Kinross High School
Kinross High School is a proud learning community with a vision for Learning Together and Achieving Together. Young people and staff work together on a wide variety of activities to improve our learners’ experiences. We live by the values of being ambitious, compassionate, responsible and resilient. Overall, we want to improve our work through a focus on staff professional learning.
As a school, we have invested significant resources into professional learning. This includes external opportunities, online learning and our own internal professional learning opportunities. Professional learning is regularly reviewed to ensure that it meets the needs of the staff involved and to ensure that there is a positive impact on young people. Our highly successful annual Professional Learning Conference continues to deliver high quality, outward-looking professional learning opportunities. This has included local and national partners supporting our work.
All staff engage in an annual entitlement to Employee Review and Development using self-evaluation wheels provided by GTC Scotland to support engagement with the Professional Standards for teachers. Coaching conversations with line managers support staff to plan their own professional learning which links to a personal, faculty or whole school priority. The introduction of collaborative trios at middle leadership level has encouraged peer coaching opportunities for improvement through our work on self-evaluation for school improvement.
Senior leaders meet with middle leaders individually on a monthly basis for a remit meeting. Some middle leaders have replicated this with their own staff. This provides opportunities for professional dialogue and support through a coaching approach. Senior and middle leaders are trained in coaching techniques as part of the Collaborative Middle Leadership programme (Education Scotland PLL). Targets agreed always consider the impact on the young people as part of the learning and teaching process.
Furthermore, all teachers engage in a school improvement group that supports the leadership of change for an aspect linked to the school improvement plan. Staff can lead the group or an aspect of the group’s work. In addition, all middle leaders and senior leaders are linked to a school improvement priority as part of their whole school remit.
Coaching opportunities are provided as part of regular support for all group leaders, development post holders and middle leaders. Colleagues from across the learning community regularly share their own practice as part of in-service days and staff meetings.
Leadership development has played a key part of our school improvement plan over the past five years. This includes the development of an in-house programme for aspiring leaders. In addition, we were a pilot school for the Collaborative Middle Leadership programme which has supported the capacity building of our entire middle and senior leadership teams.
Digital professional learning has been taken forward significantly during the pandemic through the upskilling of staff in the use of glow, specifically Office 365 and Google Classroom. This was out of necessity that we led the change so quickly.
We have a culture where learning from our experience is encouraged. This includes a regular review of the feedback received from parents and other stakeholders to ensure we review our policies, procedures and practice. In addition, our staff look outwards at practice from other schools to support our knowledge and understanding of national, regional and local priorities.
As a school learning community, we continue to develop our practice and understanding. At the moment, our main focus is on recovery through re-engaging with high-quality learning.