How BlueSky is adding value, to ‘value-added measures’.

Lampton School

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An Outstanding secondary academy and Teaching School

Transparency is key to holding people to account and staff have warmed to BlueSky as it enables them to highlight their successes. They view it as progressive and particularly like it when it supports them to progress up the pay scale!

Johnnie Pavey
Assistant Head and Teaching School Specialist Leader of Education.

The Goals

Lampton faced five key challenges, to:

  • improve its Progress 8 'value-added measure' year-on-year
  • track staff progress in relation to Progress 8 targets
  • enable staff to document their achievements
  • identify areas for development
  • bring transparency to discussions on performance-related pay


    • The senior leadership team was seeking a holistic approach to assessing each member of the staff. They needed to gauge the value-added measure achieved; record internal and external lesson observations; and receive their line managers' appraisal of how staff perform against the school's, and national teachers', standards.

    BlueSky's Role

    Lampton uses a range of BlueSky features:

  • Reviews: staff review themselves against internal and national standards
  • Professional Objectives: staff work with their line manager to identify and enter their professional objectives, linked to their development needs and the school's improvement plan
  • Training: Lampton advertises the professional learning courses available to be booked for staff
  • Continuous Professional Learning: staff log their professional learning, including Lampton's professional learning sessions, and the impact it has had

    • The Impact

    Both the staff and the school have benefited from BlueSky.

    • Staff members now have a platform where they can document their successes, and set down meaningful evidence before discussions on performance-related pay. (The dreaded value-added progression spreadsheets are, thankfully, history.)
    • The school has a diagnostic tool that reveals, simply and clearly, how staff are performing: the successes, the challenges, and any issues to be addressed before external reviews. From the SLT team, it sends out a clear message: "We are here"

    The school continues to value the contribution it gains with BlueSky, tracking standards, celebrating successes, and gaining all-important evidence for pay discussions.

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