Rainford High launch teaching programme to develop excellence

Despite the recent success of its good OFSTED inspection, and its best ever GCSE results with 79% of students achieving 5 A*-C grades, Rainford High is not resting on its laurels. The school is using a new programme to continue to develop excellent teachers throughout the school.

The Outstanding Teaching Intervention (OTI) programme is a sustainable process which is proven to raise teachers’ performance. Using a range of techniques, assessments and feedback, OTI is designed to create long-term, measurable changes to teaching.

For Principal Ian Young, this was the appeal to the scheme. He says, “As a school, Rainford High has found a heartbeat for teaching and learning. Our aim is to achieve excellence, and excellent teaching and learning is our core business.”

“We agreed that teaching and learning was about principles not strategies. The underlying principles of good teaching and learning for our school are engagement, challenge, independence and feedback.”

The programme has a clear focus on developing great teaching and learning, as well as focusing on professional development.

Fifty staff have now completed the OTI programme across the school, and Ian says the results have been significant.

He adds, “The impact has been to raise the teacher’s confidence in their ability to lead teaching and learning in the classroom and help students make great progress. It has given Rainford High a vision and heartbeat for teaching and learning.

“As a school we now have a shared language for teaching and language that has helped share great practice. By investing in our teachers we are working hard to make sure all our teachers continue to learn more to become even better teachers for our children.”