Building Capacity in School

Building capacity in school

The table below explains the characteristics of a school or department with a well-developed capacity for improvement in teaching and learning approaches.

Attribute	Examples at whole-school level	Examples at department level	How are you doing?
It routinely shares its expertise	Staff meetings regularly feature teachers demonstrating or illustrating how they teach	Collaborative planning involves teachers sharing their ideas on how work can be delivered. The department shares demonstration lessons with staff
It uses external support and challenge to enhance practice	Teachers are regularly encouraged to attend external INSET. LEA school advisers are drawn in to contribute to school self-review processes	The department uses the LEA KS3 consultants to observe lessons and provide feedback
It has a clear, operational focus	The SMT signals clearly that certain items in meetings are significant in improving teaching and learning and ensures they are given significantly more time	Meetings are focused on teaching and learning issues. The team is clear about which items require only a little time. Administrative items are given later slots in meetings
It has a well- developed set of priorities	It has a clear and operational (not cosmetic) development plan which guides resource decisions and action taken	The department has an action plan based firmly on an audit of teaching strengths and weaknesses. Resource decisions are based on declared priorities of strengths and weaknesses
It elevates professional development to a continual process	Individual teachers are enabled to watch colleagues teach on a regular and systematic basis	An audit of each team member’s skills is used as a basis for termly review discussions and lesson observations

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• This resource is part of the DfES resource "Pedagogy and practice: Teaching and learning in secondary schools" (ref: 0423-2004G) which can be downloaded from the National Archives http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110809101133/nsonline.org.uk/node/97131 The whole resource (512 pages) can be downloaded as a pdf File:Pedagogy and Practice DfES.pdf
• The resource booklets, and many 'harvested' documents are available to download, generally in editable formats from the ORBIT resources http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/Category:DfE
• The videos from the accompanying DVDs are available http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/DfES_DVD