Observations - surely they need to come after performance management?

[CatKisser]

As I've posted before, my school is in chaos and a very unhappy place to be. (I'm looking round a new school tomorrow.)
Head has announced we are to be observed next week - but we haven't had PM and won't have by next week. Everyone's PM is a nightmare as old head kept no records of anything, etc. I've not had a PM meeting in almost two years.

I thought we needed to have PM first so we knew what the focus was? Also, these are going to be joint obs, which is irritating but I can bear.

Anyone know what the proper procedure is? As I'm job hunting, I'm inclined to just do a great (!) lesson and keep applying like mad...

We've got observations next week but our PM observations aren't until the following week. But that's because an adviser from the LA is coming in to do a health check, and we were allocated a date early in the school year. PM was in the diary for this week, but for unavoidable reasons it's had to be postponed.

I'm not aware of any rules saying that observations can't be before PM. In fact, if there aren't any records, couldn't you argue that the outcome of the observations could be used to set PM targets?

I know your school is not a good place to be at the moment, but I can't see anything to object about too much with this one.

We generally have the first round of obs before the PMR meetings. We don't have a specific agreed focus for lesson observations which inform PMR - it's just a general observation.

No, you're right, it's not a battle to pick, and I wasn't intending to. Just wondering for my own knowledge really. Good tip about using outcomes for PM targets. I think I'm just at the end of my tether. Everything the new Head stands for goes fundamentally against everything I believe in in education. And he's a dishonest coward. There endeth the sermon.

We have our observations first to generate possible targets for PM then have follow up observations throughout the year.

At my old school, obs often hadn't been done before the summer hols so were done prior to PM review in October. In my new school the entire staff is PM reviewed and targets set in one evening. Our dept is being reviewed this week which to my involves two obs in three days (with open eve thrown in between).