Secondary heads free to share responsibility for school improvement13 January 2009 - The Skills Factory will unveil a new version of its highly successful online school self-evaluation system, schoolcentre.net, on stand C50 at BETT 2009. The new edition contains the Departmental SEF feature, a tool that enables individual departments of a school to complete Part A (the Evaluation questions) of the Ofsted Self Evaluation Form (SEF) relating to their specific department. This enables headteachers to effectively entrust responsibility for the SEF to individual departments - a major benefit for secondary schools looking for an effective way to keep up-to-date with departmental improvements, whilst also ensuring their evaluations are reflected in the main SEF.
As schools are increasingly moving away from regarding school improvement as the sole responsibility of the headteacher, the new version of schoolcentre.net will allow the different departmental heads and subject leaders within a school to take responsibility for completing the area of the SEF that is relevant to their role. This will enable all those involved in raising standards of teaching and learning to contribute fully to the school improvement process and ease the burden on school leaders.
Using schoolcentre.net, the head of maths or English could log on and view details of a new teaching strategy that has been introduced to help boost boys’ achievement in their particular subject areas. Assessment results for individual students, classes or year groups could be stored online to help teachers monitor their students’ progress and target additional learning support where it is needed. Information on any intervention can be recorded on the system and this data could then be submitted for inclusion in the SEF to help demonstrate the school’s success in meeting school improvement goals.
Mike Boyce, Sales Manager at The Skills Factory, which is part of the Granada Learning Group, says: “schoolcentre.net’s Departmental SEF frees school leaders to assign responsibility for completing particular areas of the SEF to the teachers and subject heads within their own school. Storing school improvement documents online makes it easier for teachers across a school to play a key role in driving progress. The system will also help ensure the SEF provides a rich source of the most up-to-date information for Ofsted inspectors.”
Schools can use schoolcentre.net to store electronic copies of the SEF, school development plan and a wide range of other relevant data. Heads can assign action points for completion by individual teachers and information can be added and updated as required. The system can be accessed from a school or home computer and staff will only be able to view the information that they have been authorised to see.
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About The Skills Factory The Skills Factory has created a range of school management tools and lesson planning and record keeping software. The company’s aim is to reduce the time teachers spend on school administration and management, and our innovative tools can be used to aid school improvement, plan lessons, set targets, assess pupil attainment and create reports.
About Granada Learning Granada Learning is the UK's leading provider of educational assessments, online school improvement resources and training. It publishes an extensive portfolio of online and print-based tests for schools and education specialists, which assess children’s progress in literacy, ability and numeracy and identify a broad spectrum of special educational needs.
The company’s range of innovative, screen-based tools helps reduce the increasing burden of administration within education and support whole-school improvement to help schools work efficiently and effectively to meet their pupils’ needs.
For further information, please contact: Danielle Morgan PR and Events Manager Granada Learning Tel: 020 8996 3632 Email: danielle.morgan@granada-learning.com
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