Gleniffer High School
Gleniffer High School is committed to providing a high-quality education in a caring and welcoming environment. It is our belief that the wellbeing of all young people promotes self-worth, confidence, and self-esteem, leading to high quality attainment and achievement.
In Gleniffer High, we will engage with all our stakeholders to promote wellbeing and ensure that our learners have the opportunity to thrive in a stable school environment which will support their progress and prepare them for life beyond school and make our community a great place to live.
Having highly skilled and motivated staff delivering high quality teaching and learning with a focus on family learning and wellbeing is key to achieving our vision. All the work we do is underpinned by our values of acceptance, ambition, nurture, respect, and trust.
We have a flexible approach to professional learning in our school, offering a broad range of opportunities for staff to ensure the needs of our learners are met. We deliver sessions from external providers, offer staff and pupil-led sessions, and signpost online learning opportunities linked to our self-evaluation and school improvement priorities. This approach empowers staff, building capacity in our team, and provides opportunities for pupils to lead learning.
Staff complete peer-partner learning visits twice per year; one within their own department and one out-with. Visits have an agreed focus linked to whole-school focus HGIOS4 Quality Indicators. This, in turn with the Qualify Improvement focused Career-Long Professional Learning (CLPL) programme ensures the process is tangible for staff, and that everyone is contributing to whole-school improvement in a focused way.
Our CLPL programme is reviewed annually in response to feedback and requests from staff, the identified needs of our pupils, and to ensure our professional learning programme aligns with our school improvement priorities. We critically evaluate our programme to ensure sessions allow staff to develop their practice in a way that has a direct impact on our pupils. Young people have the opportunity to take part in surveys, focus groups, and student councils where school strengths and development opportunities are identified. These are also used to inform our CLPL programme.
Staff have the opportunity to take part in case conferences for pupils with additional support needs where they can hear from pupil support staff, and staff from partner agencies, for example Educational Psychology, the hearing-impaired team, or the English as an Additional Language (EAL) team. This allows staff to share good practice that is positively impacting on our pupils across the school, and to further develop their knowledge by engaging with subject experts.
Collegiate working groups have had a real impact on the work of our school, with staff leading on a broad range of areas including Teaching and Learning, Positive Relationships, Family Learning, Raising Attainment, and Health and Wellbeing. This demonstrates the commitment of staff to take on leadership responsibility and to contribute to the professional learning of others.
Each year, or staff complete our Professional Review and Development (PRD) process where they reflect on the professional learning they have undertaken, the impact this has had on our pupils, and each piece professional learning is linked to the Professional Standards for teacher. This framework allows staff to ensure their professional learning is varied, covering a broad spread of the professional standards across a 5-year period as part of the Professional Update process. The standards are used to identify areas of development for staff as part of their self-evaluation, which in turn informs our CLPL offer for the following year.
Our extended leadership team lead coaching conversations with staff as part of our PRD process. Staff are involved in whole-school collegiate projects, and some volunteer for whole-school leadership opportunities. This involves taking on some aspects of a whole school remit with mentoring and coaching provided by an experienced member of staff.
Skilled and motivated staff who operate with autonomy and have ownership of their professional learning will deliver the best experiences for our pupils. Through feedback from pupil questionnaires and focus groups, peer observation feedback, and our formal Learner Experience Reviews, we see the quality and consistency of teaching and learning continue to improve, and our attainment data and leavers destinations show pupils benefit from the commitment of staff, to deliver experiences which positively impact on outcomes.
Our focus continues to be to support and improve the wellbeing of our school community, to improve attainment and achievement of all our learners and progress whole school accreditation, and to develop skills for learning, life and work to support positive and sustained destinations of all our learners. Our dedicated team of staff will continue with their commitment to professional learning, continually developing their skills to deliver the very best experiences for all our young people, and best meet the needs of our community.