The release, on April 16th, of “Departmental Advice on reviewing and revising your school’s approach to teachers’ pay” by the DfE is causing head teachers, senior leaders, teachers, union representatives and governors to rethink the relationship between appraisal, performance management, pay and capability. This briefing references the key documents and offers a research and development opportunity to colleagues who are committed to a sustainable model of school improvement based on self-evaluation and professional development.

Key questions

By reviewing the key documents below, we are, in effect, answering three key questions. “What is appraisal?” Answering this indicates that interpretations of the appraisal (or performance management) regulations vary. Therefore, as we ponder, “Why do we appraise?” in our school we can identify, “How do we appraise?” In this way the lines between appraisal, pay and capability become clearer.

Six hundred rural schools in Venezuela are gaining access to the Internet through a new Wi-Fi deployment designed to give teachers and students access to academic and teaching materials from around the world.

Funded by a rural broadband community fund and handled by Hong Kong-based Altai Technologies, the installations will use satellite transmission through very small aperture terminals (VSATs) as the backbone and Altai A2 combination access points and bridges at each site to provide wireless access indoors and outdoors at the schools.

A new suite of solutions under development by two global companies Microsoft and Promethean will provide a new collaborative classroom-based learning environment. Working together the two companies will develop a suite of Windows 8 and Windows RT applications giving educators the ability to use collaborative, interactive and real-time assessment technology to personalize learning.

“The prolific deployment of 1:1 devices and the increasing interest in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) may have the potential to change how teaching and learning happens, but too often these technologies are sent to the classroom without being connected to learning. Promethean’s work with Microsoft will give educators the ability to use the latest technological innovations to help change teaching and learning in all environments by engaging students and increasing their activity through whole class instruction, group collaboration and individualized learning,” said Jim Marshall, CEO of Promethean.

Two top UK schools have turned to iomartcloud for mission critical cloud services to protect and support pupils and staff while they are using the internet.

Guilsborough School and Technology College in Northamptonshire, which was judged an ‘outstanding school’ at its last OFSTED inspection, and Kilgraston School in Perthshire, which was voted UK Independent School of the Year 2011, chose iomartcloud to provide web and mail filtering.