Best Practice

Case study: Supporting your support staff

In the school team, every person counts. School leader Katherine Cocker-Goring discusses her work to boost CPD and development for support staff and to more closely link student progress and staff development

At Barnes Wallis Academy, we achieved something incredible last year. The proportion of pupils achieving five A* to C GCSE grades including English and maths rose from 32 to 66 per cent and our Progress 8 score improved from -0.14 to -0.01. However, the best thing about this achievement was the fact that we did it with largely the same staffing body as we had had the previous year.

The experience taught us the insurmountable importance of investing in people – because people improve schools. We’d invested heavily in our teaching staff through provision of quality and relevant CPD in teaching and learning and strategic planning. However, this left us with very little time to invest in the foundations of the school: our support teams.

Register now, read forever

Thank you for visiting SecEd and reading some of our content for professionals in secondary education. Register now for free to get unlimited access to all content.

What's included:

  • Unlimited access to news, best practice articles and podcast

  • New content and e-bulletins delivered straight to your inbox every Monday and Thursday

Register

Already have an account? Sign in here