Greenwich: Pupil progress meetings in ISP schools

Date of issue:	Oct. 2005
Theme:	Target setting
Audience:	Heads and deputies, Coordinators

The meetings were designed in response to actions identified within the school Raising Attainment Plan, 'Priority 1: Raising attainment and accelerating progress', in relation to the development of the target setting/getting process and tracking pupil progress.

Why the need for progress meetings?
The aims of the meetings were to enable:

• teachers to enter into a professional dialogue about the progress the pupils were making;
• members of the senior management team to be aware of the progress being made in each year group;
• teachers and SMT to identify groups of pupils making good progress and on track to meet their targets;
• teachers and SMT to identify groups of pupils causing concern;
• schools to make strategic decisions on how additional adults were used effectively in order to meet the needs of the pupils and the school;
• teachers and SMT to discuss and put into place actions to support the teacher and pupils.

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How were meetings organised?

Each school organised their progress meetings in ways that best met their individual needs. In most cases the meeting were attended by the class teacher and members of the leadership team for example headteacher or deputy headteacher, literacy or mathematics coordinator, SENCO or EMA teacher.

A variety of models evolved to take into account organisational issues within the school.

• Timetabled meetings with each teacher throughout a day. Initially this took two days, however, reduced to one day once the process was established.
• After school over a period of a week. This was usually instead of scheduling a staff meeting for the week.
• Similar to the model above but spread over a two week period in order to relieve the time commitment of the leadership team.
• Two meetings run in parallel, one led by the headteacher and one by the deputy headteacher, with the rest of the leadership team divided between the two. SEN or EMA coordinators would attend those meetings where there were known or anticipated issues.

Supporting the process

• The school set up an assessment cycle that involved three stages (see Appendix 1: Assessment and tracking timetable). The first was to identify an assessment week. Secondly to review progress using a variety of assessment strategies and complete pupil tracking sheets (see Appendix 2: Class tracking sheet), and thirdly to set the dates for the progress meetings.
• The progress meeting takes place. Question prompts are used to guide and focus the discussion (see Appendix 3: Progress meeting prompts).
• Issues identified are recorded against any action planned to respond. Target groups, those children who are working just below the expected age-related level, are reviewed and identified with specific action and support planned (see Appendix 4: Progress meeting actions).
• Any whole school issues that are identified are discussed and plans made for follow up. This might include whole staff INSET or individual development.
• Expectations are agreed and recorded.
• Issues and actions recorded are reviewed during the introduction to the following progress meeting.

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What was the impact?
As a result of pupil progress meetings:

• professional dialogue around pupil progress increased;
• the profile of target groups was raised;
• the rate of pupil progress was monitored more effectively;
• teachers worked in partnership to review provision and support for pupils;
• coordinators supported colleagues in the development of specific activities and teaching and learning strategies to support progress;
• intervention, including NLNS intervention programmes, was used more effectively;
• pupils made progress;
• members of the leadership team had a more developed overview of progress across the school.

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