Appraisals & Performance
A review cycle from opening it to closing it: reviews moving through self-assessment and manager review, goals measured against registers the school already keeps, KPIs with two of them behind target, and the improvement plan that a difficult review turns into — dated, supported and reviewable.
The part of managing staff that has to hold up under challenge
Most school appraisal is a form filled in twice a year, filed, and never read again — which is fine until the day it has to justify a decision. This is the same process with a spine: a cycle with dates, reviews that move through the employee’s own assessment before the manager’s, goals that are measurable against things the platform already holds (a register, a gradebook, a CPD record), measures that are visible all term rather than reconstructed in July, and — for the review that comes back needing improvement — a structured plan with objectives, the support the school is providing, and a review date. The employee sees their own half of all of it, which is what stops an appraisal being something done to somebody.
On this page
Open the cycle, and everything else hangs off it
A cycle is dates and a population. Getting it right is what makes the rest of this flow a process rather than a scramble: every review below belongs to a cycle, and a school with no cycle has a folder of unrelated forms.
Where it sits in the HR module
Performance is one of the HR module’s workspaces, beside leave, recruitment, documents, training and disciplinary — and it reads the same staff record all of them do. That is worth stating because appraisal is usually a separate product, and a separate product cannot measure a teacher against the registers they actually took.
The cycles a school runs
A mid-year review for everybody, a probation cycle for the people still on it, and last year’s closed cycle kept for the record. Each carries its own dates, its own population and its completion rate — which is the number that tells a head whether this is going to be finished on time.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “Open the cycle, and everything else hangs off it” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The reviews inside it, and where each one is stuck
The workflow is the feature. A review that goes straight to a manager’s verdict is a judgement; one that collects the employee’s own assessment first is a conversation, and the difference shows up years later in whether people trust the process.
Every review, and what it is waiting on
Not started, waiting on the employee’s self-assessment, waiting on the manager, completed. Two rows here are the ones a head of school actually scans for: the one that is overdue, and the one rated Needs Improvement — which becomes the last phase of this walkthrough.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “The reviews inside it, and where each one is stuck” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What was agreed, and how it is being measured
The half of appraisal that usually dies in a drawer. A goal set in a form nobody opens until next July is a wish; a goal expressed against something the platform already counts is a measurement, and can be checked in March rather than argued about in July.
Goals, with progress against them
Raise a class’s core average; take the register on time every day; complete the safeguarding refresher; mentor two probationers. Each has a target date, a priority and a progress figure — and each is about something this system can actually see.
And the measures behind them
The school-level numbers a head tracks all term: registers taken on time, marking turnaround, results submitted by the deadline, CPD hours, lesson plans filed. Two are behind target, which is what makes this a board somebody opens on a Monday rather than a slide in a governors’ pack.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “What was agreed, and how it is being measured” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And the review that came back needing improvement
This is the register that separates an appraisal system from an appraisal form, and it is the one that has to hold up if the relationship ends badly. An improvement plan is not a disciplinary case — it is a dated, supported, reviewable attempt to fix something, and the record of that attempt is what a school will be asked for.
One plan: the reason, the objectives, and what the school is doing about it
Kelechi’s mid-year review came back rated Needs Improvement, and this is what followed. Three specific objectives rather than “improve”; the support the school is providing written down beside them; a start, an end and a review date. The outcome field is still empty, because the plan is still running — and a plan with a pre-filled outcome would be a formality rather than a process.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “And the review that came back needing improvement” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And the employee sees their own half of it
The last phase, and the one that decides whether any of this is trusted. An appraisal an employee can only see when their manager shows it to them is something done to them; the same record in their own workspace is something they are part of.
Their own workspace
What is being asked of them: the self-assessment that is waiting, the goals they hold, the training they are enrolled in, the documents the school needs. All of it in the self-service every employee has from the day they are created, with no grant required.
And the record the appraisal is written into
Their own employment record: contract, department, reporting line, history. It is the same record the HR office reads, which is the whole argument for appraisal living here rather than in a separate product — one version of an employee’s history, visible to both sides of it.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “And the employee sees their own half of it” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.