Forty minutes a fortnight: collaboration, ATL and service under strain
At a school two years past MYP authorization, the coordinator is assembling evidence 14 months before programme evaluation. Findings: collaborative planning time has been cut from 80 to 40 minutes per fortnight. Of 22 unit planners reviewed, 17 name a single author, and the ATL row routinely reads "research skills" with no skill-specific descriptors. The year 5 personal project has 62 students and 6 supervisors, three of them new and untrained. Service as action consists of one whole-school charity fundraiser in December, after which students receive a certificate recording 10 hours. The parent association has asked when "volunteering hours" will appear on reports. Two experienced teachers describe planning meetings as "a compliance exercise", and the head of school wants a plan that "does not add meetings".
1. Prioritise these findings. Which are the most serious risks, and why - judged by what collaborative planning, ATL and service as action are actually for, not only by compliance?
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Highest risk: the personal project. It is the only MYP component where student work is externally moderated, and 62 students across 6 supervisors, half of them untrained, means the school cannot guarantee consistent assessment against the four criteria. A moderation outcome that does not match school judgements is a visible, documented failure.
Second: service as action. A single fundraiser with a certificate of hours misrepresents the requirement. Service as action is about sustained engagement with community needs, developed through investigation, preparation, action and reflection, and connected to learning outcomes. Logging hours converts a developmental process into a currency, and it is now embedded in parents' expectations, which makes it harder to change.
Third: collaborative planning. Forty minutes a fortnight, with 17 of 22 planners single-authored, means units are being written in isolation. The consequence is not administrative untidiness; it is that vertical articulation, interdisciplinary connections and shared expectations of student work cannot develop. The ATL row is the symptom: "research skills" with no descriptors indicates nobody has decided which skill is being taught, how it will be modelled, or how students will know they have improved.
Why prioritisation matters. The school cannot fix everything in 14 months. The personal project and service as action carry the greatest external and ethical exposure; ATL and planning are the enabling conditions that make both of them work.
2. Design a 12-month plan that addresses these issues without simply adding meetings. Give concrete mechanisms and name who owns each.
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Use the time that exists, differently.
- Re-purpose the 40 minutes (coordinator, monthly review). Replace open agenda meetings with a fixed protocol: ten minutes on evidence from student work, fifteen on one unit planner using a short checklist, ten on a named ATL skill and how it will be taught, five on actions. Meetings with a protocol feel useful, which is the antidote to "compliance exercise".
- Planner review as a feedback loop, not a gate (heads of department). Every unit planner names at least two authors and specifies ATL skills with observable descriptors and a feedback point. Coordinator reviews a rolling sample of five per month and replies in writing.
- ATL as taught, not recorded (ATL lead teacher). Choose three focus skills for the year across the school, with a shared rubric and a student-facing self-assessment each term. Report on those, not on a five-skill checklist.
- Personal project rescue (personal project coordinator). Train all six supervisors in one two-hour session using exemplar student work; cap supervisors at 12 students each by recruiting three more, including one DP teacher; set three milestone checkpoints with documented feedback.
- Service as action redesign (service coordinator, with a community partner). Replace the single event with a year-long partnership: students investigate a real need with a local organisation, plan and act, and reflect against learning outcomes. No hours are recorded.
- Evidence file (coordinator). Collect planners, meeting minutes, moderation samples and student reflections as the evaluation evidence set, gathered continuously rather than in the final month.
3. The parent association wants "volunteering hours" on reports. How would you shift understanding of service as action among parents and students, and how would you evidence the change for programme evaluation?
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Frame the shift as being about learning, not about less service. Hours measure attendance at an event; they do not measure whether a student investigated a need, made decisions, collaborated and reflected. Explain that the school is raising expectations rather than lowering them: students will be expected to identify a need, work with a partner organisation, sustain the action and articulate what changed in their thinking.
Practical steps.
- Put service as action on the agenda of an existing parent evening rather than calling a new meeting; show two or three student reflections and ask parents what the students learned that a certificate could not capture.
- Publish a one-page guide with the learning outcomes and two examples - one strong, one weak - so expectations are concrete.
- Have students present their action at a year-level showcase; student voice is more persuasive than policy language.
- Brief students explicitly that reflection is part of the action, not paperwork after it.
Evidence for evaluation. Keep a before-and-after record: the old certificate template and the new partnership agreement; a sample of student investigation plans and reflections; the coordinator's planning notes; parent communication; and a short survey of students and partners at mid-year. Evaluation panels look for a coherent story of development supported by artefacts, not for the absence of problems. Documenting the problem, the reasoning and the change is stronger evidence than presenting a flawless programme.