Performance Management

Managing early years staff performance

scameron — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:14:07 +0000

Monitoring and supporting the performance of staff is an essential part of helping them to fulfil their roles successfully. Performance management enables the manager/leader of a setting to evaluate a staff member’s overall performance in relation to the key roles and responsibilities set out in his or her job description (see EYU 57). This evaluation will lead to detailed plans for the ongoing professional development of that individual, set within the context of the setting’s strategic plan for quality improvement.

Performance management provides a way to:

Improving school performance management can improve learning

scameron — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:36:43 +0000

Some schools are well on their way to embedding performance management and professional development of all staff within their systems, but there are others that have simply tweaked what they already had in place to ensure compliance with the statutory performance management regulations. But they are missing an excellent opportunity to draw together two key elements of school improvement.

Planning for next year’s SEN provision

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:41 +0100

Support for SENCOs

Planning for next year's SEN provision

Contextualising development: CPD in practice

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:37 +0100

Quote of the Week

"It's not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?"

− Henry David Thoreau

Practical Tips

Contextualising development

Assessing the quality of CPD

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:37 +0100

Quote of the Week

"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives."

− William A Foster

Practical Tips

Assessing the quality of CPD

Celebrating staff learning

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:36 +0100

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'
Brian Tracy

Practical Tips

Getting to grips with impact evaluation

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:36 +0100

Quote of the Week

"When a measure becomes an objective it stops being a good measure."

− Anon

Practical Tips

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Using pupil voice to refine the focus of CPD

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:35 +0100
Quote of the Week

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

− Stephen Covey

Practical Tips

CPD and pupil voice

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Training and managing teaching assistants

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:34 +0100

Teaching assistants (TAs) contribute an enormous amount to SEN provision in schools today and their training and management is a key part of the SENCO role. After Christmas, the next two issues of SENCO Week will provide some reminders of how to ensure that this valuable resource is used to best effect.

Support for SENCOs

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CPD essentials for 2008

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:21:34 +0100
We spoke to the General Teaching Council for England to get the experts' views on what CPD coordinators might usefully keep track of in the coming weeks and months. We also take a look at issues surrounding the number of teachers leaving the profession to pursue alternative careers.

It is with this in mind that we offer some key questions to ask at this stage of the academic year to enable you to launch into 2008 with as clear a direction as possible. We also take a brief look at the proposed curriculum review for primary schools.

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Effective management and deployment of support staff

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:52 +0100
In most schools, the role of the business manager includes responsibility for the management of a wide range of support staff. Since the advent of workforce remodelling, however, support staff teams have grown at a rapid rate, sometimes even equalling or exceeding teaching staff numbers.
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Performance management experiences

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:50 +0100
At Teachers TV we asked a group of our Associates (teachers who spread the word about the channel and website) 10 questions about their opinions and experiences of the new performance management (PM) process and we got as many different answers. Except in one regard: everybody who responded embraced the idea of appraisal, if not in every case the actuality.

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Professional learning: Making meetings better

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:50 +0100

There used to be a poster, often placed where everyone could see it on the walls of school staff rooms, suggesting that if we had no work to do we might, instead, like to attend a meeting. I am afraid that the world of professional learning provides no escape from meetings but they do not have to be unproductive or unfulfilling. It might be useful to remember this during performance management reviews.

Costing decisions
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Providing difficult feedback to staff: What to say and how to say it

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:50 +0100
Providing feedback to staff is like attempting to fix a plumbing problem at home. By using your basic skills you might be able to solve the problem; but if it goes wrong things can get very messy and you can end up with a bigger issue than the one you started with.

Worst-case scenarios
Picture this: it is 8.45am and a class teacher is about to start an observed lesson with the headteacher. He is approached by his team leader in the staffroom who says to him in front of a group of teaching assistants…

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Getting the best from classroom observation

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:12 +0100

The amendments to how schools continue to develop performance management are expected to take effect sometime in 2007 and the Rewards and Incentives Group (RIG) makes it clear in its consultation documents that classroom observation is still one of the key ways of measuring any teacher’s performance.

Three significant changes are proposed:
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CPD priorities: national and personal

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:10 +0100

Background
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Performance management: all change?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

I don’t want to frighten anyone by using those two emotive words – ‘more change’ – but the Rewards and Incentives Group (RIG) have consulted and are proposing to alter how schools use performance management. Changes should be in place by autumn 2007, so let’s try to get ahead of the game.
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A look at the new guidance for the performance management process

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:40 +0100

As reported previously in this issue, the DfES has issued a consultation on performance management. As also pointed out there, it has not only provided a very short time for consultation but has built in no time at all to respond to any root-and-branch criticism. The official reason provided for this short consultation period (ending as school holidays begin) is that the changes are slight.
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The East Sussex self-review checklists

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:40 +0100

Regular readers may have noticed the frequency with which mention is made in these pages of critical analysis of professional need, self-assessment, critical reflection, reviewing professional learning and the development of authentic professional voices. If we are ever to establish the ‘thinking professional’ in the ‘thinking school’ or, to put it another way, move from old ideas of in-service courses to new ideas of critical professional learning we shall have to establish rigorous and systematic baselines for CPD.
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Developing a high-performance culture

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:39 +0100
The current era of objective measurement and relentless public accountability has brought unprecedented pressure to bear on school leadership teams and their governing bodies. To borrow from a now-famous dictum, they know only too well that to ensure their survival their three priorities must be ‘performance, performance and performance’.
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ASE award for science teachers

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:38 +0100
The status of chartered science teacher (CSciTeach) is a designation in line with awards such as chartered accountant or chartered surveyor. Such awards are made under powers granted by the Privy Council.

As the ASE website explains, ‘CSciTeach recognises the unique and demanding combination of skills, knowledge, understanding and expertise that are required by individuals involved in practising and advancing science teaching and learning’.
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Forming professional friendships

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:36 +0100
Are we the only leadership team who have had enough of critical friends? Governors, school improvement partners, LEA advisers, Ofsted inspectors – all are exhorted to take on the mantle of ‘critical friendship’. The problem is that in real life such beings do not actually exist. What do we do with friends who constantly assess us against a range of performance indicators? Those who suggest how we might improve our taste in clothes, our choice of football team or the TV programmes that we watch? Well, the answer is simple: we make them ex-friends.
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Performance management and CPD

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:33 +0100

A lot has been written about CPD in the past few months, somewhat less about performance management and even less about links between the two. Having applied jointly for a 20-day secondment to study this, our initial hypothesis was that there was a strong link between performance management and CPD and school improvement. We wanted to investigate this by reading and research, by attending courses on performance management and by visits to schools where we thought there may be good practice.
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Performance management and CPD

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:17 +0100

A lot has been written about CPD in the past few months, somewhat less about performance management and even less about links between the two. Having applied jointly for a 20-day secondment to study this, our initial hypothesis was that there was a strong link between performance management and CPD and school improvement. We wanted to investigate this by reading and research, by attending courses on performance management and by visits to schools where we thought there may be good practice.
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Coaching in performance management

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:16 +0100

What is coaching?

In their Performance Management Manual (Pearson Education 2003) West-Burnham and Bradbury define coaching as ‘a long term, one-to-one professional relationship in which the coach actively supports the learner to build capacity to improve performance’ (page 129). The authors emphasise the strength of the coaching process through a series of examples which stress the importance of the one-to-one relationship in other areas of learning.
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Performance management

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:15 +0100

The role of the practitioner and her team leader

Both participants in the performance management (PM) process have a vital role to play. It is important that the practitioner comes into the planning meeting with an open mind and is well prepared. As outlined below, she should (1) have undertaken some form of self-review and (2) have some idea of the developments she wishes to make in the nursery room or the classroom where she works and as part of the whole school or setting team.
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Performance management: monitoring and review

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:14 +0100

The first part of the performance management cycle, the planning meeting, is discussed in a separate article on this site (click here). Here we examine the second and third elements in the cycle.

Stage II: monitoring
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Why your setting needs CPD

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:14 +0100

Should I place emphasis on CPD for my staff?
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