Complete and sign an appraisal review

Written for: Headteachers and senior leaders who carry out and sign off staff appraisals.

Each appraisal review moves through the year from agreeing objectives to a final review that both the member of staff and their reviewer sign. This article shows you how to move a review on, rate it against the professional standards, link evidence, and sign it off. To create the cycle and reviews in the first place, see Set up an appraisal cycle.

Open the reviews

In the sidebar, open Leadership, then Staff.
Choose Appraisal & Staff Review.

The Reviews tab lists the reviews in your school’s current cycle that you can see. Each card shows the member of staff, the review’s stage, their reviewer and their objectives with each objective’s status, such as Agreed, On track or Met.

Two review cards on the Reviews tab. Emily Evans’s review is at Final submitted, with two objectives marked Met, and Move to Signed off and Sign review buttons. Callum Thompson’s review is at Objectives agreed, with one objective On track and one Agreed, and buttons to move it to Mid-year done or Final submitted.

Move the review through the year

A review goes through these stages:

Not started
Objectives proposed
Objectives agreed
Mid-year done (you can skip this and go straight to the final review)
Final submitted
Signed off

When a stage is finished, click the button on the review card that moves it to the next stage, for example Move to Objectives agreed once you’ve agreed the objectives together. The review card only offers the stages that can come next.

Rate against the standards

At the start, middle and end of the year, record ratings against each standard in the cycle’s framework: the member of staff’s own view of themselves (Self) and the reviewer’s view (Reviewer).

Click the Standards tab.
Under Record standard rating, choose the member of staff in Review. Framework shows the standards used in this cycle.
Choose the Standard.
Choose the Stage: Start, Mid or End.
Choose the Rater: Self for the member of staff’s own rating, or Reviewer.
Choose a Rating from 1 to 4. A lower rating means more development is needed.
In Justification, explain the rating in at least 10 characters.
Click Save rating.

The Standards tab. Record standard rating is filled in for Emily Evans against TS5 Adaptive teaching, at the End stage, as the Reviewer, with a rating of 3 and an example justification. On the right, the Needs analysis lists TS5 as high priority, TS4 as medium and TS6 as low, each with a Request CPD button.

You’ll see “Standard rating saved”. If you save a rating for the same standard, stage and rater again, it replaces the earlier one.

Use the needs analysis

Needs analysis compares the self and reviewer ratings for each standard and stage, and suggests a learning plan. A standard is marked high when the lower of the two ratings is 2 or less, or the ratings are 2 or more apart. It’s marked medium when the lower rating is 3 or the ratings are 1 apart, and low otherwise.

The priorities are there to start a conversation, not to decide anything for you. Talk them through with the member of staff.

Click Request CPD next to a standard to send a CPD request for it. It appears with your school’s other CPD requests in CPD.
Click PDF, XLSX or CSV to download the needs analysis.

Link evidence to objectives

Click the Evidence tab and choose the member of staff in Review.
Under Objective evidence and live KPI movement, choose the Objective and the Evidence item from your school’s evidence.
Click Link.

Each objective shows how many pieces of evidence are linked. If an objective is linked to a measure on one of your school priorities, click Refresh KPI to bring the measure up to date.

Sign the review

When the final review is done, move the review to Final submitted. Then the member of staff and their reviewer each sign it:

Open the Reviews tab.
On the review card, click Sign review.

You’ll see “Review signature recorded”. When both of you have signed, the review moves to Signed off by itself, and a copy of its objectives and ratings is kept exactly as they were at sign-off. A signed-off review can’t be changed.

Always use Sign review to finish. The button that moves the review straight to Signed off doesn’t sign it, so the review stays at Final submitted until both of you have signed.

Who can sign

Only the member of staff and their reviewer can sign a review. A headteacher or administrator can’t sign on someone else’s behalf.

Both people need to open Appraisal & Staff Review to sign. By default, only headteachers, senior leaders, DSLs and administrators (and trust and service leads) can open the page. Classroom teachers and other staff can’t, so they can’t sign their review in Student Radar.

If something doesn’t work

What you see	What to do
Sign review is greyed out	The review isn’t at Final submitted yet. Move it on first.
“Review sign-off failed”	Only the member of staff and their reviewer can sign, and only once the review is at Final submitted.
“Rating and justification are required”	Choose a Standard and write a Justification of at least 10 characters.
“Standard rating failed”	Check your connection and click Save rating again.
“Record self and reviewer ratings to build the proposed learning plan.”	No ratings have been saved for this review yet.
“No objectives recorded yet.”	Add objectives on the Team reviews tab. See Set up an appraisal cycle.
“Add or seed objectives before linking evidence.”	The review needs at least one objective before you can link evidence.
“No appraisal reviews in the active cycle yet.”	There are no reviews you can see in the current cycle. Reviews are created on the Team reviews tab.