Welshpool High School, Powys

What was the Challenge?

The school previously relied on a paper-based system which included various ways of capturing and recording information, but created a great deal of work when it came to collating reports. Senior leaders also recognised that staff were not actively engaging with appraisal objectives once they had been ‘filed away’.

Having seen BlueSky at an ASCL conference some years ago, the senior leadership team realised that a digital solution could streamline processes, creating efficiency and allowing school leaders to coherently measure performance across the school.

“It was the first digital solution we had seen that could combine all the aspects of appraisal, professional learning and quality assurance we needed in one place” says Natalie Forsyth, Assistant Headteacher.

How is BlueSky Supporting the school?

BlueSky Education removes the risk of performance management being reduced to a tick-box exercise and encourages staff to actively engage in self-reflective practice while working towards appraisal objectives methodically and consistently.

“Previously, if we were setting performance management targets, they’d be written on a bit of paper and then filed away! Now that staff can access their records through BlueSky Education, they can revisit their objectives and easily log how they are progressing” says Natalie Forsyth, Welshpool’s Assistant Headteacher.

“Now every member of staff has their appraisal objectives recorded online, in one place, we have an overview of everything and can align this to our school development plan”.

Using BlueSky, staff have greater ownership of their development: they are able to log their professional learning activities and document any developmental conversations they have with colleagues or managers. BlueSky provides leaders at the school with an evidence-based analysis of performance and a deep understanding of the impact of CPD.

Over the years, the school has introduced a greater emphasis on professional development that improves teaching quality, through a more personalised approach to training, a mentoring programme and gathering feedback.

Natalie explains: “We’ve adopted a strategy of ‘unseen’ lesson observations this year. This means you might have a professional learning discussion with a colleague as you are planning a lesson. When you come to teach the lesson, the colleague won’t observe you directly, but we gather feedback from students – voice of the learner – and BlueSky has been an ideal platform for teachers to record this feedback afterwards. It allows them to identify their own areas for improvement and feeds into our plan to encourage everyone to become more self-reflective, rather than having a top-down approach”.

What is the impact?

BlueSky has streamlined reporting to external stakeholders, such as the local authority, because all staff performance is tracked and recorded in one place, Natalie explains: “When the local authority inspectors came for a core visit, I was able to pull up everyone’s performance objectives and show how these are linked to the school development plan.”

“At other times it can be useful to review anonymised targets to see how we are doing across the whole school and whether there are things we need to focus on.”

BlueSky provides the senior leadership team with a greater level of oversight than was previously possible, allowing them to address teaching quality and areas of practice that need improvement. “It also feeds into our mentoring programme which we use to upskill and support staff,” says Natalie. “Through BlueSky we are able to see who might need a bit of extra support or is asking for training in a specific area.”

“BlueSky is really helping our school to enhance our appraisal and professional development processes, particularly through the intelligence and analysis that it provides. The system can be tailored and refined to meet our needs. It’s efficient, it’s easy to use and it centralises everything.”

“The key impact is that it helps everyone take a bit more ownership and responsibility for their own development.”

What’s next?

Natalie wants to expand the use of BlueSky to record more of the quality assurance activities they have started to implement such as the unseen lesson observation. She also sees a great opportunity to use BlueSky to demonstrate to external stakeholders how new approaches to professional learning and development are impacting on the school’s performance.

“When the local authority visits, they want to see the impact of any new initiatives,” says Natalie. “While they are supportive of our new style of pedagogy – such as the unseen lesson observations – they still want hard evidence that what teachers are doing has an impact. So we need to ensure that it is recorded in BlueSky as well.”

“I’m also looking to use BlueSky’s reports to demonstrate more of the impact of our professional development initiatives – for example, incorporating more of the voice of the learner and unseen lesson observation feedback into BlueSky, so we can explore the impact of that more directly.”

Further reading