Many schools carry out regular monitoring as part of their normal activities. By drawing together all your routine monitoring in an annual calendar, you can spread it evenly throughout the year. If you also link it to quality indicators, you can use the evidence you gather for your school’s standards and quality report. Here is an example of one school’s calendar for monitoring.
How well do we do? |
Frequency |
AUG |
SEP |
OCT |
NOV |
DEC |
JAN |
FEB |
MAR |
APR |
MAY |
JUN |
The curriculum |
Annual programme |
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School attainment data |
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National qualifications and other forms of accreditation |
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Assessing, planning, monitoring and reporting progress and achievement |
Six-weekly |
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Homework diaries |
Termly |
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Pupil jotters and classwork |
Monthly sample |
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Working in classrooms |
Planned programme of class visits |
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Reports to parents |
By stages |
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Pupil progress/profiles |
Termly |
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Monitoring individualised educational programmes |
Termly |
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Attendance |
Monthly |
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Behaviour |
Monthly |
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Staff views |
Termly |
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Sampling pupils’ views |
Planned programme |
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Sampling parents’ views |
Annually |
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Health & safety checks |
Termly |
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Progress towards targets in school improvement plan |
Termly |
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Although the focus, order and frequency of your own monitoring will probably differ from this example, the aim remains the same: to know your school well. If you map the results of your monitoring onto a grid of indicators, you can see the extent to which this will provide enough evidence for you to be able to report on standards and quality and whether or not you need to take a more detailed look in certain areas.