Training and appraising support staff, and (often-dreaded) restructures, shouldn't be a challenge. We have a range of expert advice to guide you through each process.

Summary

• Support staff are becoming increasingly influential.
• Evaluate your CPD policy for potential improvement.
• Consider creating a performance management policy for support staff. When restructuring, consider the school’s wider strategic aims.

Did you know that, in many schools, support staff numbers can now equal those of teaching staff? Indeed, support staff are becoming ‘influential members’ of our school communities.

Despite this, sadly, while teachers are well-supported because of the stringent statutory procedures, we don’t yet have this for support staff.

The good news is that SBMs can use their influence and expertise to ensure effective CPD and professionalisation for these staff members.

We are already witnessing increased professionalisation of support staff roles: we often hear stories of teaching assistants moving through to higher level TAs and in some cases through foundation degrees into teaching.

CPD

When it comes to exploring new ways of including support staff more fully in your schools CPD, we have a host of ideas. Here are a just a few suggestions:

• improving emotional literacy
• working effectively in small groups
• assessment for learning
• EAL
• SEN
• cross-curricular approaches
• SENCOs
• specialist input.

Policy

It’s also a good idea to look for areas for improvement in your current procedures: is there anything you could do differently?

Experts recommend that you have a good think about the following areas, to check if there’s anything you could improve:

• CPD leadership and management
• CPD policy and implementation
• CPD and performance management
• CPD and induction
• CPD opportunities
• CPD planning and evaluation.

You could then use the outcomes from this to identify gaps and develop your CPD policy. Consider creating a simple flow chart, making it easy for staff to follow procedures and ensure the school’s records are kept updated.

Philosophy

Your policy usually begins with a school philosophy statement, which outlines your commitment to CPD, what the framework aims to fulfil and its purpose. Here’s a snippet from our sample which shows the kind of areas to cover:

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Following this, you could then list:

• key leadership responsibilities and staff responsibilities that you referred to in your induction policy
• training activities
• resources available
• staff training dates.

Performance management

When it comes to performance management policies, schools often choose to simply add all staff to the teachers’ performance management policy and rename it as a ‘whole school policy’.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a policy that was just tailored for support staff? Especially given that teachers have completely different pay and conditions to support staff. Added to that, many authorities don’t provide pay progression for support staff (pay points can be fixed unless a role is re-evaluated). It would be ideal if your policy reflected these issues.

One school created a simple and comprehensive policy to fill this extremely important gap. It includes a rationale demonstrating the school’s commitment to the performance management of their support staff and discusses how they have tailored the process to meet their needs and the needs of the school’s improvement plan.

Review and restructure

Restructuring is one of the toughest parts of an SBM’s role, especially if it involves redundancies.

To help alleviate this, experts suggest you look at it from a moral perspective: that schools are public organisations, funded by the taxpayer, and management is charged with the distribution of those public funds in support of the education of young people. School budgets ‘belong’ to the intended beneficiaries - the pupils - and so we have to ensure that they are used in the most effective way possible.

Staffing costs can make up to 80% of a school's expenditure and, in current circumstances, we strive for value for money.

In one of our in-depth articles, an SBM expert takes you step-by-step through the restructuring process to ensure you are performing each step correctly and sensitively.

Here’s a brief summary of what you need to do

1. Before you start: consult with HR and governors and inform staff.
2. Check relevant policies and see if they are due for review.
3. Review the effectiveness of your existing structure.
4. Consider the school’s wider strategic aims.
5. Identify how every post holder contributes daily to the success of the school. 6
6. Be aware that any restructuring may well involve redundancies.
7. Gain governing body approval, publish, consult, revise, present and inform staff.
8. Now you can begin to allocate posts.