation reports quickly and easily for a range of subjects, from exams analysis and coaching reports to the school SEF.

The system’s school development planning element allows The Manor Academy to develop a whole school strategic plan which then feeds into the development plans of individual faculties – and the staff who work in them.

The performance management feature provides the academy with a complete picture of staff performance. This includes the ability to track and evaluate staff CPD, record classroom observations and review statements and objectives linked to the school development plan.

Donna Casey believes that Bluewave.SWIFT’s observation analysis feature is an underplayed part of the system. “This allows you to do lesson observations live and then upload immediately to the system,” she explains. “This gives me a picture of which teachers are outstanding and which might need support to improve. It also tells me what their particular teaching strengths are.

“That’s hugely powerful. I can be doing a lesson observation, inputting directly into the system using my iPad and attaching video and other material such as lesson plans onto the record and the teacher can see the observation immediately after the lesson. It also means that if I am out of school I can see lesson observations remotely wherever I am.”

This feature has won the support of teaching staff. “Teachers are really pleased with it,” says Donna. “The quality of feedback you can give is really impressive. You can build up a rich picture of practice that is helpful to me and helpful to the teacher as well.

“We were told by Ofsted that the school had no capability to properly assess lessons. Now they are satisfied that we have that capability.”

The CPD recording feature also comes in for praise. “We’d never evaluated the impact of CPD before. Now we know what CPD results in changes and impact.”

“I feel like we know what is going on in the institution,” Donna adds. “There is no way I can see everyone all the time but I now have a good view across the academy.”

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

How to unlock the power of school improvement planning

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.

Very little of what a student does nowadays in school is left untracked and unanalysed. Accountability has been one factor behind this assessment revolution. Ofsted demands an increasingly sophisticated picture of student progress so that any gap in pupil attainment can be pinpointed and addressed quickly. The collective will of teaching staff and school leaders to do the best they can do for their pupils is another.

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.

85% of schools maintain or improve their Ofsted Grade!

85% of schools maintain or improve their Ofsted Grade!

We (Bluewave) have gathered data regarding eighty schools that have been using Bluewave.SWIFT for a number of years. The only criteria are that these eighty schools have experienced at least two inspections within the study period. We have focussed only on ‘overall effectiveness’ for the purpose of this study and the figures relate to judgements made following the school’s second inspection unless otherwise stated.

We don’t assume these schools improve solely as a result of using Bluewave.SWIFT. Our preferred view is that these schools would have improved anyway and as part of their leadership and management approach, they choose the very best tools to help them get there.

Our summary conclusion therefore, based on the evidence gathered, is that schools with the capability and capacity to improve are more likely to do so using Bluewave.SWIFT.

Read the excerpt from Ofsted statistics and the comparison figures below:

Management Information: new schools inspection framework

This management information provides an overview of the outcomes of the inspections which took place under section 5 of the Education Act 2011 in the first three weeks of the new school inspection framework which began 1 January 2012. 

Table 1: The inspection judgements of schools inspected between 6 January and 20 January 2012 (percentage of schools)[1]

Click image to enlarge.

Percentages are rounded and do not always add exactly to 100.

Summary of Ofsted findings with Bluewave.SWIFT user comparisons.

·         Out of 348 schools inspected in the first 3 weeks of the new arrangements, 57% were judged good or outstanding in their overall effectiveness. (Ofsted)

·         64% of schools were judged good or outstanding. (Bluewave.SWIFT)

·         Eight per cent of schools were judged outstanding in their overall effectiveness, achievement of pupils and quality of teaching judgements.

·         24% of schools were judged outstanding compared with 8% after their first inspection – an improvement of 16%.

·         Thirteen per cent of schools were judged inadequate in their overall effectiveness and of these seven per cent were given a notice to improve whilst the remaining schools were placed into special measures.

·         3% of schools were judged inadequate – no change compared with the first inspection but the schools were different.

·         All but seven schools had a previous section 5 inspection. Only 19% of schools improved, 50% stayed the same and over a quarter (28%) declined on their previous inspection. This compares with 34% improving, 47% staying the same and 19% declining at inspection during 2010/11.

·         36% of schools improved their grading

·         49% of schools maintained their grading

·         15% of schools experienced a lower grading

Additional Information (compiled by Bluewave)

The following is a summary of Ofsted judgements achieved by the eighty schools using Bluewave.SWIFT and includes comparisons with Ofsted inspection data from the period September 2005 to August 2011

Summary  of data relating to the eighty schools across two consecutive inspections and comparisons with Ofsted data (Overall Effectiveness)
1	Percentage of schools that maintained or improved their Ofsted Grade	85%
2	Percentage of schools that improved their Ofsted Grade	36%
3	Percentage of schools that improved to achieve 'Outstanding'	18%
4	Percentage of schools judged to be 'Good' or 'Outstanding' in their second inspection	64%
5	Percentage of schools graded Outstanding in first inspection	8%
	Percentage of schools graded Outstanding in second inspection	24%
	Average percentage of inspections graded 'Outstanding' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011)	14%
	Lowest percentage of inspections graded 'Outstanding' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011) - '05-'06 & '10-'11	11%
	Highest percentage of inspections graded 'Outstanding' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011) - '08-'09	19%
6	Percentage of schools graded 'Inadequate' in second inspection	3%
	Average percentage of inspections graded 'Inadequate' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011)	6%
	Lowest percentage of inspections graded 'Inadequate' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011) - '08-'09	4%
	Highest percentage of inspections graded 'Inadequate' - Ofsted Data (Sept 2005 - Aug 2011) - '05-'06 & '09-'10	8%

The full Ofsted report can be found here: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/official-statistics-maintained-school-inspections-and-outcomes

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Continuity in the new Professional Teacher Standards - Bluewave.SWIFT

Continuity in the new Professional Teacher Standards

One of the challenges faced by people when they encounter change is having to ‘start things from scratch’. Understandably, people may be forgiven for asking ‘why change?’ and ‘why so often?’ A good example of this is the Ofsted SEF which changed fairly regularly and was then apparently abandoned in July 2011 only for a new framework to be devised and advised in January 2012. A more recent example is the new Professional Standards for teachers.

The new Teacher Standards come into force in September 2012 but is it really the case that teachers must wait until then before using them? A more relevant question perhaps is ‘what happens to all my evidence from the past?’ Having invested so much of their time in generating an evidence base for one format, is it really fair to ask teachers to do it all again?

Answers to these questions are the reason why Bluewave.SWIFT exists; leaders in education will recognise there must be continuity and succession planning if we are to ensure the burden of bureaucracy does not impinge on the core business of a school. In other words, administration must be made easier.

Teachers using Bluewave.SWIFT have ‘future-proofed’ their evidence. Simply storing their evidence and documents in a unique way ensures that it all comes to the surface in the right place in the future, regardless of what the next version of teaching standards looks like. This method works for all staff and indeed for the whole school meaning that everyone can have a truly lifelong record of progress all in one place, all interconnected to Performance Management and to Continuing Professionaldevelopment (CPD)

The Teacher Standards 2012 are built into in Bluewave.SWIFT alongside the current teaching standards. Headteacher standards are also included as well as Teaching Assistant standards and the National Occupational Standards for support staff.

Click here to see a video of how you can evaluate against the new Teacher Standards