Battersea Park School Deploys Paragon CPD to Enhance Teacher Training and Support School Improvement Plan

e-portfolio solution from Vantage Technologies will streamline the training process for students and staff

Battersea Park School in London has deployed Paragon, an online continuous professional development (CPD) tool, to strengthen the link between CPD and performance management; enhancing the teacher training process for the school’s staff and their assessors and supporting the school improvement plan.

Developed by e-portfolio specialist Vantage Technologies, Paragon supports trainee teachers’ and newly qualified teachers’ (NQTs) development and training requirements by allowing them to upload evidence of their training into a secure and easy-to-access e-portfolio, and their mentors to access and monitor the evidence to validate the work and provide feedback on their progress online.

By letting trainees and NQTs upload evidence of their training into a central online location, Paragon allows them to assess themselves against the Professional Standards; this helps them to be more aware of their development needs and enables them to make their training more focussed.

Key benefits of Paragon include its efficiency and accessibility. Trainee staff are able to easily and quickly upload their evidence into the e-portfolio and mentors are able to access it by simply logging in. This saves time for both parties, making the training process more effective. Paragon’s flexibility also means that Battersea Park School has been able to tailor it to their specific requirements.

Paragon enables mentors to easily monitor their trainees’ work, this helps them to keep a close track of their progress and observe whether trainees are doing the required work to hit their targets. By being able to add performance management targets into Paragon stronger links can be established between the targets and the CPD process. Paragon’s unique Ideas Generator feature also gives trainees and staff access to its library of resources to assist them in their training and professional development.

Kate Mahar, assistant head at Battersea Park School, said: “Paragon has proven to be an incredibly useful tool for us. It has not only practically eliminated the use of bulky files and folders for teacher training, it is also extremely easy to use and manage – it’s been a big hit with our trainees, teaching staff and mentors alike.

“In accordance with Government best-practice guidelines for CPD we wanted to develop our own CPD system by creating a stronger link with the performance management process. We had heard about other schools using CPD tools and opted for Paragon as it was simple to use and could be customised to our needs. The CPD tool is helping us to enhance the training process for all members of staff, in turn supporting our school improvement plan.”

As well as catering for trainee teachers and NQTs, Paragon is also used to help threshold staff - who have been at the school several years – to hit their own CPD targets.

Currently Battersea Park School has deployed Paragon to its maths and English departments; it is now preparing to roll it out to its IT department. The school plans to have deployed the e-portfolio solution to all teaching staff by the end of 2009, and to all non-teaching staff by then end of September 2010; this is in accordance with latest Government guidelines, which recommend that CPD for non-teaching staff is also monitored.

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About Vantage Technologies Limited
Vantage Technologies Limited is an IT services and solutions company, founded in 1988, specialising in the delivery of innovative software solutions for the improvement of working practice. Vantage is active in a variety of market sectors including local authorities, healthcare, police and professional institutions. Its product portfolio of web-based solutions includes risk management, professional development and e-learning. For further information visit: www.vantage-technologies.co.uk

Issued on behalf of Vantage Technologies, contact 01142 479500
Press contact: Context, Priya Mistry
T: 01625 511966
www.contextpr.co.uk
vantage@contextpr.co.uk

This release was published on openPR.