About accelerate achievement
accelerate achievement supports school leaders and teachers in completing
rigorous self-evaluation across subject areas/departments and any aspect of the school
as well as, of course, the school as a whole. It takes full account of Every Child
Matters Key Outcomes in completing school review and self-evaluations documents, including
the Ofsted SEF-summary. It will help schools routinely manage their evidence in ways
that will be particularly useful during Ofsted inspection and will support working
in the future with school improvement partners and other stakeholders.
However, accelerate achievement goes even further in providing a range of
tools for school leaders. School improvement plans can be generated from criteria
identified within the self-evaluation. Comprehensive staff management tools can be
used to record and complete staff assessments. Evidence from lesson observations,
and views of parents/learners can be captured through surveys and used in rigorously
reviewing the school’s performance in coming to robust self-evaluation judgements.
Case Studies
accelerate achievement, has been used in hundreds of
schools since 2001. Click here
to view some case studies & customer recommendations.
What's new in accelerate achievement 3
Revised Key Indicators of Performance (KIPs) directly in-line with OfSTED reporting procedures
This high level self-evaluation tool continues to allow you to assess your school/faculty/department against the Key Indicators of Performance as identified through the new OfSTED framework, including the separate frameworks for sixth form and Early Years provision. The facility to add your own key indicators to evaluate the individual needs of the school, remains.
Streamlined forensic assessment criteria
Following feedback from existing users the number of criteria used for completing a forensic assessment against any one of the KIPs has been streamlined to ensure quality of evaluation.
On-line SEF for use at whole-school/departmental/faculty level
The School Review and Self Evaluation tool has been replaced by a direct copy of the updated SEF – this can be used at any level of leadership to evaluate performance.
Milestone reports linked to Balanced Scorecard visual reporting facility
The balanced scorecard and milestone facilities help to support a school/academy in monitoring their performance against their strategic goals, giving Governors, SIPs and other partners an overview of all key indicators of performance, their targets and the staff responsible. The 'traffic light' system continues to be used to show the school whether they are making progress on a specific key indicator.
Bespoke Lesson Observation facility mapped against key OfSTED criteria
A new lesson observation proforma has been added to link directly into the OfSTED framework that can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual school/academy – these can still be mapped against the KIPs and Criterion so that they can be used as evidence in support of your school self-evaluation.
Case Studies & Customer Recommendations
The capabilities and approach of accelerate achievement have brought benefits
to Primary and Secondary, large and small schools. The following case studies reflect
this.
Jeff Brindle and Alan Loughead
Clacton County High School, Essex
“We find accelerate achievement easy to use – all 100 staff are trained and use it regularly. This has
realised a highly significant benefit – all staff are involved with the school improvement
process and appreciate how “self-evaluation” helps them to achieve better results.
The performance management feature of accelerate achievement has enabled ‘staff performance’ to become
meaningful and useful to staff where they perceived it to be bureaucratic before.
Finding ways to save time and reduce paper-work is a key thrust in schools. Adopting
accelerate achievement has saved us the equivalent of about 2 people’s time in terms of consolidating
information and progress monitoring. Using information from accelerate achievement has enabled meetings
to run more efficiently hence saved time as everyone can access the relevant information
in advance and come prepared for the meetings.
We now use accelerate achievement to record lesson observations, correlate aspects and prepare follow-up.
This has halved the management time associated with lesson observations.
We now have practical and effective integration of department action plans, performance
management and the school improvement plan.
accelerate achievement is at the heart of our management approach and we are very pleased that the support
team at Applied Information are always very helpful and react quickly to any difficulties
we may have or suggestions we may make.”
Debbie Stokes
Greensward College, Essex
“accelerate achievement is at the core of our approach to management within the school. The key benefit
is the integration of performance management with self-evaluation. This allows speedy
access by all staff to up-to-date information, which saves considerable time compared
with our previous method of consolidating and distributing information.
This allows a comprehensive development plan with simple and effective monitoring
facilities. This was particularly noted in our last Ofsted inspection:
We have found training our staff to use accelerate achievement has been easy and the layout of the screens
is relatively intuitive to follow.
accelerate achievement support staff are always very responsive to suggestions for improvements and requests
for assistance.”
Paul Kilgallon
Eldersfield Lawn CofE Primary School
“We are a staff of 4 in a small country primary school. Implementing accelerate
achievement has enabled
all staff to collate and regularly update improvement aspects within the practical
time available, it is at the heart of the management approach of the school.
accelerate achievement has been enthusiastically adopted by all the staff. Without accelerate achievement the staff would
have had to find time equivalent to an extra half a person to bring the development
and improvement aspects adequately together.
accelerate achievement allows effective and informative discussions with the Governing Body on all aspects
of improvement and budget priorities”.
Interviews by: Paul McIntee, P&JM Management Services Ltd