Are schools up to the CPD challenge of School Direct?

Are schools up to the CPD challenge of School Direct?

With the ramping up of the School Direct scheme more and more schools will find themselves responsible for the CPD of a new generation of teachers.

But the techniques – and technology - that many schools are using to help track and manage the professional growth of these young professionals is seriously out of step with modern demands.

With School Direct we have the 21^st century reality of large scale in-school teacher training and development, yet the culture and the systems that most schools have for managing and tracking this on a school-wide and individual level is distinctly late 20^th century in its approach.

And my worry is that this will disempower teachers, especially trainees.

The vast majority of schools in England and Wales today – around 85 per cent – simply don’t have the means to track and manage processes like staff CPD and performance management in ways that fully take on board the needs and feedback of staff.

My experience, gained from working with thousands of leaders and teachers, is that although there is a real understanding of what constitutes good practice in relation to the identification and evaluation of CPD this isn’t translated into reality because the tools used to manage this fall short.

Many schools still rely on paper based systems or simple spreadsheets for managing CPD and  behind closed doors many of those responsible for managing CPD will admit these systems just provide a quantitative record of who requested what, where they went and how much it cost.

In professional development there should be two sides to the contract. If schools are to effectively support the development of their trainees they need to give them the means to build up a detailed, evidence rich picture of their professional development that will help them make informed decisions about their career path. Trainees need to know how their CPD has made them act differently and what the outcome of these changes have been. They need to reflect regularly on their development, evaluate that activity and be appraised by colleagues. In fact it’s an approach schools use all the time to track pupil attainment yet these common classroom approaches have yet to fully transfer into staff professional development.

We all want new and established teachers to take more control of their development, but if they can’t build up a rich picture of their development so far then it becomes more difficult for them to make informed choices about their future development path.

As well as putting the career development of new and existing teachers at risk current approaches to CPD and development can also be problematic for the school as a whole. Many CPD activities may not be as effective as they could be because many schools do not have a clear idea of exactly what is effective professional development - and what is not.

This isn’t to say that all CPD misses the mark, but I do believe that schools could draw more value out of their CPD investment by ensuring that what they deliver actually helps their colleagues and the school move forward.

The identification and analysis of individual professional development should be given far greater importance than it currently is. Quite simply this means asking more questions of ourselves and our peers about what we need to do to make progress. 

For teachers this approach to evaluation gives them a real stake in the process. It makes it easier for them to provide evidence of the impact of their CPD and also means that future CPD will be informed by them because an explicit link is made between CPD and the impact it has on school improvement.

Schools are increasingly in the driving seat in the professional development of new and existing teachers. It’s time to let technology help.

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

No fear! Technology will tackle the challenges of school improvement

No fear! Technology will tackle the challenges of school improvement.

Schools are very comfortable with using technology to closely monitor the progress of pupils and take action if any issues are uncovered. Pupil tracking and management information systems that help schools do this have been widely used for several years. 

But when it comes to using ICT for the management and tracking of the school improvement processes that help staff perform to their best – for example CPD, performance management and school development planning – schools are less likely to invest. 

Instead most schools – around 85 per cent of those in England and Wales – use ‘homebrew’ approaches, usually consisting of elaborately constructed computer spreadsheets or simple box files full of paper, to manage this area. 

It seems strange doesn't it that there is this contrast of approaches, especially when both play an absolutely vital role in helping pupils really achieve. 

Money, time and complexity are the main reasons why this approach still persists but I’m confident school leaders are waking up to the reality that dislocated systems are simply not doing the job. It’s too tricky to get an 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. I’ve seen for myself some wonderfully creative, DIY documents which at first appear to be a massive step forward for schools. But after a few months, it becomes quite apparent that maintaining them is a full time job and it gets out of hand.

As well as clouding a school’s view of what it needs to do to keep on improving, this traditional approach could also create problems with Ofsted. The body now wants schools to give full account of the school improvement processes that ultimately have a huge impact on pupil attainment.

It wants evidence that the SLT knows the school’s strengths and weaknesses, that leaders are immersed in self-evaluation and that development plans are focused on improving teaching and raising achievement. These are compelling reasons for schools to change to something more efficient and coherent and which ideally gathers evidence of impact from grass roots level, yet many still have a bit of a blind spot in this area.  I worry that this reluctance might be a sign of a deeper, age old, issue – a fear of change. 

As well as potentially obscuring a school’s view of school improvement processes, DIY tracking and management could have serious implications for the professional development of staff too.  

Many opportunities could be missed because your colleagues don’t have a more complete awareness of their abilities. But if we can ensure that performance discussions are informed and evidence led then decision making becomes informed by evidence at an individual and school level. That’s good for schools and for the professional development and motivation of everyone working in them.  

Schools need to seize the opportunity to let online technology assume the role in school improvement planning that it is already playing in supporting student progress. Technology can support change and make it easier. 

School improvement planning and the monitoring of impact shouldn’t be about cold data crunching. We need to use technology to support people in their development and let them make a real contribution to school objectives. This applies equally to individuals following their own career path and large organisations trying to make sense of the bigger picture. 

For example, if a school’s performance management systems show that staff need some professional development in a particular area it would help if they were given the means to evaluate that CPD themselves and back this up with evidence that it is making a difference. Many leaders will claim they already do this, but are the methods they use sustainable, accessible and above all, do they solve the old problem of how to produce evidence of the impact of CPD on pupil achievement?  

Then there are the questions of time and resources in an age of austerity. Taking a ‘homebrew’ approach to school improvement planning means time organising the paperwork for performance appraisals, job applications and CPD. 

If school leaders use the technology to get 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 easier said than done with traditional tracking and management methods but it is achievable using the online school improvement planning systems that are now available. These systems can unify staff rather than alienate them, giving them a voice in the change management process that otherwise might not be heard. This is about staff having ownership and control. And there’s nothing more powerful as an antidote for the fear of change.

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.

Outstanding Testimony - Seend Primary School

"...it is perfectly in line with Ofsted’s requirements and ensures that all I have to focus on is the school improvement work needed to raise standards..."

"I am in the first year of using Bluewave.SWIFT so I am still not fully aware of its ultimate potential. However it has already had a profound affect on certain aspects of my work. I was initially looking for a system that would help me to present a more structured School Development Plan and that is exactly what I got. The governing body were very impressed with what I was able to present to them this year, as it clearly links in with the Ofsted Categories. However, the system has given me much, much more. It has allowed me to input the Teacher Appraisal targets onto the system – linked to the projects within the School Development Plan and to Professional Standards. The system encourages the staff to then take ownership of recording their progress against their targets by logging on and recording their evidence.

The Self-Evaluation section provides an extremely comprehensive set of prompts to encourage you to assess yourself and identify where you need to improve – thus linking into the School Development Plan. With the facility to tie in CPD as well, as far as I am concerned, it is perfectly in line with Ofsted’s requirements and ensures that all I have to focus on is the school improvement work needed to raise standards and not worry about whether I have missed something or that it is not all joined up thinking – the hard work has been done for me.

One other thing to add is the ongoing support that I have received in building up the skills base to operate the system has been second to none. I am happy to recommend this as a complete system in managing school improvement."

Jackie Chalk, Headteacher, Seend CofE VA Primary School

Does your CPD have a direct impact on school improvement?

School CPD - Everybody discusses it and nobody argues that it shouldn't happen. After all, if there was no professional development how would we progress?

But there’s plenty of professional development going on in school which just ticks boxes or satisfies a requirement for ‘something to be done.’

It certainly doesn’t always help a school improve.

For evidence of this you just have to look for the stifled yawns, eye rolling and blank stares at your next school inset day.

If there is any paperwork evaluating the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the training then it might just be a few ticks on an evaluation sheet which are then filed away in a lever arch folder and never seen again.

I think this happens because there is still a lack of understanding from leaders of what truly effective CPD is and whether it moves a school forward, as well as uncertainty around how to track the impact ofteacher CPD.

In tough financial times like today it has never been more important for CPD coordinators to know which professional development delivers the very best value for money.

I’d characterise school CPD as a bit like a huge set menu meal for thousands of people. This approach is, on the face of it, effective – many people engaging in many things. You’re bound to satisfy a few appetites and some people will even enjoy it. But there will be many people who don’t get what they want or more importantly, what they need. These people might well go hungry and be turned off the experience for the rest of their life.

There might be a multitude of reasons why not enough priority is being given to identifying the most appropriate CPD at the moment. This might be down to a lack of meaningful articulation of needs, a lack of context for evaluation and impact, unrealistic expectations associated with impact of CPD, or a lack of consistency around the value and nature of CPD.

How can you ensure CPD leads to school improvement?

So how can you and your leadership team colleagues overcome these barriers and ensure that teacher CPD returns on the investment and leads directly to individual progress and whole school improvement?

An excellent starting point can be a couple of well chosen questions. Ask your colleagues if they know how their CPD directly relates to school improvement. I doubt that they all do and the further you are from the headteacher’s ‘vision’ for the school the less connection or relevance you will see.

The next question to ask is, if an individual can’t convey or demonstrate how their own CPD relates to not only school development planning but their own wider development, why are they doing it?

While the pinnacle of successful CPD is an evidence base of positive impact, the foundation stone is the identification and understanding of what we need to do and what success or impact will look like.

I would suggest that the identification and analysis of individual professional development should be given a much greater importance. Quite simply this means asking more questions of ourselves and our colleagues about what we need to do to in order to move forward.

Supplying the evidence of CPD impact

Perhaps more problematic is how to supply the evidence of impact. My advice would be to look first at the actual impact itself and then link that back to the most relevant CPD event. In this way you can build up a rich picture of the effectiveness of each CPD activity. This helps you track which CPD activities result in tangible changes in the practice of the colleagues and therefore contributes to schoolimprovement – and which don’t.

This can then be influential in terms of future CPD planning decisions and help the school arrive at a point where all its CPD has an integral part in school improvement.

Interestingly we are always looking at the performance of pupils and assessing the quality of learning but there is still not enough good practice around that measures the productiveness of CPD and what that means in terms of quality of teaching.

Take an example, where a decision might be made to send a senior colleague on some leadership training about how to manage teams.

They will attend the training and then evaluate it. They will say how good it was, how effective they think it will be and what they will do differently as a result of receiving the training, and from where they expect to draw evidence of this.

At a later point that individual might be working on the school improvement plan. One priority area of the plan might be to improve leadership and management. They might write in the plan that they have recently introduced a series of peer led management meetings across the school and that this has enabled a much greater shared responsibility of leadership of the school. In other words they are describing impact or changes.

Once they have written that they should ask whether any of the CPD that has been delivered previously has been relevant to these changes. By ticking against a piece of CPD you establish a clear link between the CPD delivered and a tangible piece of school improvement. A clear, evidence based picture is built up of the great value and impact of that particular piece of CPD. This gives you and your colleagues a strong guide as to what CPD works in your school context.

Empowering teachers

For teachers this approach to evaluation gives them a real stake in the process. It makes it easier for them to provide evidence of the impact of their CPD and also means that future CPD will be informed by them because an explicit path is made between CPD and the impact it has had on school improvement.

This approach has a powerful effect on the bottom line as well because all of the money invested in CPD will deliver tangible, measurable school improvement and this will make future spending decisions that much easier.

With budgets decreasing schools have to be absolutely sure that the money they have to spend on CPD works. It’s now time to make CPD really count.

Keith Wright is MANAGING DIRECTOR of school information management specialist Bluewave.SWIFT.  He has worked with hundreds of schools during in the past decade supporting institutional leadership and management. For the past six years Keith has worked with Leeds City Council to develop their quality standards framework for adoption by schools in the UK and overseas. He has also advised overseas education ministries on raising school standards through the effective use of school improvement support systems. For further information go to www.bluewaveswift.co.uk

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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