You have inherited CAS in September and there are no notes

Someone left in July. You were given CAS in the last week of August, probably in a corridor, and the handover was a sentence. There is a spreadsheet somewhere, a folder of forms from two years ago, and a cohort who think CAS is a website they log into.

This is the order I would do it in. It assumes you have about three hours in total, spread over a fortnight, because that is realistic.

Find out who is actually at risk, before anything else

Not the whole cohort. You are looking for two groups.

The first is anyone in their final year with gaps. CAS completion is a requirement for the Diploma, so a student who has done nothing by late September in DP2 is a genuine problem and everything else can wait. Find them first.

The second is anyone whose project has quietly stalled. A project that was agreed in March and has had no reflection since May has usually stopped.

You do not need a system to do this. You need a list of names and a column that says "last evidence of anything". An afternoon with whatever records exist will give you that, and it is the single most useful hour you will spend.

Do not rebuild the system in your first term

The strongest instinct when you inherit a mess is to redesign it. Resist that until at least January.

The reason is not workload, it is trust. Students and advisers have just adapted to one set of expectations. If you change the forms, the deadlines and the language in your first month, you spend all your credibility on administration and have none left for the conversations that actually matter.

Run the year that exists. Fix the design of it in the spring, for the cohort that has not started yet.

Write down what you cannot find

Keep a running note of every question you could not answer from the records. Things like:

• Where is the evidence of the interviews that are supposed to have happened
• Which adults are actually supervising which projects
• What was promised to parents at the information evening
• Which external providers the school has a relationship with

That note is your handover document for the next person, and it is also the honest agenda for your first meeting with your line manager. Nobody can help you with problems you have not written down.

Fix the information problem, not the people problem

Almost everything that goes wrong in an inherited programme comes from the same root. The rules exist in one person's head, and that person has left.

So the first durable thing to build is not a tracker. It is one place that answers the questions you are about to be asked forty times:

• What are the deadlines this year, with real dates
• What counts, and what does not
• What a reflection actually needs to contain
• Who to talk to when something goes wrong
• What happens if you fall behind

If that exists, on a phone, without a login, the volume of email drops immediately. If it does not, you will answer the same six questions until July.

Have the conversation with your DP coordinator early

Ask two questions, directly.

First, what does the school consider a completed programme, in practice, for a student who is borderline. You need to know where the line is before you are standing on it in May with a specific student in front of you.

Second, what happens to a student who does not complete. Not the theory, the practice in this school. The answer shapes every conversation you have for the rest of the year.

The two-week version

If you only do four things:

1. Identify the final-year students with real gaps, this week.
2. Write down every question the records could not answer.
3. Put the dates, the expectations and the "what if I fall behind" answer in one place people can reach on a phone.
4. Agree with your DP coordinator, in writing, where the completion line sits.

Everything else, including the system you are itching to rebuild, can wait until the students who are actually at risk have been found.