As a busy and long serving Headteacher, I found that I began to question some of the fundamental aspects of how schools are expected to improve. For example, if teaching and learning is always most important thing, then why are the methods that we use often so time consuming and uninspiring, with systematic cycles that could have little to do with any day to day activity. Our school had been on a journey from special measures to two consecutive 'good' judgements, and because we were always looking to improve, I knew that we could only do this if our methods themselves could evolve. To consider this, I began to use my ipad to wander around the school, gathering my thoughts more regularly. Then I did the same but with another group of Headteachers, all using the same focused criteria. We all took a one hour learning walk and spent ten minutes or so in each class. The outcome was a report that could tell me exactly what my colleagues thought, alongside my views. Our teachers much preferred this because they said that it was just business as usual, despite us capturing so much more. I then used this report for inspections, for the governors, for individual feedback, and for our leadership planning. My learning partners and the inspectors found our methods forward thinking and my reports credible. We began to apply quick and significant changes, more regularly, rather than just working through appraisal based, stand-alone observations. Our teachers and other leaders all began to contribute and participate in learning walks, often scheduled to occur over a week or half-term. All of this would mean less time sitting behind desks desk managing clunky systems and trying to find areas for improvement from summative data.

Headteachers, leaders, teachers and visitors can now walk around school, capturing their views with Nautilus. Every discovery can be presented clearly on the Headteachers online dashboard, ready for use. Nautilus is the product of a long and important process and I would now hope to help Headteachers to be able see more, know more and to be able to work much more intuitively and productively.

David.