Progress Teaching

Case study: Highbury Grove

Background

City of London Academy Highbury Grove is a mixed secondary school with academy status located in the London Borough of Islington. Their students are at the heart of everything they do. Their teachers get appointed for their passion, enthusiasm, and expertise in communicating with young people.

Before using ProgressTeaching, City of London Academy Highbury Grove tracked self-evaluations manually via spreadsheets. The information that observers needed to conduct a lesson observation wasn’t readily available.

Objectives

  • Move from a high-stakes, low-frequency observation model to a low-stakes and high-frequency model
  • Gain a typical view of teaching across the school
  • Reduce stress on teachers
  • Deliver reports to stakeholders easily
  • Identify teaching and learning requirements
  • Remove paper-based processes associated with observations

It’s great! I absolutely love it! It’s given me the tools and time I need to better inform decisions. Our teachers can now take greater ownership of their own development needs. It has allowed us to place our strongest teachers where they need to be and identify training needs throughout the school!

Results

Thanks to ProgressTeaching, City of London Academy Highbury Grove is now using a low-stakes high-frequency observation model. They have a deeper understanding of training needs across different departments and have increased the number of lesson observations conducted from 70 a term to 380.

Professional development across the school has become even better as teachers can take ownership of their development needs by seeing exactly where they need to improve on the ProgressTeaching platform.

Their leaders can accurately report to stakeholders using the automatically generated reports in the ProgressTeaching platform. They now have a clear view of the typicality of teaching at their school which has hugely reduced the stress burden on teachers associated with high-stakes observations.

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Join us for this Ofsted-focused webinar exploring how curriculum and teaching are being evaluated under the new inspection framework. Drawing on recent inspection experiences and sector insights, our speakers will share what schools and trusts need to know to prepare effectively.

We are delighted to be joined by Sarah Pringle, Principal at Littlehampton Academy, who has experienced an inspection under the new framework.

Key themes will include:

  • Analysis of curriculum and teaching trends under the framework
  • The questions inspectors are asking about curriculum and teaching
  • School and Trust leaders’ insights and lessons learned from recent inspections
  • How schools and Trusts can prepare for inspection

This session will provide practical insights, real-world experiences, and actionable takeaways for school and trust leaders preparing for inspection under the new framework.

All attendees will receive a copy of our new report ‘Spring 2026 Ofsted Review: Curriculum and Teaching Analysis’.