This is a shortish blog as I’ve had a few questions about the ‘Post it RAP’ which was mentioned in my blog on School Development Planning. 

So you’ve written your SDP, the Action Plans are all complete and you feel that you and your staff know what needs to be done this year. Flicking through the action plans you see a myriad of resource and training requests, all vying for staff meeting, INSET or non-contact time and all claiming to be the most important thing that needs doing ‘RIGHT NOW’.  

You sigh. Was is really only 4 weeks ago that you were sitting on a beach in flip-flops and a panama sipping mojito’s? Your E-mail pings. It’s the Chair of Governors. They want to know when they can start monitoring things.

So it’s time to get stuff done. And for that you need to RAP!

1. It’s not about ‘bling’ & ‘sick beats’… it’s a grid with SDP actions written on it.

The ‘Raising Attainment Plan’ (or RAP for short) came out of the DfE sponsored ‘Improving Schools Programme’, a course for leaders of vulnerable schools (where I first came across it). It is a way to timeline all the actions and initiatives which are within your SDP so that you can break them down into manageable weekly actions.

The basic RAP proforma looks a bit like this: RAP – 2017-18 . It’s a simple concept but, for me (someone who is prone to focus on the big picture and neglect the detail) it is the single most useful planning document which we use in school. It takes all the action plans and puts them into a single time-lined programme of activity.

The only difficulty with this paper copy is that, even in the most disciplined school, things sometimes need to be moved around. And for that coloured post-its on the wall are the most effective solution I’ve found to date.

2. Sit down with your SLT and plan your Post-it RAP together

The act of planning physically on a board where everyone can see it (in our case in our Leadership Hub) allows everyone to contribute and look out for clashes. We start by putting in the things that simply have to happen by a certain date (this term that’s the PM reviews/ target setting, the first round of PM observations and Pupil Progress Meetings). This invariably leads to a discussion about timetabling and staff cover which, although at times frustrating, means that everyone can see and rectify the pinch-points and clashes.

3. Plan in the most urgent CPD and linked monitoring next.

Planning big, new initiatives, on a post-it RAP allows you to break the task down to its component parts. So from the example above you can see that we have some Big Maths training on wk/beg: 2/10 which will no doubt result in a need to tweak our practice in this area (we’ve been using Big Maths for 3 years so it’s not starting from scratch). Therefore the week after the training we have planned in a learning walk and then 2 book scrutinies 4 weeks apart to check that the new approaches have made it through to the children’s learning in their books. These cycles are repeated for every piece of CPD and ensure that we are constantly checking for consistency, providing more training where necessary.

4. Post-it RAPs allow staff meetings etc. to be focused on the ‘main thing’… But also ensures balance.

Planning in the main focus of the staff meetings is critical when creating your Post-it RAP. Again, we start with the main thing – the most urgent training and development need for the school at that moment – and work out from there.

However, we quickly learnt from an initial mistake. When the school was more vulnerable, the temptation was to cram every staff meeting with weighty new English and Maths Initiatives. This just led to people becoming confused as they couldn’t assimilate so many new initiatives week after week.

These days we try to balance the weightier staff meetings with ‘lighter’ training (especially in the dark winter months) so that staff only have one or two things to get their heads around at any given moment.

6. Don’t fill all the boxes!

Tempting as it is, don’t fill every box in the grid! The whole point of a RAP is that you can plan work flow and identify in advance particularly busy times so as to avoid over-loading people.

7. Start every SLT meeting by discussing and ticking off actions on the Post-it RAP

At least half of all our weekly SLT meeting’s time is spent discussing the RAP: ticking off completed tasks (this feels great!), looking at which staff need release time to complete actions and discussing where changes might need to be made because we’ve reached a pinch point or something has come up out of the blue. It is perfectly okay to move the post-its around (this is why we use post-its). However, if you find yourselves always moving the actions into next week then you may need to discuss as an SLT whether you’ve been too ambitious or a bit disorganised.

8. Make sure that every  governor’s committee meeting starts with a discussion about the RAP

We hold our governor committee meetings in the same room as the Post-it RAP and include in every meeting a discussion about the RAP. This allows the governors to see the SDP physically moving forward and lets them know when the Subject Leaders are completing monitoring (so that they can sit in where appropriate). Most governors understand this simple document and it allows you to explain the school’s priorities and actions with greater clarity.

9. Keep staff well-being in mind

We have a duty of care to our staff that involves us not over-loading them. This is easy to forget when you have urgent school improvement priorities which need to be addressed. All our staff have a copy of the RAP and have some ownership of it (as they all wrote the action plans behind it). Indeed, some schools keep the Post-it RAP in the staff room so that everyone can see what’s coming up next and it can be discussed in staff meetings as a standing item.

When creating your Post-it RAP or when reviewing it each week, always ask ‘is this workload reasonable?’. Look for stressful weeks (e.g. when there are parents’ evenings etc) and try to avoid monitoring or whole school training in these. Encourage staff to look at the RAP and comment on it – suggesting improved timings and identifying pinch-points. That way everyone will feel like it’s their plan – not just the SLTs.

10. A 100 little actions will transform your school.

The RAP is at its most useful when you are feeling tired or stressed. During these times productivity drops significantly and it’s difficult to prioritise effectively. However, if all your work flow is mapped out on the Post-it RAP which you wrote when you still had a tan, then all you have to do is follow the plan and every week you’ll inch forward. And it is these marginal gains that, over time, will build the school that you, your staff and, most importantly, the children want and deserve.

Happy Rapping.