Make the most of your School Improvement Partner

This article by Martin Pounce first appeared in Governors’ Agenda and was reprinted in the Oxfordshire Governor, Autumn 2007.

Most schools are due to start working with School Improvement Partners over the next few months so it is a good time to clarify the role of the SIP and how governing bodies get involved. This article is based on the DfES School Improvement Partner’s Brief, work with clerks in Kent and an interview with Dr Mark Fenton, headteacher and Mrs Sue Lawson, chair of governors of a school in Buckinghamshire. That county was a pilot authority and the school is nearing the end of its second year with a SIP so I was able to discuss how the SIP works in practice.

The rationale for School Improvement Partners

SIPs constitute a piece of the New Relationships with Schools jigsaw, launched in the government’s Five Year Strategy of 2004. This sought to streamline communication and introduce a ‘single conversation’ to stop schools feeling battered by a cacophony of messages from all and sundry. The School Improvement Partner would conduct that ‘single conversation’ – actually a series of conversations with a single person – focusing on the full range of data now available to schools, validating the school’s self-evaluation, helping to identify development priorities and strategies that work. The two other pieces – Inspection and School Profile – relate to continuing external accountability.

Mark Fenton suggested that local authorities may struggle, at least initially, with the culture shift required by the ‘single conversation’. His local authority continued to make direct requests which in his view should have been mediated through the SIP.

The quality of School Improvement Partners

SIPs are accredited professionals who have passed a rigorous – some have reported gruelling – assessment. This checks that they really know the business of school improvement and the realities of school leadership. They must be prepared to provide the challenge and drive for further improvement as well as support by pointing the school towards good practice. SIPs must operate with respect for the school’s autonomy and the primacy of evidence-based evaluation. Typically, each school will receive five days of the SIP’s time; this may consist of 3 half-day visits and an additional quarter day for the meeting with the headteacher’s performance management governors. The remainder of the time - 3.75 days – will be out of school looking at data and writing reports.

Sue Lawson and Mark Fenton spoke in glowing terms about the quality of their SIP. Buckinghamshire decided to deploy serving headteachers from their own and neighbouring authorities in all their secondary schools. They allowed the schools to state a preference and Dr Challoner’s SIP leads another high achieving grammar school within the county. Her experience enables her to understand the issues in this ‘non-standard’ school, to look at their data in a different way and ask the relevant questions. “I am having a professional dialogue with someone I respect”, Dr Fenton beamed. In some ways this is even more important for governors. Governors knew the school was getting excellent results but were they as excellent as they could be? Sue Lawson reported that having a SIP with her experience “helps governors to calibrate what we do here.” The SIP has not uncovered anything that the school wasn’t already well aware of. In fact she has confirmed the school’s self-evaluation that they have moved from the Ofsted judgement of ‘very good with some outstanding features’ to ‘outstanding’. However, she has helped to tease out from the data some aspects which the school will need to keep its eye on.

SIPs do far more than look at school data. They also help to focus school development priorities and make suggestions about how the school might achieve them. In the case of Dr Challoner’s School, the SIP acted as a sounding board for the headteacher as he and his staff pursue some cutting edge initiatives that include working with student research groups on Guy Claxton’s approach to Building Learning Power. Another change that came out of discussion with the SIP a year ago was a restructuring of consultation and communication processes within the school. The SIP’s visit later this summer term will evaluate the impact of these changes.

Communication and involvement of the governing body

Governing bodies will want to be fully and appropriately engaged with this key new player in their school. The School Improvement Partner’s Brief states, ‘Since a school’s governing body is responsible for the strategic direction of the school, the SIP needs to interact with the governing body as well as the headteacher’ and goes on to say that ‘the range of meetings and other contacts between SIPs and governors for this work will be for local determination’. At a minimum the SIP will produce an annual report which should include a commentary on:

  • the quality and impact of the school’s self-evaluation;
  • priorities and targets in the school plan and progress in achieving them
  • the impact of the school’s specialism, in the case of a specialist school
  • the action planned by the school and a recommendation about external support needed.

In Kent, the local authority has designed pro-forma reports for the SIP to provide an annual report in the autumn and two further reports in the spring and summer. In Buckinghamshire, the annual dialogue between SIP, head and chair of governors in the autumn term is reported to governors. Mark Fenton chooses to copy the SIP’s ‘contact notes’ to the governing body. Sue Lawson reports that governors have not seen the need to invite the SIP to any governing body meetings but agreed that in different circumstances, where governors might need to understand some contentious or uncomfortable messages in the SIP report it would be important for the SIP to attend in person.

We discussed the possibility that without explicit local authority guidance SIP reports might stick with the Chair of Governors, especially when they contain ‘bad news’. It is important that governors – and clerks – are alert to these dangers.

The SIP and the Headteacher’s Performance Management

SIPs take over the role of External Adviser and work with appointed governors on the headteacher’s performance management. Mark Fenton and Sue Lawson both spoke warmly about the quality of their External Adviser but their SIP now has a deeper understanding of the school. ‘The External Adviser was good at bullying us into drafting very explicit success criteria’. Since the CEA quality assurance forms are no longer required this may slip.

Continuity or change?

Might the relationship between SIP and school become too comfortable over a number of years? It is not at all surprising that now Dr Challoner’s School has a SIP with the skills and understanding they need, head and chair are reluctant to contemplate a change. Mark Fenton regarded the enforced change of External Adviser as “a pain” and regards continuity as more important than a fresh pair of eyes. “After all” he said, “things are unlikely to remain static for long….” Sue said that governors should be able to review their SIP allocation but she and Mark agreed that they would like to have the option of continuity.