The Pivotal Role of School Middle Leaders in Setting and Maintaining Standards

A presentation given as part of Developing Middle Leaders INSET at Ranches Primary School, Dubai on Thursday 25th August 2016

Using Appraisal to Drive School Performance - Presentation

A presentation given to the Education Experts Conference in Dubai on Monday 30th May, 2016.

A Guide to the Berkhamsted School Appraisal Grids

For more detail on the rationale behind this approach see the following blogposts:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part Six: PRP for HoDs and Teachers

The majority of the posts in this series have focused on appraisal and on improving performance - I make no apology for that, for any organisation that seeks to introduce a form of Performance-Related Pay needs first to have robust appraisal structures in place.  As I argued in the first of these posts (see Part One), there are a number of issues when it comes to measuring teacher performance solely on the basis of pupils' results. The Novartis 3 x 3 grid which looks at both 'outcomes' and at 'attitudes and behaviours' provides an appraisal structure that looks beyond simple outcomes.

PRP and Heads of Department.

Recently I attended a Westminster Forum on the Introduction to Performance-Related Pay to the Maintained Sector. The well-rehearsed arguments for and against were played out, but no one mentioned that Heads of Department have a key role to play. My experience working in some of the top independent schools in the country is that a school's academic performance stands or falls by the quality of its Heads of Department because, unlike senior leaders, they are the close enough to the action to have a significant influence. It is they who are in a position to establish high standards and to hold teachers to account when they fall short; and it is they who can turn a blind eye and let poor performance drift. It was for this reason that we both decided first to introduce the new appraisal structure at HoD level, and, alongside that, to introduce an element of PRP for HoDs.

'Too soon to measure'

One of the issues that we have had to address is the situation where a HoDs appraisal falls 6 months after taking office. Clearly the HoD cannot be held responsible for the historic departmental results. However, we took the view that there was nothing to be lost by using the 'Attitudes and Behaviours' data to evaluate the HoD's performance, albeit over a relatively short period of time.

PRP and Teachers

At present we have no plans to roll out PRP to teachers because we are not confident that we have the granularity of data on teacher outcomes that would make it a meaningful exercise. Our priority is getting the new appraisal structure to bed down and to evaluate what impact it has in terms of teacher and whole-school improvement.

Roll-out Timeline

• 2011-12: Senior Leadership Team and Governors formulate new appraisal structure
• 2012-13: Consultation with HoDs on new pay scales and a group of HoDs drew up the HoDs appraisal grids
• Michaelmas 2013: Working parties develop the Teacher, SLT and EY appraisal grids
• Jan/Feb 2013: HoDs appraisals.  Outcomes judged on three-year rolling average; Self-appraisal forms comepleted, 360° Feedback, Moderation Meeting and Feedback Meeting
• Jan/Feb 2013:  Trial Appraisals of the Teacher and SLT Grids
• March 2013:  Publication of Teacher and SLT Grids (to Prep and Senior school staff)
• April to June 2013:  Teacher Appraisals;  SLT Appraisals
• Jan/Feb 2014:  HoDs appraisals - these will be the first PRP appraisals

The principal advantage of rolling out the new structure to the HoDs is that they already have an understanding of the process by virtue of having been through the appraisal process themselves.They have in effect already had some informal training in advance of the formal meetings and hopefully will be well prepared when they come to conduct teacher appraisals for members of their department later this academic year.

Caveat

This project is in its infancy and we are very conscious that what we are doing at the moment is not the finished article - it is very much work-in-progress. There will be lessons learned as we go through the progress and I suspect that the Appraisal Grids will go through many more versions over the next few years. I will write again in due course with updates on our progress.

Acknowledgements:
It is only fitting that I close by paying tribute to the many members of the Berkhamsted School team who have put hours of work and brain-power into this project; particular thanks must go to Deputy Heads who have worked hard to create a system that works and to the HoDs and teachers who have been the first guinea pigs going through the system. Thanks to you all.

Links to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target-Setting and CPD

The Feedback Meeting with the appraisee should take place as soon as possible after the line-managers have agreed a moderated and standardised version of the Appraisal Grid:

The Feedback Meeting fundamentally is a dialogue about teacher improvement.

The aim of the meeting is not to agree a final version of the appraisal grid - it is to have a constructive, informed conversation about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the appraisee and, above all, to set personal professional development targets for the following year.

Discussion of those areas where there is a difference of judgement:

There is clearly scope for a discussion where there is a difference of opinion between the self-assessment of the appraisee and that of the line-manager. Here the question of evidence will need to be discussed and the reasons for the different judgement explored.

1. The appraisee may over-estimate his or her performance.  In these instances it is incumbent on the line-manager to explain what the appraisee needs to do in order to meet the next level. This is a very important aspect for the credibility of the process:  the line-manger needs to have a good understanding of what it takes to be considered 'outstanding'. At the end of the day, there is nothing lost by the line-manager and appraisee agreeing to differ, so long as there are clear professional development outcomes.
2. The appraisee may under-estimate his or her performance.  These instances are an opportunity for line-managers to build up, praise their team-member and build up his/her confidence.

Target-setting

The whole appraisal structure is focused on Teacher/HoD/SLT improvement. 

The Appraisal Grids themselves point the way to target-setting. If, as a HoD, I put myself in column 2, assessing myself as 'meeting expectations/good', I have automatically set myself the target of being outstanding - the description for which is already in front of me.

The purpose of the Feedback Meeting is to select which 2-4 areas are going to be the priority for the next academic year. The role of the Line-manager is to set intermediate targets for the appraisee so that s/he can make that progress over the coming year. 

CPD

At Berkhamsted, alongside these developments in our Appraisal system, we have put in place a twilight programme of INSET with eight major stands:

1. GTP
2. NQT
3. General Teacher
4. Head of Department  (Academic Middle Management)
5. Assistant Head of Department
6. Head of House  (Pastoral Middle Management)
7. Assistant Head of House
8. Senior Leadership Team (including a Senior Leadership Reading Group)

All staff are required to attend at least four of the eight twilight INSET sessions during the year.  Each of the strands of next year's CPD programme will be devised in light of the training needs that come out of this year's appraisal rounds.  

(For more information on this see Dr Nick Dennis' blogpost: CPD Development #1)

Next Post in Series

Links to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage

Step Two:  The Review and Moderation Stage
The Review and Moderation Stage of the Appraisal Process is conducted by the line-manager:

• In the case of a teacher, this is the Head of Department in the senior schools; or the Head of Year in the prep schools.
• In the case of the HoD, this is the Deputy Head who line-manages that cluster group (Departments are allocated to one of four clusters: 'English and Languages', 'Humanities', 'Maths and Science' and 'Creative and Practical'
• In the case of a Year Head in the Prep Schools it is the Headteacher.
• In the case of SLT, it is the Principal.

This structure both empowers middle managers and spreads the load from the SLT.

360° Feedback

The Line-manager collates evidence.  Let me take the example of the appraisal of a HoD by a Deputy Head:

• Evidence from Below:  the Deputy Head will send a simple confidential questionnaire to members of the department about the performance of the HoD.  These will include comments on a range of issues including how department meetings are run, the extent to which the HoD provides clear leadership of the department, the way in which tasks are shared out within the department and so on.
• Peer to Peer:  the Examination Officer will provide feedback on the HoD's administrative efficiency in relation to both internal and external examinations.
• Evidence from Above: the Vice-Principal Education and the Director of Studies will provide feedback on the Departmental academic performance in relation to MidYIS and ALIS data, on how the HoD uses budgets and on their administrative Efficiency in terms of meeting deadlines etc.

Lesson and Meeting Observation
HoDs will collate information on the basis of formal and informal Lesson Observations. Likewise, Deputy Heads will evaluate the HoDs performance at cluster group meetings and by attending HoDs meetings from time to time.

Step Three:  The Line-Manager Review
Once the line manager has received all the highlighted (Self)Appraisal Grids from their department or cluster, s/he reviews the appraisee's self-assessment in each category against the 360° and observation data that they have collated. The line-manager then make his/her own judgement of the teacher/HoD's performance by noting that they agree the self evaluation or by highlighting the grid in a different colour:

HoD Reviews the Teacher's Self-appraisal

There is clearly scope for a discussion where there is a difference of opinion between the self-assessment of the appraisee and the line-manager. Here the question of evidence will need to be discussed and the reasons for the different judgement explored.  (How this is done will be tackled in the next blogpost.)

Step Four:  The Moderation and Standardisation Meeting
As teachers we are all familiar with 'Moderation' and 'Standardisation' meetings for pupils' work - indeed schools have exceptional expertise in this area in comparison to many other sectors. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that there is a fairness in the system across the school - between clusters and between departments. It is also a vital step in ensuring that 'outstanding' remains truly outstanding and that there isn't grade inflation.  Yes, we all hope that next year that more people will be deemed 'outstanding' than last year, but we want that to be because of genuine improvement rather than because of a lack of rigour in the appraisal system.
So earlier this term here at Berkhamsted, the Deputy Heads met with the Principal and the Director of Studies and we looked at the reviewed Appraisal Grids (highlighted in both colours as above), evaluated the evidence and came up with a final judgement for the overall score for each of the HoD.

The Moderation and Standardisation Meeting was a very important meeting and, as a Principal, was a great opportunity for me 'to take the collective pulse' of the School's middle management.  It was also a great opportunity to witness the professionalism and passion of the team of Deputy Heads who are rising to the challenge of driving up standards of teaching and learning in the school.

Next Post in Series

Links to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage

The Appraisal Grids:
So far we have developed five versions of the Berkhamsted Appraisal Grids (although they are a different stages of maturity):

1. Teacher (for KS1 to KS5)
2. Head of Department
3. Senior Leadership Team
4. Early Years
5. Support Staff

The Appraisal Grids focus on 'Atttitudes and Behaviours' rather than on outcomes and all follow the same fundamental structure. Key competences or responsibilities relating to the role are identified.

There are descriptors of three levels of teacher 'attitudes and behaviours':

1. Falling Short of Expectations
2. Meets Expectations / Good
3. Outstanding

Step One - Self Appraisal

The appraisal process starts with self appraisal. Teachers simply work their way through the appraisal grids highlighting the description that summarises their performance best. They need to be prepared to present evidence in support of their judgement. This might take the form of lesson planners, photographs of classroom displays etc.

There are four advantages of this system of self-appraisal:

1. The grids force teachers to focus on how they are performing in relation to key teaching competences (or 'responsibilities' in the case of middle and senior managers.
2. It is very quick and easy to complete the appraisal grid self-appraisal. It takes the appraisee about 30 minutes to highlight the grid.
3. It is a standardised system across departments and key stages
4. The process automatically sets targets for teacher improvement and describes what that improvement might look like:

Improving the Pace of Lessons is clearly a priority in this instance.

Next Post in Series

Links to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation

We began a consultation process with Heads of Department in October 2012 proposing a move to a new middle management pay scale for the academic year 2013-14. These scales would include an element of performance-related-pay.

New HoDs Pay Scales - Banding according to Size of Department

The HoDs pay scales were in four bands relating to the size of the department: Small, Medium, Large and Faculty. The criteria for the allocation of a department to each of these bands were based on five factors:

1. Number of Staff 
2. Number of Pupils at KS3 
3. Number of Pupils at KS4 
4. Number of Pupils at KS5 
5. Examination v Non-examination subjects.

PRP: -The Performance-Related Pay Element

There are at least three levels within each of the Bands. The theory being that a HoDs will start at the bottom of the band and can progress through the levels according to their performance. (Conversely, poor performance can lead to a loss of an increment.)

HoDs Appraisal: Measuring Performance

HoDs' performance is measured in two ways: by 'Outcomes' and by their 'Attitudes and Behaviours'. This can be summarised on a 3x3 grid, an idea developed from a performance-management model used by Novartis (see previous blogpost):

Measuring Departmental Outcomes

Heads of Department will be evaluated on the basis of a three-year rolling average of their academic performance in the following way:

NB Not Berkhamsted School Data

• Academic Results: MidYIS and ALIS results – against Independent Schools  
  Outstanding = over 1 standard deviations re Independent Schools (in blue) Good = in line to 1 standard deviation (in white) Weak = lower than average performance (in yellow).
• Inspiring Pupils: Trend analysis of pupil option numbers at GCSE and A-level and university. 
• The Level of Departmental Activity: Trips, Societies, Visiting speakers etc.

Evaluating HoDs 'Attitudes and Behaviours'

The aim of the appraisal grids was to provide descriptors for three levels of possible 'Attitudes and Behaviours' of HoDs for all of their key responsibilities:

1. Falls short of Expectations
2. Meets Expectations / Good
3. Outstanding

(These titles went through many versions:  Poor - Satisfactory - Outstanding; Poor - Developing - Outstanding. Ultimately we set upon Falls short of expectations etc for two reasons: first it focused on improvement; and, secondly, we were keen to avoid the OFSTED trap of devaluing 'outstanding' - we don't expect every HoD to be outstanding in every area of responsibility all of the time).

The following is an example of some of the descriptors for the HoD responsibility for conducting appraisal and monitoring staff performance:

Rather than imposing the grids onto HoDs, a group of leading HoDs worked revising and rewording the HoDs appraisal grids. Looking back on the process, this proved to be the most important part of the consultation process, for it gave HoDs the opportunity to determine the criteria against which, ultimately, they would be appraised. Indeed, it was this group of HoDs who subsequently presented the HoDs Appraisal Grids to their peers - which meant that their was genuine buy-in from the HoDs from an early stage.

Lessons Learned

Although we have decided to have a PRP element to the appraisal system for HoDs, the key driver is towards improving performance. HoDs were treated as the professionals that they are and were given the opportunity to make a significant contribution to the process. Whilst the structure was imposed 'from on high', the detail of defining was is poor, satisfactory, good and outstanding performance was left to those in the job. Perhaps the greatest testimony to the success of the consultation process is that all but one of the HoDs chose to move onto the new pay scale.

Next Post in Series

Links to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers

Teacher Appraisal and PRP - Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach

As a teacher I never found the appraisal process particularly satisfactory: the self-appraisal questionnaires were symptomatic of a broad-brush approach that, at one end of the spectrum, didn't set out to recognise excellence and staff who went the extra mile; and, at the other, allowed poor and even failing teachers to survive for yet another year (or three!):

• "What have you been teaching this year?"
• "What are the things that you have done well this year?"
• "What aspects of the job have you found most satisfying this year?
• "What areas have you found challenging?"
• "Are there any ways in which the school management could make it easier for you to do your job?"
• and so on . . . . . 

As a Head of Department, I was never even asked to feed back to the SMT on the performance of those in my department which meant that under-performance remained unaddressed - at least by the senior team. However, it is all too easy to be critical of Senior Leaders, as I realised as soon as I was catapulted to running my own school. As a young Headteacher I was just as bad as those who had gone before:  I was too busy keeping the school I was running afloat to be able to deviate from the bland platitude approach to appraisal. There had to be a better way . . . . . . 

It has taken us (this has been a real team effort) three years to put a better way in place.  

The starting point:  Learn from the Best

The starting point was in November 2010 when I had the opportunity to visit the Human Resources team at the Basel headquarters of Novartis, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. It has the value and turn-over the size of a small country and its continued profitability depends on developing new drugs and medicines each year to replace those that are going out of patent. Novartis' success relies on attracting and developing the best talent in the world. There the rewards for high performance and the cost of of poor performance are measured in tens of millions (£s). 

Novartis use a 3 x 3 grid developed by The Harvard Business School to evaluate performance:

This performance management tool combines two aspects: 'performance outcomes or results' on the y axis; and 'attitudes and behaviours' on the x axis. The 'attitudes and behaviours' dimension is particularly important for Novartis, because the success of Novartis isn't just about individual's meeting personal objectives, it is about working as a team and collaborating with others. The company can suffer if I as an individual meet or even exceed my objectives, but that the rest of the team that I lead decide to leave the company (probably taking experience and insight to work for a rival) and our (£multi-million) project goes down the pan.

'Results' v 'Attitudes and Behaviours' in Teaching

The attractive aspect of this approach to appraisal  is that gives scope to evaluate how they do their job -by looking at how teachers conduct themselves on a daily basis.  

An appraisal structure that looks at the key teaching competences, such as lesson preparation, classroom control, subject knowledge, the range of pedagogy, assessment etc., allows appraisal to focus on teacher improvement and development and not just on results. 

Such a structure provides scope to recognise those who are team-players, those who are excellent practitioners and those who go the extra mile for their pupils. It also provides a mechanism to highlight areas of relative strength, which might be harnessed by the school in spreading 'best-practice'; or of relative weakness, which will be areas which will be a focus for improvement over the coming year. 

Managing Poor Performance in Teaching: 

In my experience, everyone knows who are the 'good teachers' and who are the 'bad' ones: the pupils can tell you, colleagues know, Heads of Department know, the parents know, and (because of that) Headteachers certainly know. The problem is that often 'bad teachers' can perform when they need to, and are able to pull out a 'satisfactory' lesson when required. Furthermore analysis of examination results often demonstrate that 'bad teachers' in independent schools tend to perform as well as good ones.  There are many reasons for this: pupils devote a disproportionate amount of time to their subject or paper, other teachers in the Department put on revision classes, and in some cases parents pay for private tutors or attend crammers in the Easter vacation. Ultimately pupils and parents will "back-fill" because the price of a child failing is just too great. The consequence of this is that exam results (raw, comparative or value-added) alone are too crude and instrument to manage poor performance.  By looking at day-to-day teaching practices, the Novartis grid provides a management tool, where teachers who do not prepare lessons or do their marking can be held to account.

Next Post in Series

LLinks to related posts on Teacher Appraisal and PRP:

• Part One: Background Thinking behind Berkhamsted School's approach
• Part Two: The Berkhamsted School HoD Appraisal PRP Consultation
• Part Three: The Self Appraisal Stage
• Part Four: The Review and Moderation Stage
• Part Five: The Feedback Meeting, Target Setting and CPD
• Part Six:  PRP for HoDs and Teachers