Getting the most out of lesson observations in an international school

Before becoming the head of St Paul’s School in Brazil five years ago, I was a head in London. While the culture and the environments are certainly different, many of the concerns that heads and senior leaders face are exactly the same.

For senior leaders running any of the 10,000 English-speaking international schools around the world, how we nurture and develop staff is an overriding focus. Whether that’s ensuring lesson observations are carried out in a way that benefits both staff and pupils, building effective professional development and training programmes, or improving the appraisal and review process.

These never seem to leave a head’s list of ‘things to improve’. This is certainly the case at St Paul’s School, where we are always looking to improve.

Established in 1926, we were the first South American School to be recognised by the UK government as a British School Overseas. A member of COBIS and HMC, we teach a bicultural and bilingual Anglo-Brazilian curriculum, embracing both cultures and languages.

Lesson observations

Like many international schools, our pupils and staff often move around, changing schools, cities and countries. With the added mix of languages, cultures and curriculums, carrying out lesson observations can be somewhat complicated.

Is the teacher struggling to deliver a great lesson that engages children or is it a recent intake of pupils, new to learning at such a high level in English that could be holding engagement back?

For us, developing unique lesson observation frameworks is a good place to start. The same template doesn’t work for every lesson and every situation, so we have created a series of lesson observation proformas so the right one is available in a variety of situations.

One example of this is in the run up to our most recent IB evaluation. We had to carry out a self-evaluation and demonstrate that we had fulfilled all the relevant IB criteria. One of which is ‘approaches to teaching and learning’ which examines strategies, skills and attitudes that are key to the IB teaching and learning environment.

We set about devising a specific lesson observation proforma that would look at how the lessons included certain elements outlined by the IBO. One example of this is collaboration and participation. Creating lessons which are focused on encouraging effective collaboration among students is a key factor in ‘approaches to teaching and learning’. Developing a lesson observation proforma around this skill, and each of the others highlighted by the IBO, ensured we were adequately assessing all of the main areas.

Over a two-week period, all of our senior leadership team took part in lesson drop-ins throughout the school. These were short 10 to 15 minute visits to observe the lessons and report accordingly.

The process allowed us to collate a powerful report on what we saw and how as a school we fulfilled the necessary criteria.

Scrapping grading lessons

On the journey to our continued improvement I also made a recent decision to move away from grading lessons, as it wasn’t benefitting teachers. I know that there are strong views on both sides of the argument, but for us this is the right move. It is also in line with the British School Overseas standards, who have now stopped grading lessons. They still grade provision and outcomes but no longer give the lesson itself a numerical score.

The reason that I brought in the change is because you can often see excellence in a lesson that overall wasn’t necessarily excellent. And you can also see some mediocre practice in a lesson which all together creates an excellent outcome. Having to mark one lesson as a ‘one’ and one as a ‘two’ does not provide good feedback to staff.

What is helpful to staff, is that you can always see something positive.

We always emphasise the positives. We also always include areas for improvement, even if the lesson is amazing.

We try and look at it from the point of view of ‘how could it be more amazing?’ If the lesson was brilliant, maybe our feedback would be to think about sharing it with others. Even in a first-rate lesson, there’s always something and we have to think about what the next step is for that teacher.

I have found that lesson observations work best when there’s a two-way dialogue between the teacher and observer. With the online system we use from BlueSky Education, observers can upload feedback straight away. In fact, I have often provided feedback before the lesson has even finished. Then staff can respond online, and we always offer teachers the opportunity to discuss any feedback in person.

Staff development

It is important to recognise that there’s no point observing lessons if the information isn’t used to inform staff development and CPD. Our staff are a key asset and when I took on the role of head, we already had a process of appraisals and reviews. But with over 200 members of staff, appraising each one on a one-to-one basis meant that many appraisals were being delayed and staff were not always getting the feedback they needed. It was much too time-consuming a process.

I wanted to have a more devolved system, one which allowed staff to develop their leadership, coaching and mentoring skills and manage their own direct reports. And one where everyone felt they had some ownership of their own professional development.

I reshaped the leadership structure and put in place an annual appraisal cycle. Now everyone is appraised every year by their line manager, which is a huge improvement. These reviews have also been standardised, with room for flexibility, with everyone identifying objectives and then a training programme implemented which reflects both the individual and the needs of the school.

Professional standards and CPD

It was also important to me to develop a certain level of professional standards relevant to all members of staff, not just teaching staff.

This is about involving all staff, departments, and levels of seniority, from academic teachers to sports coaches and from senior leaders to teaching support staff, part-time and full-time. In my view, professional standards and opportunities for developments are for everyone, whatever the role in the school.

For example, teachers can apply for training courses directly through our online CPD system. We are lucky to have a generous training budget and working in this way enables teachers to feel in control of their development.

The added advantage of course, is that from a management point of view we have an overview of spending by department and can plan how we deliver CPD in a more holistic, consistent and less reactive way if trends start to develop.

In the last five years, I have made many changes that have had a positive impact on our staff. A head’s work is never done though, and my list of ‘things to improve’ is not yet completed.

I would still like to make some more strategic changes to the way we plan and deliver CPD. But in the meantime, this new way of working is making a world of difference to our teachers – and that’s a great start.

Louise Simpson is head of St Paul’s School in São Paulo, Brazil. The school is a member of COBIS and HMC, and uses BlueSky Education to manage staff performance, professional learning and school self-evaluation. BlueSky’s latest research on lesson observations ‘Challenging Perceptions of the Lesson Observation’ is available from https://www.blueskyeducation.co.uk/lesson-observation-report.