The Promotion Panel Meeting

The Promotion Panel will consider all the documentation for each application and agree collectively the evaluation and scores against each of the Assessment Criteria documenting for each application whether it is supported and the reasons for its decision. The Promotion Panel should then rank the applicants in a list according to the strength of their applications.

The Secretary of the Promotion Panel will attend the meeting to provide advice and guidance as appropriate and, together with the Chair, oversee the fair and effective operation of the procedure. 

Panels may invite additional individuals to attend meetings to assist in the consideration of multidisciplinary applications. These persons are not panel members and are not entitled to vote but the names of those invited to attend may be disclosed to applicants. 

Each member of the Promotion Panel has a responsibility to ensure its business is conducted in accordance with this guidance; the Chair of each panel has a particular role in this regard. Each panel member, and those attending the panel meetings, should ensure that:

  • they are familiar with this guidance (the Chair will ask each member for confirmation at the start of the meeting); 
  • in considering the applications, they adhere to the Assessment Criteria and do not import additional considerations into their evaluations which may be construed as additional criteria; 
  • they treat Indicators of Excellence as being suggestive in nature and non-exhaustive; not all indicators will be relevant to all applicants; 
  • they are aware of their responsibilities relating to equality, diversity and inclusion, including the potential risk of unconscious bias, and have completed the appropriate training (see Key Principles) to ensure their considerations are collective, fair, impartial and evidence-based;
  • they consider whether allowance should be made for Contextual Factors; and
  • they state any declarations of interest to enable the panel to agree appropriate action to be taken before consideration of applications.

Each panel, together with any other individuals involved, is responsible for ensuring all relevant documentation and associated content is treated in the strictest of confidence.

The Secretary for each panel is responsible for ensuring that each application and supporting documentation is complete and conforms to the guidance. The Secretary will prepare and circulate the documentation not less than a week in advance of the meeting, including: 

  • an agenda;
  • a link to this guidance;
  • the complete documentation for each applicant; and
  • comprehensive lists of all applicants for each office/post

Any material submitted that is not in accordance with the guidance should be returned to the applicant, for necessary revision and re-submission in advance of the date on which the agenda and documents are to be circulated to members of the panel.

After the Promotion Panel meeting, a report of their recommendations together with the minutes of the meeting should be submitted to the HR Reward Team for circulation to the relevant ACP 10-12 School Committee. 

The Promotion Panel will then make its recommendations to the GB concerning applicants that should be successful.  The GB receives these recommendations by circulation and confirms the cases for promotion.

Applicants must not be informed of the outcome of the Promotion Panel’s evaluation or provided with feedback at this stage (see Outcome and Feedback for further information).

Promotion Panel Minutes

The Promotion Panel will provide a fairly and objectively worded set of minutes that:

  • confirms whether: 
    • an application has been treated as multidisciplinary,
    • if allowance has been made for Contextual Factors, and/or
    • if there has been a departure from the standard scoring model and if so, the reasons;
  • confirms any declarations of interest stated by panel members, and states the agreed actions to address them;
  • provides a reasoned justification of the agreed evaluations and its determination of the rank order for each office/post;
  • provides a justification where high scores have been awarded that indicate an exceptional contribution; 
  • records where the panel’s assessment differs from that suggested by a referee and where it has either taken strong account of, or apparently disregarded, a single critical reference/statement amongst a group of positive references/statements;
  • provides feedback statements to be shared with unsuccessful applicants (more information on the preparation of feedback statements can be found here); and
  • reference may be made to comments contained in referees’ statements; however, any such reference must be anonymised.

Feedback Statements

The Promotion Panel must prepare written feedback statements for unsuccessful applicants.  The purpose of the feedback is to provide an unsuccessful applicant with a clear sense of what they would need to do in order to raise the level of their achievement to the standard required to obtain promotion in a future exercise. 

Feedback statements must therefore provide clear information on the areas in which improvements are required, referring to the relevant Assessment Criteria and Indicators of Excellence, and provide practical advice on how the applicant might achieve these improvements. For example, they may suggest examples of service contributions that they would expect to see from someone at the level for which the applicant has applied.