Central to the success of The Island Free School is the appointment of outstanding staff
to deliver our curricular and extra-curricular vision.

Our model

As the school continues to grow and develop we are working with universities to support PGCE teacher trainees and newly qualified teachers to develop our outstanding teaching team for the future. In line with our vision of the school and development of staff, support staff who already hold undergraduate degrees and show potential to offer outstanding practice will be supported in teaching roles via the assessment only university accreditation in partnership with local universities. All trainee teachers (PGCE, Teach Direct and Assessment Only) will be supported in lessons by a fully qualified teacher, maintaining our ethos that all teachers employed by the school will have qualified teacher status (QTS).

Our recruitment process includes requests for details of last three lesson observations, as well as progress and attainment data for the most recent classes taught. Shortlisted candidates for teaching posts who are invited to interview are asked to complete a number of tasks focused on lesson observation skills, writing and grammar, use of data, teamwork and presentation skills and given a formal interview.

Our expectation

All teaching and support staff engage fully with school life including the planning and delivery of high quality lessons, regular marking and assessment of pupils’ work (in line with the assessment and marking policy). They also eat lunch with the pupil body and engage fully as both teacher and learner in the extra-curricular programme.

Most teaching staff are expected to deliver a second subject area and the most senior staff take responsibility for running high quality professional development sessions for colleagues in areas such as Assessment for Learning, Differentiation, Data Analysis and Questioning Skills.

Teacher appraisal

The appraisal of teacher performance takes into account the findings of the Sutton report and includes:

  • Progress analysis of all classes and by all characteristic groups.
  • Lesson observation data from formal observations (including work scrutiny).
  • Pupil and parent feedback via survey, marking and interviews.
  • Marking and assessment
  • Individual support in delivering the 7 visions of our school
  • Marking and work scrutiny

Teaching staff ensure that the marking in all pupils’ books is kept up to date with regular deep marking activities.

Staff are given opportunities to mark together in departments as part of their planning, preparation and assessment (PPA).

Pupil voice

Each member of teaching staff runs termly surveys, known as rate my teaching surveys, regarding teaching and learning in the classroom. The findings of these are displayed in teaching rooms and form part of the teacher appraisal process.

Lesson observations

Each member of our teaching team is formally observed a minimum of three times a year.

There is, each year, a minimum of one performance management (PM) observation followed by a peer/coaching observation and an agreed pupil observation. Additional sessions are seen as developmental tools and an opportunity to observe good practice.

Drop in observations are a regular occurrence with teaching staff encouraged to support one another’s lessons on a regular basis.

Performance management targets

Performance management targets have been drawn up with reference to the school development plan as follows:

  • Whole school target – all staff have an agreed target that outlines their individual responsibility to deliver upon a whole school target.
  • Progress target – all staff have an agreed progress target usually focusing on the progress of an examination group. targets always take into account the expected progress of sub-groups (SEN, FSM, LAC etc)
  • Individual development target – all staff have the opportunity to develop an individual performance target in discussion with their line manager. This target is always linked to the job description of the individual member of staff.

Performance management targets at the Island free school are quantifiable, and outcomes are always measurable so that we can accurately identify the relative performance of the individual member of staff. This is crucial in the appraisal process as it gives the school the evidence to accurately identify, and therefore celebrate, outstanding performance. This also allows the school to identify, and challenge, any inadequate performance.

Central to the internal accountability measures of the school is the line management structure. The headmaster takes responsibility for the line management of all Senior Leaders, so that accountability is overseen at the highest level. In turn, Senior Leaders have a designated responsibility for managing and developing all areas of our school. The Senior Leader responsible for teaching and learning will oversee all aspects of the curriculum.

School improvement planning

At the end of each academic cycle, the school leaders, in conjunction with staff, parents and pupils, review the school’s progress against each of our visions. Using these key performance indicators, we then create an action plan to develop our processes for the following year.