Case study: All Saints CEVA

Background

All Saints CEVA is a Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School. The school is supported by their governing body, parents and carers, alongside the Diocese of Peterborough, Northampton Local Education Authority, and their networks with other schools and wider school family.

Thanks to the ProgressTeaching platform, they have been able to optimise the efficiency of processes that were previously paper-based.

Challenges

When it came to lesson observations, All Saints CEVA found it difficult to implement a consistent feedback structure.

Each observer would conduct lesson observations differently, they would make notes on a piece of paper, rewrite them in full, and then store them in a “lesson observations” ring binder. Lesson observation notes would then only be looked at if the teacher began to struggle with a particular area of their teaching.

Sharing insights with governors and other external stakeholders was conversational and opinion-based, rather than data-led. Having feedback from lesson observations written down on paper meant it was hard to evidence the quality of teaching and learning at the school.

Results

The Leadership Team at All Saints CEVA worked together to decide what effective lesson observations looked like for their school. Using the ProgressTeaching platform, they now have a structured approach to observations and teachers are getting the high-quality feedback they deserve.

Feedback is available immediately after lesson observations, giving teachers actionable insights at their fingertips. They now go into follow up meetings having already seen the feedback they’ve been given. This lets them have meaningful developmental conversations about what has been documented, and what steps are needed to improve their practice.

The colour-coded progress chart in ProgressTeaching gives the Leadership Team quick and visual insights into areas for improvement. They can now act on areas for concern before there is an impact on their pupils’ education.

Governors and other external stakeholders have a clear picture of the quality of teaching and learning at the school. ProgressTeaching lets them see all the information they need, backed by data, in an easy-to-understand format.

Data collection was a huge burden on the teachers at All Saints CEVA because of the sheer amount of time it took. With ProgressTeaching, time spent collating data for reports has reduced from days to minutes.

“The output of reports previous to ProgressTeaching was always well received by teachers, but the actual process of collating the data took ages! Now it’s quick and straightforward. It’s given us so much more time to get on with teaching.

ProgressTeaching has helped us to raise the standard of teaching much quicker than we ever could have done before we implemented the platform.

As a small primary school, we use the platform differently from how a secondary school would. The team at ProgressTeaching listens to what it is that we want to get from the platform and tailors it to meet our specific needs. 

They are always quick to respond to our questions and give us the support we need. This has helped us with getting all of our team up to speed with our new and improved way of working.”

 

Martin Hunter, Assistant Headteacher at All Saints CEVA Primary School