Bromsgrove School, Worcestershire

Why did the school choose BlueSky?

In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, senior leaders at Bromsgrove School wanted to reassess performance appraisal and professional development processes. The school was using an online document-sharing system to manage professional development but wanted to expand the programme to incorporate the entire school workforce and align the strategy with school priorities.

“We wanted to tie our professional development reviews to our training programme,” says Judith Holden, Deputy Head (Teaching). “Up to that point, we had called the process appraisal, and we felt there was a disconnection between that and training. We wanted to strengthen the connection between PDR targets and our school and departmental priorities. It just didn’t all sit together as it should do.”

Bromsgrove School selected BlueSky based on a recommendation from a colleague and were impressed by the customer focus during the demonstration and implementation stages. “It’s been brilliant from day one. Our account manager has been amazing and has helped us find solutions in BlueSky such as ensuring we had the right account permissions set up to suit our needs. It’s been really, really helpful.”

“BlueSky has put me in contact with other schools who are also changing their PDR strategy. I had a lovely conversation with a similar independent school and they were able to guide me as well.

“BlueSky gives us a very efficient way to drive professional development and link it to our school development plan, encouraging incremental improvement across the school.”

How is BlueSky supporting the school?

Bromsgrove School is using BlueSky’s CPD features to ensure professional learning and training is being deployed effectively for all staff. Judith explains “We wanted to make sure that training was provided to staff that needed it, not just those who asked for it. BlueSky has enabled us to signpost training and incorporate the whole school workforce, which is fantastic.”

“It makes it easier to track all the different forms of training that people are doing, for example, online courses, and to check if anyone has missed out on something that we’ve provided so we can ensure they can catch up.”

High quality online CPD

The school has BlueSky Learning membership, the suite of online CPD content which integrates with BlueSky Education and uses these courses to support its training programmes and CPD for all staff. “I love the fact that I can use the content with my ECTs,” says Judith. “Bromsgrove is a teacher training hub and as part of my role, I run all the induction programmes for my PGCE and ECTs. With BlueSky Learning, I can easily signpost relevant modules and tie that in with our training programme.

“The modules are of high quality, provided by great facilitators, and relevant to our training needs. We thoroughly enjoyed the recent webinar on revision with Helen Howe – we’ve all been reading her book, so that was manna from heaven! I was really pleased to be able to send that around to staff and say, ‘This is what we are moving towards”.

“I also very much appreciated the session on subconscious bias [Teacher Expectancy Effects: Minimising Teacher Biases That Affect Student Outcomes]. The sessions around SEN and leadership have been extremely useful.”

Identifying training needs

The school has incorporated the school development and departmental plans into BlueSky which allows the leadership team to assess training needs in line with the strategy.

“In my role as Deputy Head (Teaching), I oversee the review process for the majority of our teaching staff,” Judith explains. “Teachers complete a review form in BlueSky and then we’ll have a meeting to discuss their training needs. I use BlueSky to look at their training record, and I’ll then signpost further training resources, often in BlueSky Learning as a first port of call.”

“The PDR process starts with the school development plan, which feeds into department development plans and these inform individual targets, and this is all linked through BlueSky,” says Judith. “We ask our colleagues to write three individual targets which can be related to pastoral objectives as well as academic – they can write more if they want to, we don’t restrict this. That’s another thing I love about BlueSky; you can finish a target and immediately start a new one.

“You might have long-term targets such as completing your MA, or short-term ones but you can keep track of it all in BlueSky, with features like the Timeline View. It allows individual staff to see where the incremental gains have been made.

“As a leader, BlueSky gives me oversight of everything that our colleagues have done, and it means I can go back to them to offer support and encouragement.”

Sharing intelligence easily

“Having a one-stop-solution where you can record everything relating to staff development is a game changer, in terms of knowing what the school is doing. It’s helped us produce useful data and information that we can present to governors, to school leaders and for inspection. I don’t have to go through a paper file, I can just pull off a list very easily straight away.

“During our inspection, I was able to show that our RSE training had been carried out, who had done it, when they’d had it and which provider it came from. It’s simply reassuring for school leaders to know they can show that training has been done and it’s up to date.

“There are other ways to do it but BlueSky just streamlines the process.”

What is the impact?

“We’ve got 300-plus staff. If we had to do this on paper, it would be very difficult to manage, whereas keeping it on BlueSky is very efficient and very effective in what it does and has undoubtedly streamlined and made the PDR process more useful,” says Judith. “It’s very user friendly. The customer support is excellent – I get a response very quickly and it always resolves my query.”

“Our colleagues have enjoyed the experience of having purposeful and meaningful discussions with their line managers, with their teams, and seeing the impact they’re having within the great ecosystem that is Bromsgrove School,” says Judith.

“That’s why the hierarchy of targets coming from the school development plan is so important – if you get that right then everything else feeds back into it. I do think having BlueSky encourages greater focus. We had targets before, but I think the fact that you can monitor them – not in a Big Brother way, but in a supportive way – encourages ongoing development.

“We want our colleagues to work and learn together. We don’t use ratings, but we do peer observations as part of the PDR process and that whole collegiate collaborative experience is supported by BlueSky.”

“As large independent school, Bromsgrove offers a broad range of co-curricular activities as well as pastoral support for students. These aspects of staff responsibility are also captured in BlueSky,” says Judith.

“We use it very much as a holistic capturing tool. It’s a multi-faceted job and BlueSky helps you to capture all of the aspects of being a teacher within a busy school like this.

“It’s a one-stop-shop for school development. I love seeing progress, which is why I love the timeline so much. I can see continuous improvement and BlueSky is helping us to facilitate that.”

What’s next?

“We’re starting to use it with Support staff; the Bursar has taken the lead on this. We’ve introduced a basic form for our heads of various faculties within the department, for example, our Head of Estates, our Head of Operations and Gardening Services, all have a development plan with targets which we’re developing.

“We’re still on a journey, but it will happen. I do love the fact that our support staff are included within BlueSky, because they’re vital to our school and they can also see that they’re working towards the school development objectives. I think incorporating them within the same PDR process shows the value that we put on them, so we do want to develop that, and BlueSky will help us with that.

“I’m also looking at the Journal area, considering how people could record other types of CPD, such as what they’ve read. We are looking at setting up some professional enquiry groups, and I think we could use BlueSky to capture that.”

Further reading