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Getting Started

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Introduction

This module enables the creation and maintenance of multiple Development Plans for the school. Each Development Plan can have multiple Development Areas selected from a set of common Development Themes created for the school.
In a multi school system the central Development Themes are available and a Development Manager can also add new Development Themes.
Development Areas have one or more Development Initiatives. image
Initiatives are the key elements of any plan. Areas/themes provide a way to group them together. Some schools do this using Inspection headings, other might use a different structure.
image Each Development Initiative summarises a key area of activity over the year and contains:
  • General information about Rationale, Resources and Monitoring as well as who is responsible for the initiative.
  • One or more Success Criteria which can be marked as Not started, In progress, Not met, Partially met or Met. Each of these Success Criteria can be annotated with Notes.
  • Optional Progress updates three times a year.
  • Actions to be carried out by named staff by particular dates. Each Action can be annotated and marked as Complete. As their Due date approaches they are displayed as Due when within 14 days and as Overdue when the Due date has passed. image
The Rationale, Resources and Monitoring give a high level summary which is particularly useful to governors.
image Each Development Plan, Development Area and Development Initiative has an Owner and may, optionally, have a Supporter i.e. a second Owner with similar editing rights. Each Development Action also has an Owner. Owners and Supporters have editing rights to the level below them but not above. For example, a Development Area Owner can edit all Initiatives and Actions in their Area but not the Plan overall or other Initiatives and Actions in their plan. Anyone who is an Owner or Supporter of any element of a Development Plan can view and print out all other plans in full detail. It is also possible to assign the role of Development Viewer to any system user which wll give them access to view but not edit any Plan.
  • Users with access to view Development Plans will have a panel visible on their Dashboard that summarises the status of all the Actions in all the school Plans.
  • For Owners and Managers this panel also indicates the status of the Development Plan Actions that they “own”. image

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Operation

Actions for all Development Plans can be accessed directly from the overview page. image On this Actions summary page the Actions are filtered by default to exclude those that have been completed but these can be added back in. Similarly, actions can be filtered by Status and Owner or searched. image
Once setup, Development Plans can be maintained just through the Actions summary page and termly Updates which can be downloaded as PDF files and distributed or printed.
Owners of actions will receive an email when the action is due in less than 14 days. They will be emailed again when the action is due and weekly thereafter The email contains a link back to the Actions summary page filtered down to the specific Action in the email.
Updating Success Criteria and adding notes for final review can be done by all Initiative Owners at the appropriate point of the year.