Why do schools choose BlueSky?

Using an online platform to support your appraisal and professional development processes can significantly reduce workload, help prioritise CPD in school improvement strategies, and make evaluating the impact on professional learning easier. But how can you ensure that you choose the right software solution to support your school?

To start off with, you might consider your objectives for moving to an online platform for staff appraisal and development. For some schools, it can be a simple case of improving efficiency, gaining oversight and ensuring compliance, making sure that all staff are participating and receiving the same levels of support. However, as professional development is increasingly placed at the centre of appraisal and professional accountability, many schools need a platform that can underpin an integrated people strategy that not only allows documentation and tracking but also sustains the practice of professional growth and aids retention.

Read on to learn key reasons why schools have chosen BlueSky to support their staff development practice.

Shifting the focus of appraisal

“A few years ago, we had a philosophical shift in our approach to appraisal and professional development,” says Jamie Tegerdine, Strategic Lead for Teaching, Learning and Professional Development at Diverse Academies Trust. “All of our schools had a totally different process and ethos for appraisal, performance management and professional development.”

“We redefined our processes around our trust values: we empower, we respect and we care. With all the challenges we face around recruitment and retention, it is really important that our policies and processes reflect these values. We recognised that policies such as performance related pay didn’t support that.

“Implementing BlueSky for the trust came from our desire for a new approach that separated performance management from professional development. It supports our ethos of placing trust in your staff to take ownership of their own professional work.

“BlueSky underpins the professional development, appraisal and coaching model which supports recruitment, career development and retention of good staff. We see BlueSky as part of our benefits offer to staff – it underpins the PDP and staff can use BlueSky to support their career development.”

As Jamie sees it, a key benefit of using BlueSky to document work on professional development programme objectives throughout the year is that it encourages people to be reflective while also allowing them to review and evaluate their goals with an agile approach.

“I’ll often look at my objectives in BlueSky and think ‘I’m going to tweak that, add that into my actions or remove that because that’s not relevant anymore since my job’s changed’. Using BlueSky helps you keep track and maintain that focus on what’s important.”

A versatile approach to staff development

Repton School has used BlueSky to support its processes for staff appraisal since 2022. Having looked at a number of other options, the leadership team selected BlueSky for its versatility and ease of use.

“Having an appraisal system that didn’t just focus on the classroom was very important to us,” Deputy Head Ashley Currie explains. “While BlueSky can give us the Teachers’ Standards for classroom staff to self-review against, it is also able to incorporate our standards for the pastoral and co-curricular side of school life, both of which are a big part of what we do here.”

“We’re not the sort of school that marks teachers out of ten, so we wanted a system that is versatile and could be adapted to our appraisal process. We prefer a more holistic, reflective approach that focuses on setting targets to improve through professional development.

“If we’d used any of the other solutions on the market, we would have to use number ratings, and of course you can create unnecessary conflict when you grade someone with a number.”

Many of BlueSky’s features can be adapted to meet the needs of any organisation, whether it’s a small village primary school, a multi-school trust or even some of the world’s top international schools. This includes any terminology or standards.

At Dulwich College Singapore, every teacher identifies one aspect of their teaching practice as a focus for professional development and works with other staff in a professional learning community to achieve their goals.

Daniel Brown, Director of Professional Learning and Development, explains: “We use BlueSky to document the whole of that process, from setting the inquiry question, to review meetings with their line manager, recording evidence, through to the end of year review. What has been particularly useful is the ability to tailor BlueSky to this approach, so we have been able to change the terminology that is used in the platform – for example, ‘Objectives’ is now ‘Inquiry Question’.”

A portable portfolio to nurture continuous development:

At Advanced Learning Partnership (ALP), a large multi-school trust in the UK, BlueSky allows the school improvement team to evaluate the impact of all professional learning as staff are able to record all activities in their personal portfolio.

School Improvement Partner Catherine Taylor explains: “We encourage staff to record and evaluate all internal and external CPD. Staff sometimes move from one school to another within our trust, and BlueSky provides a portfolio that they can take with them, which I think is so important in terms of their professional development and leadership journey. It also gives staff ownership of their own career progression and professional learning.

“BlueSky is not only a personal portfolio for staff – it creates a dialogue between staff and their line manager, and enables our teaching and learning leads to monitor and evaluate the impact of CPD. We’ve been able to develop our own bespoke framework for how we want coaching sessions to be recorded on BlueSky. Evaluations are used to inform changes to the programme and understand where they can share best practice.”

For Deb Poole, Director of Staff Development at City Learning Trust, Stoke on Trent, the unique portfolio tools are a boon for CPD. “Staff love the Timeline view because they can easily add evidence and see progress on an ongoing basis. The information is clear and in one place, so it’s more effective for everyone involved. What I love about BlueSky is that everything can be linked back to the performance management review, which is the thing that makes it purposeful.

Schools choose BlueSky for a variety of reasons, but all schools find that it improves the essential process of staff appraisal, professional development and evaluation, not just for the organisation and leadership, but for individuals themselves. Using BlueSky’s online platform encourages continuous professional development which reduces the stress of performance reviews, while helping individuals understand the value of their work.

ALP’s Catherine Taylor, sums it up: “BlueSky supports accountability: the records are ongoing and staff can build up a professional development portfolio throughout the year.”

“Having ownership of their professional development is really important. Using BlueSky helps to maintain the structure of having those ongoing conversations, with the meeting schedule and information in one place, where it can be accessed easily at any time.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

To learn why your school should choose BlueSky’s flexible appraisal and professional development platform, simply get in touch with our team today.