School Improvement Partners
The coalition government published a White Paper (Cm 7580) in November 2010, which signalled that the statutory requirement for local authorities to appoint a School Improvement Partner (SIP) for every maintained school will be removed. The published Education Bill confirms this intent.
All local authorities are reviewing the range and scope of school improvement services.
Currently, local authorities receive government funding for the school improvement partner function but this will be withdrawn. As such, many local authorities are considering the extent to which they will continue with the school improment partner function throughout the 2010 to 2011 acdemic year. Some have already taken the decision to conclude contracts drawn up with independent consultants to act as school improvement partners for their schools.
In many local authorities, the school improvement partner function is continuing for the time being.
During this tranistional phase, an interview with a secondary school improvement partner is still available as well as information about the role (see below).
The school improvement partner role
According to the original documentation, the purpose of the SIP to:
- contribute to whole-school improvement in a number of secondary schools in one or more local authorities.
- provide challenge and support for the senior management team in a number of secondary schools.
- provide information to a governing body on their school's performance and development.
- work with a range of partners in order to deliver challenge and support for schools.
The main accountabilities of a SIP are to:
- Discuss and assess a school's self evaluation and school improvement plan against available evidence including the Ofsted report, and comment on the effectiveness of these.
- Provide an objective review of the school's performance data by considering its most recent national test results, trends over time, other pupil achievement data, and analysing the evidence for the school's improvement.
- Discuss the school's targets and priorities for the coming year, based on the analysis of the data above, to ensure that they are ambitious but realistic.
- Challenge the school where necessary, particularly on its capacity to improve and whether it is focusing on the most important priorities for improvement and development.
- Discuss a package of support and challenge for the school (provided both by the LEA and/or external sources) and ensure that this is appropriately managed to give the school maximum value (particularly in the case of complex arrangements for schools in difficulties).
- Report the outcomes of the "Single Conversation" to the school's Governing Body, the head teacher and the school's maintaining authority.
- Provide advice and guidance to the governing body to inform the performance management of the head teacher.
- Contribute to the effective development of the SIPs programme.
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