This afternoon I received an email about the ‘practicalities and cost’ of the ATL ‘stars and bars’ reward system. If I am honest, the main expense is staff time. Every cycle our staff enter 2000+ grades, that is a significant staff investment for these grades to merely appear on a report card and ‘possibly’ be discussed with key staff and parents and carers.
From here on, the investment is small. A report is easily prepared in SIMs and cloned for each year group. Export to Excel, trim the unused cells and paste into a master copy worksheet. The complete worksheet gets to the key staff; Community Leaders, Directors of Progress, the Principals secretary and our fantastic administrative staff who mail merge a preformmated letter for Bands 8, 3, 2, and 1. The fix costs;
- Next – £400 start up costs for the stars and bars. Each award if just under £1, or £25 per year, per cycle. Of course you reclaim 2-3 stars for a bar.
- 34% of your cohort x 60p for letter sent.
- Staff time preparing the reprot and the letters.
Directors of Learning direct the low band action, Communities Leaders drive the rewards and, with the bands, have a simple, clear tool with which to engage with parents and carers. One of the reasons for developing this approach was the ‘cost’ of not using the ATL grades we invest so much staff time to collect. This may not be an enteraining read – but I think its a decent answer. It is low cost, high impact.
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