School Development Plan

Before I created my Action Plan, I needed to sit down with someone from the Leadership team to discuss technology and the DCF requirements moving forward. This was essential as whilst there is a lot of the DCF that can be done unplugged, it is important to realise that money needs to be set aside and allocated each year to the development and improvement of Technology in the school as this is now a core skill across the curriculum.  Our Headteacher was really supportive and I understood that we would not get all of the technology that the school needs over night, but having a long term plan to implement this was essential.  As we are a secondary school with a large number of pupils, it is also logistically more difficult to book ICT rooms and in some cases take classes across site to a different building to use them. Therefore, as a school we aimed to have a class set of Chromebooks for each Department by a target date to assist subjects in incorporating the DCF and hopefully removing obstacles to DCF implementation.

Short Term Planning

The DCF needs to be seen as a whole school approach, so it is important to get the support and involvement of the Leadership team. We had a short meeting with them to discuss our approach for the DCF across the curriculum in the short term initially. We were conscious not to overwhelm staff, so wanted to come up with shorter term goals that were achievable and also not too time consuming as we all know that time in schools is very precious, especially when teaching a full timetable.  The goals we implemented in the first year were:

• Whole staff meeting during an INSET session to discuss findings, celebrate what is already being achieved and discuss the plan for moving forward

• Have a meeting with all HODs individually to discuss their Schemes of Work and help them develop small areas to include further skills

• Ask each department to work on Year 7 only this academic year and how DCF skills can be included in their SOW but NOT as an add in! It needs to fit and be meaningful and authentic for it to be worthwhile to the pupils' learning 

• To send a questionnaire to staff about their confidence in certain Digital skills

• Use the information gathered to hold CPD sessions to increase staff confidence and skill levels

How to set up the Action Plan

This is where Stage 1 comes in, as I need the information I have gathered to influence what actions I need to make moving into the new school year and beyond in some cases. I needed to be realistic as to what could be achieved and by when. Even today, I still have actions on my plan that are 'rolling' or not fully achieved as there will be road blocks or obstacles along the way and it is not always be possible to stick to the timeline. However, by having the goal written down and shared with staff and SLT, the school are aware of what to collectively aim for. 

Here is a partial example of how I laid out my first action plan:

Staff to Staff Support

By asking the staff about their confidence I was able to identify staff who have skills and experience in certain areas. I decided to approach these staff and ask if they would be happy to train other staff members should they need help? It was so lovely to see that those staff identified were more than happy to assist me and show off how they use skills within their subject areas. For example, I worked closely with a member of Science department on including Flowcharts for experiment processes and he became so confident with this that he was able to show other members of staff where needed. Having this knowledge allowed me to plan for Stage 3 - where I could put in professional development sessions for staff that they could attend voluntarily to improve their skills.