The school integrated three schools – Taipei British School, Ecole Francaise de Taipei and Deutche Schule Taipei – to become the Taipei European School in 2003. It continues to operate three European language sections in one school for students aged 3 – 18. The school, and each section, is fully accredited through national or international accreditation bodies.
“It has been revolutionary! It has helped enormously with showing staff how to cherish their own professional development.”
The Challenge
Everything was on excel or handwritten, stored in different places which made it quite unwieldy and difficult to keep on top of. There was no way of maintaining professional dialogue regularly with individuals. The school leadership team met other school leaders at a FOBISIA (Federation of British International Schools in Asia) conference, who spoke highly of BlueSky and the impact it had in their schools.
BlueSky’s Role
Taipei European School uses BlueSky to support their staff with appraisals, CPD provision and quality assurance. The set up and implementation of BlueSky was very smooth, there is no issue with the time difference – we are eight hours ahead. The team are so responsive, very helpful going through detail and offering support calls wherever needed. They have been exceptional – the support we receive from BlueSky is fantastic!”.
“It has provided enhanced efficiencies for both individual staff members and line managers. Staff can individually source their own professional development through the Training area, and the ability to reflect on CPD, reminders of short and long term impact from their training and maintaining that dialogue has been very valuable. Line managers are aware where their team are at and how they can best support them as well. It has definitely enhanced efficiency for line manager meetings.”
“We did a lot of work at the beginning of the academic year about writing appraisals and setting quality goals, and we set time aside to review last year’s goals. The response has been fantastic, teachers and heads of departments have written really accurate and honest appraisals which we then use as the foundation for setting goals for the new academic year. Staff are feeling really, really proud of what they have achieved, and being able to show evidence towards their progress through relevant CPD feels really connected”.
The Impact
“With the peer learning and peer observations we have been able to generate a report to see where staff are at, any trends that are coming through and work as a team on how best to support them.”
“I now sign off and approve all CPD requests through BlueSky so it’s helped me to manage the CPD budget better. It is also good to be able to quality assure the CPD staff have undertaken and to see their evaluation feedback.”
“I also really like the Projects area for collaboration. We have a few projects at the moment. We set the project up where we can work on specific aspects in a concentrated place where everyone can return to it and make comments and provide feedback which also contributes to professional learning.”
