The essentials
- A multi-academy trust in England with primary and secondary schools, a central team, and a workforce split between teaching staff and support staff.
- One trust calendar, several school realities.
- Workflows carry the difference between the two populations.
A trust is not one employer running one process. It is a group of schools, each with its own leadership team, its own timetable and its own habits, holding a single set of appraisal obligations. This is how one multi-academy trust runs appraisal in New Dynamics.
The trust has asked us not to name it. We publish a customer's name, and the numbers behind a story, only once they have approved both in writing.
The organisation
A multi-academy trust in England with primary and secondary schools, a central team, and a workforce split between teaching staff and support staff. Appraisal for teachers follows the academic year. Support staff sit on a different rhythm and are often reviewed by someone who is not a teacher.
Before New Dynamics each school ran its own documents. The central team could not see where a cycle had reached without asking, and asking across several schools in the summer term is not a quick job.
What the process had to handle
One trust calendar, several school realities. Objectives are set early in the autumn term, reviewed in the spring, and completed before the end of the summer term. A school in the middle of an inspection or a leadership change still has to land on the same dates.
Two populations, two forms. A teacher's objectives are written against classroom practice, pupil progress and a wider contribution. A site supervisor, a teaching assistant or a finance officer needs something that does not read as a lesson observation form.
Evidence that arrives through the year. Lesson observations, learning walks, moderation, pastoral work and subject leadership all happen between September and July. By the summer term nobody can reconstruct them from memory.
Visibility without central interference. The trust needs to see completion. Heads need to own the conversation.
The process they run
Workflows carry the difference between the two populations. Separate stages, forms and participants for teaching and support staff, on one trust calendar, configured centrally and run by each school.
Goals and OKRs hold the objectives set at the start of the academic year, connected to the school improvement priorities they come from, and kept open through the year rather than filed.
Continuous feedback is where the evidence accumulates. A few lines after a learning walk, a moderation session or a difficult week, recorded by the person who was there.
Multi-manager reviews bring in a subject leader or a phase leader alongside the line manager, which matters most for teachers whose work is seen by more than one leader.
Recognition makes the contribution that never appears in a data set visible: the colleague who covered, the one who rebuilt a scheme of work, the one who held a year group together.
The cycle through the academic year
September. Objectives agreed, connected to the school improvement plan and the trust's priorities.
Autumn and spring. Observations, learning walks and pastoral notes recorded as they happen.
February. A mid-year check. Objectives adjusted where a role or a cohort has changed.
May and June. The appraisal conversation, with the year's evidence already in one place.
July. Completion visible to the central team, by school and by stage, and development actions carried into the next year's objectives.
What is measured
- Completion by school and by stage, which tells the central team where to offer help rather than where to send a reminder.
- The proportion of appraisals carrying recorded evidence from before the summer term, which is the real test of whether the process ran through the year or was assembled at the end of it.
- Preparation time for leaders, which in a school is measured in evenings.
Frequently asked questions
Can one process cover teaching and support staff?
Yes, with separate forms, stages and participants on a shared calendar. The two groups need different questions and often different reviewers, but a trust benefits from seeing completion for both in one place.
Who should contribute to a teacher's appraisal?
The line manager owns the conversation. A subject leader or phase leader often sees work the line manager does not, and their input is most useful when it is recorded close to the observation rather than recalled in June.
Does this replace our lesson observation or pupil progress systems?
No. New Dynamics holds goals, feedback, recognition, reviews and onboarding. Observation records and pupil data stay in the systems that own them, and the appraisal refers to them.
How much control do individual schools keep?
The trust configures the calendar, the forms and the stages. Heads and their leadership teams run the conversations and own the outcomes. Central visibility is of progress, not of the content of a conversation.
Talk to us about your trust's calendar
Bring the appraisal policy and the forms your schools use today. We will work through how the cycle would run across them.
Turn the guidance into your next conversation.
Choose one action from this story, agree who owns it and set a date to review what changed. To explore how your process could work in New Dynamics, bring your current workflow to a demonstration.
