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The Development Planning module gives your school a flexible, structured way to build and maintain School Development Plans. Whether your senior team organises plans around Ofsted inspection headings, curriculum priorities, or entirely school-defined themes, the module accommodates your approach — you choose the groupings that make sense for your context, not a structure imposed by the system. Multiple plans can run simultaneously, so whole-school plans, department plans, and phase plans all sit alongside each other in one place.

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How Development Plans Work

Every plan follows a clear hierarchy that keeps accountability visible at every level:
1

Development Plan

The top-level container for a strand of school improvement activity — for example, a whole-school plan or a subject department plan. Each plan has its own owner and can be viewed, printed, and cascaded independently.
2

Development Areas / Themes

Within each plan you create one or more thematic areas (e.g. Quality of Education, Pupil Wellbeing, or whatever groupings suit your school). These areas draw from a shared library of Development Themes, so a MAT can define common themes centrally and make them available to all its schools.
3

Initiatives

Each area contains one or more initiatives — the key projects or programmes of work your team will deliver across the year. An initiative carries its rationale, the resources required, and the monitoring arrangements, as well as one or more success criteria that can be updated throughout the year.
4

Actions

Each initiative breaks down into individual actions assigned to named staff members with a specific due date. Actions are marked Not started, Due, Overdue, or Complete, and together they form the operational heartbeat of the plan.
Every level — plan, area, initiative, and action — is assigned to an individual Owner. Areas and initiatives can also have an optional Supporter (co-owner) who shares editing rights at that level. Owners and Supporters can edit everything below their level but cannot modify the level above them, keeping the hierarchy clean and accountable.

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Key Features

  • Multiple plans per school — run a whole-school plan, department plans, and phase plans in parallel.
  • Customisable themes — you define the groupings. No requirement to mirror inspection headings.
  • Ownership at every level — every plan, area, initiative, and action has a named owner responsible for progress and reporting.
  • Automatic due-date reminders — owners receive an email reminder when an action is due within 14 days, again on the due date, and weekly thereafter. Each email links directly to the relevant action.
  • Visual progress summaries — every summary page shows a live visual overview of the current state of the plan, so you can see at a glance what is on track, due, or overdue.
  • Cascade plans to other teams — clone the whole-school plan framework for department or subject teams so they can develop shared initiatives for their own context without starting from scratch.
Most schools find it helpful to separate department and subject plans from the whole-school plan, while keeping overlapping initiatives visible across both. Cloning a plan copies the common framework so each team can adapt it without duplicating effort.
  • Group-wide theme sharing for MATs — in a multi-academy trust, central Development Themes are available to every school. A Development Manager can also create new themes at trust level for distribution across the group.

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Roles in Development Planning

Development Plan Manager

Creates and manages plans, development themes, and areas. Assigns owners to plans, areas, initiatives, and actions. Has full editing rights across all plans in the school.

Development Plan Owner

Responsible for a specific plan, area, initiative, or action. Receives automatic email reminders as action due dates approach. Can edit everything at and below their assigned level.
Any user assigned the Development Viewer role can view and print all plans in full detail but cannot make any edits. All owners and supporters can also view all plans across the school.

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Get Started

Getting Started

Set up your first Development Plan — create themes, add initiatives, assign owners, and share progress with governors.