About the school
Step by Step School is a small independent SEND day school for pupils with autism, serving a wide area of Local Authorities in the South-East of England. Founded in 2004 by a group of parents who had been running home education programmes, the school provides highly specialised teaching within a social setting for Primary, Secondary and Sixth Form pupils with individualised and autism-specific needs.
“BlueSky has benefited us by bringing all of our quality assurance and CPD activities together in one platform. This makes the process much easier to manage and ensures staff continue to keep their focus on their professional development.”
Gayle Adam
Headteacher, Step by Step School
What are the challenges?
Like many schools, Step by Step School faces challenges around recruitment and retention. The rural location of the school can make it difficult to recruit staff with the specialist training required to deliver SEND-centred learning. The nature of the individual-focused curriculum means that both new and
existing members of staff need to be continually developing their professional practice to support the unique learning needs of their pupils. As Gayle Adam, Headteacher at the school explains, it has become “a case of juggling the investment in professional development and retaining our staff, amongst meeting the daily needs of our pupils.”
Step by Step needed a solution that could help the senior leadership team identify where training and development were needed, in order to maintain their high-quality education provision. They also wanted an easy-to-use tool that would allow a customised approach to staff review processes such as self-evaluation. The team selected BlueSky Education, having seen how the platform could support meaningful professional development, appraisal and quality assurance processes that would help to strengthen staff retention.
“I am genuinely massively impressed with the training and customer service that we’ve had from the Customer Success Team.”
Gayle Adam
Headteacher, Step by Step School
How is BlueSky supporting the school?
BlueSky’s flexible functionality has allowed Step by Step to adapt the platform to the school’s more specialised practice. Through a supported set-up process, the school has taken advantage of BlueSky’s extensive customisation, including creating bespoke frameworks for more experienced members of staff to use, and competency-based frameworks for trainees, including specialised observation templates, which help teachers receive regular feedback and constructive assessment to identify areas for development and further training.
“Step by Step has a strong emphasis on evidence-based teaching strategies,” says Gayle. “Our mission is to ensure that we’re giving our pupils the very best education possible, so we implement many research-driven teaching strategies and we support our people to do continued professional development, such as a Master’s Degree or PhD.”
Using an online platform has been especially useful in supporting Step by Step’s distributed leadership team to keep track of staff development and to collaborate with colleagues. “We lead on different areas of the inspection framework,” explains Gayle. “I do a lot of work supporting other schools. Our School Improvement Action Plan set up a triad which works with two other similar schools, sharing best practice frameworks.”
BlueSky’s tailored training and guidance has ensured that senior leaders and staff can make the most of the platform, while the Customer Success Team have helped with set-up and customisation. Gayle is delighted with the support she has received from BlueSky’s Customer Success team: “I am genuinely massively impressed with the training and customer service that we’ve had from the Customer Success Team”.
What is the impact?
With BlueSky Education’s support, Step by Step is able to improve its teaching quality and enhance its performance as a school.
In October 2022, Step by Step School achieved an improved Ofsted rating, moving from ‘Good’ to ‘Outstanding’. Ofsted noted the school’s particular emphasis on the individual support of both its staff and pupils and praised how staff at the school had built a strong understanding of the importance of their work. Gayle is confident that BlueSky can continue to help the school deliver a high standard of education, even with their small staff.
The ability to run reports quickly and easily has meant that this investment in staff professional development can be effectively tracked and evaluated: “BlueSky has benefited us by bringing all of our quality assurance and CPD activities together in one platform. This makes the process much easier to manage and ensures staff continue to keep their focus on their professional development.”
What’s next?
The school plans to use BlueSky’s new 360 review tool, Opal Review, to support performance reviews, starting with middle and senior leaders. The tool allows individuals to gather feedback from a variety of colleagues within the organisation, offering a more meaningful and balanced view of the competencies they need to perform their roles.
“I do a 360 review and I have my appraisal with governors, but it’s not something that the other members of the leadership team have traditionally done,” Gayle explains.
“The 360 review offers a really good opportunity to take feedback from different people at different levels within the organisation. I think it’s something that people find quite a challenge; people are always scared to ask for feedback, so I think this will be really beneficial for our senior team and middle leaders.”
