Governing teacher files: from shared drives to accountable evidence

A governance question, not a storage question

Most schools have plenty of storage. What they lack is governance: clear answers about what must be handed in, by whom, by when, who checked it, and where it is now. When lesson plans and portfolios live in personal drives, email threads and phones, those answers depend on individual memory, and they disappear when a teacher or Head of Department leaves.

That matters for quality assurance, for the Ministry’s yearly teacher evaluation, for accreditation, and increasingly for data protection.

Five questions a school should be able to answer

1. What is expected? Which documents, from which teachers, on what schedule.
2. What has arrived? For every teacher and every due date, not just “most of them”.
3. Who reviewed it, and what did they decide? Approved, sent back, and the comment given.
4. Where is it, and who can see it? One known location, with access limited by role.
5. How long do we keep it? A retention period the school chooses, applied consistently.

If answering any of these needs a phone call, the process depends on people rather than on the system.

What good governance looks like day to day

• Clear ownership. Each department has a Head of Department responsible for its folders and reviews; the school manager can see every department but not change it.
• A complete record. Every hand-in has a time, a status and a decision. Late work is visible as late, not lost.
• Consistent review. Short rubrics and shared comments make decisions comparable across teachers and departments.
• Least access. Teachers see their own work (and chosen exemplars); Heads of Department see their department; leaders see the school.
• Defined retention. Work older than the school’s chosen period is deleted on schedule, and the school can export everything at any time.

How TeachFolio helps

• Folders with schedules define what is expected for whom.
• The tracker and school overview show what has arrived, everywhere, in real time.
• Review decisions and comments are recorded on each piece of work, with an activity log of key actions.
• Role-based access and optional storage in the school’s own Google Drive or OneDrive.
• Retention you set per school, plus full data export and deletion on request.

Governance doesn’t have to mean more paperwork. Done well, it means less, because the record builds itself as people do their normal work.