Skip to main content
This guide walks you through setting up your first Development Plan in Clever School Systems, from enabling the module through to assigning ownership across your senior team. Once configured, your whole leadership team can contribute to and monitor the plan — from high-level themes right down to individual actions and due dates.
Initial setup requires the Administrator role. Once the module is enabled and roles are assigned, day-to-day management is handed over to your Development Plan Managers and Owners.

​
Setup Steps

1

Enable the Development Plan module

Go to Administration > Modules and enable the Development Plan module. This makes the module available to users with the appropriate roles.
2

Assign a Development Plan Manager

Go to Administration > Users and assign the Development Plan Manager role to one or more staff members. Managers are responsible for creating and managing all plans, themes, and top-level areas across the school.
3

Assign Development Plan Owners

Still in Administration > Users, assign the Development Plan Owner role to other members of staff. Owners can be assigned to individual Plans, Areas, Initiatives, and Actions. This is typically your wider leadership and middle-management team.
4

Create Development Themes

A Development Plan Manager creates Development Themes — the high-level groupings that structure the plan. You might use Ofsted inspection headings (e.g., Quality of Education, Leadership and Management, Personal Development) or your own school-defined categories.
5

Create a Development Plan and assign Areas

Create a new Development Plan and select the Development Areas you want to include from the available themes. Each area represents a distinct strand of school improvement work.
You can copy an existing plan and roll it forward to a new academic year rather than starting from scratch. Dates, owners, and structure are carried over, ready for you to update.
6

Assign Owners and Supporters to each Area

For each Area, assign an Owner — the person accountable for that strand. You can also assign a Supporter, who has similar editing rights and acts as a second owner. The default Owner is the Manager who created the Area.
7

Area Owners create Initiatives

Each Area Owner creates one or more Initiatives within their area — the key activities planned for the year. They assign an Owner and optionally a Supporter to each Initiative.
8

Initiative Owners add detail

Initiative Owners complete the detail of each Initiative by adding:
  • Rationale — why this initiative is a priority
  • Monitoring — how progress will be assessed
  • Resources — staffing, time, or budget needed
9

Add Success Criteria and Actions to each Initiative

From each Initiative’s details page, Owners add:
  • Success Criteria — the measurable outcomes that will show the initiative has had the intended impact. Each criterion can be marked as Not Started, In Progress, Partially Met, Not Met, or Met, and annotated with notes.
  • Actions — the specific tasks that need to be completed to deliver the initiative. Each Action has a due date and is assigned to a named member of staff.
In a multi-school system (MAT or LA), central Development Themes are available to all schools in the trust or authority. Development Plan Managers at individual schools can also create their own local themes alongside the centrally managed ones.

​
Monitoring Progress

Once your plan is live, Clever School Systems keeps everyone informed and on track automatically. Every summary page — at Plan, Area, and Initiative level — shows a visual progress indicator so you can see at a glance how each strand is progressing without having to drill into individual actions. Owners and Supporters receive automatic email reminders as action due dates approach: a first reminder when an action is due within 14 days, another on the due date itself, and then weekly reminders until the action is marked complete. Each reminder email includes a direct link back to the relevant action.
Actions that are within 14 days of their due date are flagged as Due. Actions past their due date are flagged as Overdue. Both states are visible on the Actions summary page, which can be filtered by status, owner, or searched by keyword.
Senior leaders and governors can view the whole plan in read-only mode. Use the Actions summary page as your day-to-day management view — it shows all actions across all plans, filtered to highlight what needs attention. Action Owners can update the completion status of their actions and add notes at any time to record progress or explain delays. Initiative Owners can update Success Criteria throughout the year, marking each criterion as it progresses and adding evidence notes. At the end of each term, Initiative Owners can also record a termly progress update for their initiative. These updates — along with the full plan — can be downloaded as PDF files for distribution or printing at governor meetings.
Assign the Development Viewer role to governors or other stakeholders who need read-only access to the plans. Viewers can see all plans in full but cannot edit anything.