Simplifying school improvement using SchooliP

A flexible model supporting schools on their development journey

Following a celebratory or disappointing Ofsted report every school goes through an intense period of self-reflection at all levels in the organisation. From teachers and associate staff through to leadership and governance, we all have a role to play in helping to craft the action plan response. It’s vital that all staff understand how their learning and development journey fits with the overall school improvement journey and how they all have a role in contributing to this process.

A language of judgement or development?

The school evaluation framework requires school leaders to state what teaching looks like in their school using Ofsted terminology. At the same time a developmental language is required that supports teachers at all stages in their career and on their learning journey. This is backed up by research from as long ago as 2014 from the Teacher Development Trust. Schools are approaching this conundrum in different ways depending on their circumstance and current Ofsted judgement. Some are sticking with ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’ etc. Whereas, others have developed a new language around the teacher standards and cohorts of teachers. One example is shown below:

Identifying cohorts of teachers

Once we have established a culture and language of development we can then start to identify learning communities of teachers to support their group and individual needs. This removes the old ‘badge of honour’ that was prevalent - the minute you are graded ‘outstanding’ for a lesson you are ‘outstanding’ for life. Starting with data from the previous performance cycle will help but we need a find a way to quality-assure these outcomes with other sources including objectives from the current cycle and lesson review.

Lesson review – light touch or in-depth?

Triangulating data from different sources is vital in helping us to build a up picture of a colleague’s current practice. We can then decide which review route to use at lesson review – light touch or in-depth. In this model we use the following data sources:

Light touch or in depth?

We can qualify which lesson review to take by looking at the progress data and by talking to students using the following, simple steps:

If an in-depth review is required then the following observation protocols can be added that support the teacher is developing their practice against national teacher standards:

In both cases the following should be identified prior to giving feedback to teachers and in doing so gather evidence for the current performance cycle:

School journey vs individual journey?

Now that we have identified and are supporting different teaching communities within our organisation we can start to prioritise depending on the overall school improvement journey. This is vital if we are secure accelerated improvement with limited CPD resource. A school on a journey to ‘Good’ may decide to focus resource on getting the majority of ‘RI’ staff to ‘Good’ – ‘on track’ to ‘good and effective’ in developmental language. This ensures rapid improvements are made and where necessary evidence can start to be gathered for those staff who are not making expected progress and where capability processes are initiated. A school on a journey to ‘outstanding’ would focus resource on those ‘good and effective’ teachers wanting to take the next step in their development journey. Other development journeys for staying ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ can be defined.

Conclusion

There are many different models for school improvement in evidence across the U.K. that require a local response to complex issues with many variables. SchooliP is flexible enough to support any school improvement model with the use of bespoke template tools and a defined sets of standards. The cloud service allows schools to link self-evaluation and action-planning at both leadership and classroom level supporting teamwork and collaboration across an organisation.