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Abbey Catholic Primary School

Birmingham City Council STEP Learning and Development has been working in conjunction with NAPTA to run an online programme that enables all support staff (including lunchtime supervisors, site managers, teaching assistants, mentors and administration staff to name but a few) to answer honestly a series of job role-related questions, with the subsequent answers showing their strengths and opportunities for improvement. The individual, along with the school, receives a full report showing the areas of strength and those that need developing. The school also receives, as part of the package, over 40 learning and development sessions specifically matched to the areas highlighted in the report. This fully-funded opportunity is proving popular with the schools that have taken part.

One school, the Abbey Catholic Primary School in Erdington, recently completed the process and Julie-Anne Tallon, Deputy Headteacher, had the following comments to make:

"NAPTA training has been a worthwhile addition to our whole school staff development programmes at the Abbey RC Primary School. We already had a robust performance management cycle in place for teaching staff; however, we were lacking a detailed training package for teaching assistants.

The NAPTA online questionnaire for TAs was easy to access and use. Results from this were detailed, informative, well presented and easy to analyse; allowing us as a school to identify strengths and areas for development for individuals as well as groups of teaching assistants.

As a direct result of the NAPTA support, we have sent TAs on training specifically linked to their needs. We have identified an area for development for the whole school and have planned this into next year's school improvement plan.

Following the success of the NAPTA training for TAs, next academic year we will also be using it with other support staff.

Support … with the introduction, implementation and analysis of NAPTA profiling has been detailed and easy to access."

Reproduced by kind permission from Birmingham City Council STEP Learning and Development Newsletter

NAPTA, 10 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 1JP — tel 01223 224930 — email info@napta.org.uk