Case Study: Whole-school Coaching - 3 Years On

In 2021, St Luke’s secondary school in Exeter began implementing a whole-school Instructional Coaching programme using Steplab (read part 1 of St Luke’s Implementation Journey). In this case study, Alex considers how their programme has evolved over the past 3 years and the impact it has had.

Implementing a successful whole-school Instructional Coaching programme is not easy. However, at St Luke’s our coaching journey with Steplab has had a transformational impact. Within three years, St Luke’s improved progress by +0.9 for all students and have maintained strong results ever since. In 2023 we were within the top 5 schools in Devon for progress and the top 3% of schools of a similar context (above average disadvantage and below average EAL). Whilst there is still more to improve, the impact of coaching for our students has been profound. 

The key to our success has been ensuring coaching is not an add-on but is integral to our wider school systems and priorities. To ensure our coaching programme is coherent, we look beyond completion rates and focus on the systems and training coaches need to help drive our whole school goals:

1. Integrating Coaching Within Whole-School Systems

Coaching should be part of a larger school ecosystem. We’ve created a number of wider systems to complement our coaching programme.

Aligning the roles of senior leaders, middle leaders and coaches has been critical in maximising the impact of our coaching programme and ensuring everyone works towards a shared goal. Our senior leadership team plays a key role in supporting staff and recognising their coaching efforts and middle leaders have defined responsibilities related to the quality of coaching. We make it clear that the role of the coach is focused on individualised development, not performance management.

To enhance our coaching programme, and to help align coaching with our wider school priorities, we run structured whole-school CPD sessions to focus on staff development needs, with deliberate practice embedded into the process.

1. Clarifying Coaching Programme Goals

We keep a sharp focus on providing clarity and consistency in communicating our goals to all stakeholders, including school leaders, coaching teams, and teachers.

We regularly return to the following questions:

• What are we aiming to achieve through our coaching programme?
• What do we think excellent teaching looks like in the classroom?
• What should coaches prioritise?

Everyone needs to understand the desired outcomes of the coaching programme. Narrowing our focus and using the Steplab library to create our own St Luke’s sequence has helped us to communicate this effectively.

1. Providing Effective Coaching and Coach Development

To maintain a high standard of coaching, we focus on continuously developing our coaches, both experienced and new. This is essential in ensuring we improve over time and avoids setbacks when staff turnover occurs.

We achieve this by having a structured plan for quality assurance and coach development. Every half term, we observe coaches through both video and live sessions, providing them with feedback for improvement. We also have new coaches shadow experienced ones and analyse videos of coaching sessions in our weekly coaching meetings.

We also invest in other developmental opportunities, such as organising visits to other schools, reviewing high-quality teaching footage, having coaches lead professional development briefings, and conducting school-wide learning walks with lead coaches. This approach ensures that coaches grow over time and become leaders in teaching and learning across the school.

By creating supportive systems, setting clear goals, and responding to the needs of our coaches and teachers, we've been able to build a coaching programme that's made a real difference to teachers and transformed outcomes for pupils. If you'd like to learn more about our approach, we'd love you to visit!

Visit St Luke’s for their next hub day or book a visit to one of our other hub schools.

If you'd like to learn more about how Steplab can supercharge your PD programme, meet our team of experts by booking a demo.