Step 1 How well are we doing?

Stage 1 involves the school analysing its current performance.

The first step of the school improvement cycle involves teachers in understanding what their pupils have achieved in relation to the curriculum they have been taught.  In many schools, the pupils' achievementscan be set in the context of similar pupils' achievements in previous years enabling judgements to be made about whether a group of pupils has made similar rates of progress.  Key to identifying 'how well are we doing?' is having in place appropriate standards against which groups of pupils' achievements can be measured, and sensible criteria for the groups of pupils to which those standards apply. 

In most schools, National Curriculum level descriptions set the standards to use in English, mathematics and science, and pupils' performance at the end of a Key Stage are appropriate measures of the school's overall performance.

The most important aspect during the first step of school imrpovement process is for teachers to ask questions about the school's performance on the basis of what the pupils are achieving.