
Last time I published my school’s development plan, I was surprised by how many people were interested. At Highbury Grove we have adopted the methodology we’d devised at KEGS. The criteria are posed as questions; this allows us to be evaluative in deciding how we’re doing. The live version includes columns of target dates, key SLT personnel driving each area and columns where we RAG rate our progress. We’ve just completed a review which was really useful in helping to kick-start some areas of activity. We also added in some things we thought of after the plan was written back in September.
This pdf version is published on our website:
http://www.highburygrove.islington.sch.uk/resources/3108/HGS_School_Development_Plan.pdf
Note, there are no data or inspection targets. This is all about processes driven by our sense of what is needed. It doesn’t cover all of our activities – just the things are new or need special focus this year. There’s another raft of activity embedded in our Reviews. That’s where all the attainment action is – in the detail at departmental level.
Samuel Rhodes is the Special School that we are co-located with. MiSST is the Music in Secondary Schools’ Trust that is based at our school; IC6 is the Sixth Form consortium that we’re part of.
My only comment is to ask why there is nothing about improving your provision for careers education, information and guidance?
It may be that it’s wonderful already but given the current dichotomy between employment/university routes and your goal of improving aspiration; a specific mention alongside the raising aspiration aspects in point 1.2 would have been a positive move.
What is the point of having high aspirations if your young people don’t have the support structure in place to enable them to achieve those aspirations.
Please don’t take my comments as critiscism, they are merely a suggestion for further improvement.
LikeLike
Hi. Obviously IAG is vital. It has emerged as an area to develop from our review processes. It is likely to feature in the 2015-6 plan .. As i say, there is a lot that we do that doesnt feature in the plan.
LikeLike
[…] posts about development plans (like this one) has made me think about mine. As part of ours, a digital strategy is […]
LikeLike
[…] building the Sixth Form, tackling homophobia – amongst other things. You can see the whole school development plan here, just to get things in […]
LikeLike
[…] my Headteacher’s report six weeks in and several other steps along the way. I shared our development plan in full in this post. Instead of targets and success criteria, we’ve been using a series of […]
LikeLike
[…] The School Development Plan: It’s always been my experience that the minute you finish your SDP, it’s out of date. Six months in and some of the items seem irrelevant whilst other things are conspicuously absent. It’s a rolling process. Nevertheless, the plan serves the purpose of setting out some sense of direction at a given point for all the stakeholders. The trick is to keep its value in perspective and allow necessary changes to be made whilst keeping an eye on the long term goal. I’m always wrestling with the idea that is should be possible to have a simple, clear set of core aims whilst, in reality, the to-do list grows and grows. It’s a tough balance. At some point you have to accept that we can’t do everything we’d like all at once, if at all. […]
LikeLike
[…] Once you have a list this long, you can’t add any more and still talk in terms of priorities even though this doesn’t include everything we’re doing. We’ll review it in the same way as we did before. […]
LikeLike