At Littlehampton, when colleagues carry out their Performance Management Planning/Review Meeting, they complete a CPD action plan. As part of this, they are offered the opportunity to work alongside a coach on any aspect of teach- ing and learning that they wish to develop. Alternatively, they can opt to work with a specialist coach on one of the following aspects of teaching and learning: • assessment for learning
• behaviour for learning
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• developing literacy skills
• using Information Technology as an effective teaching and learning tool. Interestingly, this tied in with one of the requests made by teaching staff on how they would like to see coaching progress at the school – a number of staff stated that all teachers should be offered the opportunity to work alongside a coach. In terms of opening up coaching, this has been extremely successful. At least 50% of those who returned their CPD action plans, following their performance review meetings, asked either to work alongside a coach in a specific area, or to observe a colleague teaching with a view to focusing on an area of their teaching that they wish to develop. The latter will tend to result in the development of a coaching relationship.
The success of this approach was further aided by time being put aside on a school clo- sure day for colleagues to meet and have their review meetings and complete their CPD action plans. This, in our minds, is an essential part of the process. If we want the process of performance management, and the associated discussions regarding CPD, to become an effective coaching conversation, then schools need to give staff the time to carry out the process in a relaxed and stress-free atmosphere. Only then will mean- ingful discussions take place that may then lead to positive outcomes. This is not nec- essarily the case if the performance management process takes place after a busy day of teaching. Coaching takes time.
Those who are carrying out the performance management review meetings will need some guidance on how the meetings should run, in order to achieve more of a coaching focus. If this is not done, then they may well revert to form and end up telling the reviewee what they need to do better and how. Firstly, they will all need to have had some training in the principles and skills of coaching. Secondly, they will need to be fully briefed on how the meetings should run within a coaching model. This will almost certainly require some briefing sessions with the reviewers, before they embark on their meetings. This investment in time beforehand will pay dividends in terms of the quality of the performance management process.
The important role of the CPD co-ordinator in setting up coaching, has been dis- cussed elsewhere in this book. This role becomes pivotal if a performance manage- ment process that is linked to CPD, such as the one described at Littlehampton, is to be successful. Here teaching staff hand their CPD action plans to the CPD co-ordina- tor, who is then charged with analysing the many coaching requests on these plans and with pairing colleagues up accordingly. Clearly, this can only be effective if the school has a very good working knowledge of the strengths of its teaching staff – and this will only be the case if the school has a strong self-evaluation structure in place. At Littlehampton, the long-term plan was always to dovetail the processes of school self-evaluation, the school development plan, performance management and CPD. Incorporating the CPD action plan into the performance management process seemed to be the final part of the jigsaw.
It is clear to see how coaching, particularly specialist coaching, plays a key role throughout this process.
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THE COACHING TOOLKIT• The school development plan, based on developmental priorities from the self-evaluation form, feeds into subject action plans. Within these plans, sub- ject teams identify how they will address specific whole-school developmen- tal priorities. For many subjects, this may involve setting up a peer-coaching programme or focusing on a specific area of teaching and learning, for exam- ple, assessment for learning. The subject leaders then meet regularly with a leadership link (somebody from the school leadership team) to be coached on leading this process.
• These subject action plans form a framework for teachers to focus on their indi- vidual developmental needs during their performance management review meetings. As a part of this process, they complete their CPD action plan and can opt to work with a specialist coach in that area, for example assessment for learning, from a different subject.
• During the monitoring process, school leaders and subject leaders observe les- sons. While making a judgement on the quality of teaching and learning is a key part of this process, more important is the coaching conversation between the observer and the teacher that should happen following the observation.
This can be further developed at Littlehampton, with a view to having a whole- school push on consistency of approach, in terms of classroom practice, in the following key areas:
Self-evaluation form School development plan Lesson observations; walk-throughs; subject leader Interviews Monitoring by school self- evaluation process School improvement cycle Subject action plans Frequent coaching meetings between subject leader and leadership link Individual performance management objectives High-quality and focused CPD, e.g. coaching
Figure 4.1 School improvement cycle
• Teaching for Learning
• Assessment for Learning (AfL) • Behaviour for Learning • Literacy for Learning.