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

Is a 'two page SEF' an oxymoron?

3 SEF's in five years, 

then no SEF, then 3 SEF's in a year! 

No wonder Headteachers are frustrated.

So, the challenge is how to produce the necessary 'two page SEF', deemed most desirable by some Ofsted inspectors, that contains everything you want (or need) to say about your school. It is highly appropriate that inspections should focus on the educational capability of the school rather than a documentary synopsis, but Headteachers can be forgiven for thinking that a two page SEF might leave them short changed.

Of course, not all Headteachers are pressurised into producing this rather brief overview of such a complex, dynamic and unique establishment; but some are and many are rightly concerned about how they can be expected to dance to several tunes at any one time.

Our approach to supporting schools therefore attempts to meet the challenge head-on.

If the first stage of engagement is to present a two page synopsis then so be it; but that same synopsis must be 'expandable' in order that when questioned, the Headteacher can drill down into the detail and provide as much evidence-driven evaluation as may be necessary. Essentially, we enable schools (and that means everyone within a school community) to record all of their contributions to school improvement in such a way that the detail builds the bigger picture. Once a school achieves this, the bigger (two page) picture can be produced, secure in the knowledge that it is built upon solid foundations - foundations which are accessible at the click of a button and which demonstrate whole school contribution and robust, evidence-based evaluation at all levels.

Of course, this can all be done on paper; but paper based systems aren't sustainable, they don't support sound succession planning and ultimately they cost a lot more in terms of finance and stress.

In these times of knee-jerk changes in regulation, doesn't it make sense to have one, all-encompassing system that is driven by the need to lessen the impact of those changes?

First the SEF now SFVS… how many more plates to spin?

First the SEF now SFVS…

…how many more plates to spin?

Schools face many challenges today not least how to cope with the fallout of recent changes and cuts to budgets; there are clearly many decisions to be made which may significantly impact the school, its staff and students. Potentially all decisions will involve the governing body and it has never been more important that the decisions made must be well informed decisions.

Question: ‘How can we be assured we are well informed?’

Consider the revised SFVS framework which many schools must complete by the end of March 2012. This revision is intended to reduce the level of complexity associated with its predecessor FMSiS. We might look back and ask ‘what of all our past efforts in FMSiS?’ and look forward and ask ‘what if SFVS changes into something else, perhaps something even bigger and more complex than FMSiS?’

The challenge of catering for the future with regard to SFVS might not in itself be that big an issue. However, if we consider the bigger challenge of how to produce many self-evaluation reports, including whole-school inspections focussing on performance and improvement, then we begin to see how this aspect of school monitoring is akin to [pardon the pun] death by a thousand cuts.

In the past, the public sector, with a more centralised ‘control and management’ resource (now rapidly diminishing) didn’t always call for schools to adopt new ideas and mechanisms that would sustainably support their own operational efficiencies; the net result is that as schools become more independent and self-reliant, they may often lack the necessary ‘tools’ to survive in a challenging environment with regard to provision of coherent management information.

Microsoft Word or Excel (or similar products) will not, without high maintenance, connect your Strategic Development Plan to Performance Management dynamically and will not facilitate an automatic flow of information from your Development Plan to your Self-evaluation Report.

“… This is one of those products that really does deliver what it says on the can and is the first programme I have ever bought that really does significantly reduce my workload.”

Mark Edwards, Headteacher
Shire Oak CE Primary School

We genuinely believe there is a better way for people on the front line of accountability in schools to manage and reduce this workload:

“Our ability to secure accountability is significantly improved with Bluewave.SWIFT. Previously everything was coming into the Head teacher’s office and never going out.”

 

John Drake, Headteacher

Coppice Valley Junior School

We also believe there is a consensus developing that any school facing this myriad of challenges over the next few years will only succeed, in relative terms, if they adopt a modern, purpose-built, coherent and future proof approach.

Keith Wright has worked with schools for the past seven years offering front line support and strategic direction.

He is the Managing Director of Bluewave.SWIFT a company specialising in the field of school improvement management

www.bluewaveswift.co.uk