This week the Department for Education published updates to its teacher appraisal and capability guidelines.

The move came after the new Labour government accepted the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) to publish updated guidance. This arrives alongside the recommendation that all teachers receive a 5.5 per cent pay rise, as announced on Monday.

The regulations on teacher appraisals apply to teachers in all maintained schools in England and centrally employed teachers employed by a local authority, apart from teachers undergoing induction periods or who are subject to capability procedures.

Academies are not legally required to follow these guidelines, although the document says it is “good practice” for them to do so.

The new updates will come into play from September 2024.

Here are eight things you need to know about the new guidance:

1. Teacher appraisals should be ‘intrinsically supportive’

The new guidelines frame appraisals and capability policy in a very different way to the previous guidelines, which were last updated in March 2019.

The appraisal process should be “intrinsically supportive and developmental”, the new document says, “conducted within a school culture that values openness and fairness”.

It should offer “a supportive and safe environment where individual teachers and their line managers can have open and honest conversations about successes and areas for improvement”, it says.

The previous guidelines made no mention of openness or honesty, and while fairness and support were referred to in sections further down the document, no such values were highlighted in the opening section.

2. Teachers, leaders and governors are all involved

Also new is a breakdown of who is responsible for what during the appraisal process.

“School leaders, governing bodies and teachers all have a role to minimise burdens on their staff, including in relation to paperwork and evidence collection,” the document states.

Responsibilities for school leaders include reviewing appraisal policy and consulting with staff and union representatives when needed, keeping records of decisions made to show that judgements have been made effectively and ensuring that teachers are notified in writing of any changes.

Responsibilities for teachers include participating in relevant meetings, keeping records of their objectives and, where applicable, appraising the performance of other teachers.

In addition, the document outlines responsibilities for the governing body, including ensuring that eligible governors receive training on the appraisal process, agreeing the extent to which parts of the process are delegated and to whom, and ensuring that the appraisal policy has been assessed to minimise impact on teacher and school leader workload.

By setting out these responsibilities in this way, the document suggests that the DfE sees everyone - not just the teacher being appraised - as having a role to play here.

3. It’s all about workload…

Managing workload is referred to frequently throughout the document.

As before, the document states that appraisals should be managed in a way that avoids increased workloads. For example, meetings should not be held too frequently or unnecessarily.

But new to this update is an even clearer declaration of the need to address teacher overwork: “Reducing unnecessary workload should be at the forefront of any considerations around implementing appraisal processes,” says a new addition to the introduction.

This guidance is developed in the body of the policy, where schools are encouraged to use the government’s workload toolkit. The guidance says that appraisal decisions should use evidence that is easily available from day-to-day work, and that it should not be necessary for teachers to collate large portfolios of evidence for their appraisal.

For the first time, the document reminds schools that they have a duty of care to protect the health, safety and welfare of their staff under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 - staff wellbeing should always be considered when setting appraisal objectives.

4. …And professional development

The other key words in this update are professional development. It is referred to in the text’s introduction as a key element of the appraisal process, and a new section in the body outlines this in more detail.

Professional development (or CPD, continuous professional development) should form a key part of teacher objectives, making sure their practice stays up to date with the latest research, the document says.

It explicitly connects strong professional development cultures with high-quality teaching, “the single most important in-school factor for improving pupil outcomes”.

The guidance adds that Monday’s announcement of the removal of the requirement for performance-related pay means that schools can now focus more on CPD in appraisal objectives.

This move follows up on Labour’s promise to improve the teacher CPD offer, which experts have long advised could be an answer to the retention crisis.

5. New timeline for appraisals

Another addition to the guidance is a term-by-term breakdown of how the appraisal process should be organised.

The guidance suggests that, in the autumn term, the appraiser and appraisee will finalise objectives, success criteria and evidence. Then, during the spring and summer terms, the teacher’s performance will be reviewed against the objectives, perhaps through lesson visits and mid-year reviews.

At the end of the year, teachers should receive an appraisal report that includes an assessment made against their objectives and success criteria.

6. An appraisal shouldn’t just consider hard performance metrics

More so than in the previous guidelines, this new document emphasises the importance of line managers discussing workload, wellbeing, working hours, opportunities for flexible working and career aspirations with their appraisee.

The document suggests that doing so will help the teacher to identify ways to manage their workload and wellbeing, as well as present an opportunity for them to provide feedback to management on these areas.

7. Informal support should come before capability measures

If there are concerns about elements of a teacher’s performance, they should receive informal but focused support, such as mentoring, specific training or extra resources. This emphasis on informal support is a new addition to the guidance.

The guidelines state that it should always be made clear to the teacher that they are receiving this support because of performance concerns, and that core to this is the idea that all teachers are expected to achieve satisfactory performance if they follow the support offered.

Informal support should be offered for a set period that reasonably allows time for improvement. During this time the teacher should work towards clear and achievable goals. If, after this time, the appraiser is satisfied with the teacher’s progress, their appraisal process will continue as usual.

If the teacher has not made sufficient improvement, the document advises they be moved into capability procedures.

The guidelines emphasise the need to avoid conflating capability and disciplinary procedures. The latter are only triggered by factors relating to misconduct or professional standards.

8. Guidelines on capability measures are now published separately

While previously appraisal and capability guidelines were published in one document, these have now been separated into two.

As before, the capability framework reflects the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, and moves through a sequence of a formal meeting, monitoring period, formal review meeting and decision meeting.

There are no major updates to this process, and schools should follow the detailed framework in the document.

These updates to the appraisal guidelines may be minor news compared with the teacher pay deal announced yesterday.

But the changes here highlight the Labour government’s aim for teachers to experience a more transparent appraisal process. Now ministers will be hoping it will lead to improved retention.

Ellen Peirson-Hagger is senior writer at Tes

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