Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge

Moving from Good to Great in Glasgow

We are getting better

In the last five years, Glasgow schools have demonstrated the competencies required to move from good to great.

We are:

•enablinglearners and educatorsto have the opportunities to be successful in a culture of high expectations and aspirations.

•puttinglearners first and working in collaboration and cooperation with all who provide services to people in Glasgow.

•aiming to achieve independence, choice and opportunity for all while protecting and supporting our less thriving children and families.

The most notable measurable outcomes are:

  • Increased attainment
  • Reduced exclusions
  • Improved attendance
  • Increased proportion of school leaver positive destinations
  • Increased very good and excellent evaluations from inspections

These improvements are reported annually through our standards and quality report which also provides evidence of the outstanding range of achievements of children, young people and staff. However, these improvements are not yet consistent across the city. There remains headroom for improvement.

What led to the improvement?

We have focused on our core business by placing improving learning and teaching at the heart of our improvement approaches. We have encouraged innovation and schools and nurseries planning to meet the needs of their own communities. In addition, we have strengthened our approaches to quality assurance through introducing a more systematic approach to support and challenge.

We reviewed the way in which our nurseries and schools worked together by reviewing Learning Communities. Following consultation we moved to 26 Learning Communities. In the last two years, we were able to allocate £265,000 each year to support developments in Learning Communities

Despite the challenging financial environment, we have continued to invest in high quality continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers and support staff. Our staff development policy was developed in 2009 ( ) to provide a platform for a more systematic approach to the planning of individual staff members’ professional development.

During 2010-12, around 100 teachers participated in Harvard Leaders of Learning. This major staff development initiative empowered teachers to work together across schools and sectors on joint projects. In addition, by June 2013, 120 primary teachers successfully participated in Improving Our Classrooms, an innovative programme led by a former Glasgow headteacher,who was also a Chief Inspector of schools. This programme also focused strongly on teachers’ professional practice and promoted reflection and working together. Both programmes have been evaluated very strongly. We will be continuing to run Improving Our Classrooms during 2013-14. In addition, we have developed Improving Our Playrooms which will be introduced in 2013-14; initially targeted at Child Development Team Leaders in our nurseries.

We have selected a team of up to ten Leaders of Learning each year. This team are a mixture of primary and secondary teachers who work across the city alongside teachers and headteachers on improving learning and teaching. Schools can request their support and they can be directed to provide support by link QIOs. Evaluations of their work have been very positive. We continue to have a team of teachers who are Leaders of Early Learning who work in our nurseries supporting learning, teaching and planning.

During the last two yearswe have held large scale Good to Great conferences with audiences of over 400. These events have focused on learning and teaching with keynote speakers and schools sharing best practice through workshops and displays. In the first year, the target audience was all our headteachers. In the second year, the audience was staff who were responsible for leading learning in their schools; depute headteachers and principal teachers in the main. A very small number of headteachers attended two years in a row. Planning is underway for this year’s programme with the target audience being classroom practitioners.

Over the last two years, we have taken a very structured approach to moderation and assessment as part of Curriculum for Excellence. Our focus has been on ‘sharing the standard’ which has allowed teachers to develop a shared understanding of secure learners across Curriculum for Excellence levels. Part of this initiative has been the development of learning conversations among teachers and pupils. Teachers have reported an increased confidence in their assessment and reporting of children’s progress. During 2012-13, we focused support on the preparation of new national qualifications in secondary schools.

Two years ago, we embarked on a pilot project with Glasgow University to introduce hub teaching schools. This concept was subsequently highlighted in the publication Teaching Scotland’s Future as a potential way of improving initial teacher education. The concept has evolved and the title ‘hub teaching schools’ is no longer appropriate. It is a now very much a partnership approach. This year, Glasgow University has built on the success of the pilot and has expanded the programme across Glasgow and neighbouring authorities. They plan to adopt this approach for all their teacher training programmes from August 2013. Strathclyde University joined the pilot programme during 2012-13. We introduced a joint funded post to work across both universities and Education Services. Teachers who have been involved in mentoring students have received additional training in coaching and mentoring. The improved joint assessment approach has been evaluated as improving the links between teachers in school and tutors and has resulted in improved experiences for students. A progress report on this work has been taken to the National Implementation Board and the Children and Families Policy Development Committee We have now started joint work with the universities to develop masters’ qualifications for our teachers.

We have supported a growing number of teachers to achieve Professional Recognition Awards with the General Teaching Council for their personal research. For example, more than 40 achieved this award for their work on global education. The staff who worked in Malawi in June 2012 also received this award. All those who successfully completed the Improving Our Classrooms programme have automatically been accredited with a Professional Recognition Award. In 2012-13, Glasgow’s probationers who successfully completed a global education project as part of their induction programme all achieved a Professional Recognition Award.

For the last two years, we have run a bespoke Aspiring Heads programme which replaced the more expensive Scottish Qualification for Headship programme. We have had nearly sixty senior managers successfully complete the programme. We have also run a number of very successful middle managers programmes which aimed to build the capacity of principal teachers to be leaders of learning. We launched our Leadership strategy during 2012-13 In addition, we have participated in the Scottish Leadership Development Programme in partnership with ADES and the Scottish Government.

We introduced an improved quality assurance and improvement policy in 2009 and updated it during 2012-13 to take account of the improvements in approaches in quality assurance which are evidenced in our practice. We had a very positively evaluated conference in January 2013 attended by more than 400 senior managers where we were able to share best practice.

We have also improved our approaches to support and challenge to schools and to individual teachers. We have an intolerance of any provision which results in weak outcomes for children and young people. This has resulted in more teachers being supported to improve through LNCT 11 and where improvements have not been evident then a very small number have been dismissed with others agreeing to take up alternative deployment such as administrative posts or pupil support assistants.

We have remained with the same key priorities and we have chosen to drive these forward through a more simplified approach to school improvement planning.

City Challenge

City Challenge, launched in 2008, is an initiative which aimed to raise attainment in three urban areas – London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country. It built on the success of the London Challenge 2003-08. It received £160 million of funding from the Department of Education. The full research report and an Executive Summary on City Challenge is available at .

City Challenge aimed to reduce the number of underperforming schools, increase the number of Good and Outstanding schools and improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children.

A key characteristic was that it focused on support and challenge rather than blaming and shaming. In all areas, meetings were held with civil servants, the local authority and City Challenge Advisors to decide which schools would receive support. Schools were categorised as ‘intensive’ or ‘improving’. Schools were generally supported for two to three years. Six London secondary schools were supported for all nine years of the London and City Challenge, a few only had one year of support.

Each school had a bespoke programme designed. Whilst the improvement package varied across schools there were some common elements:

  • Ongoing support and advice from a City Challenge advisor[1];
  • Support from a Local Leader of Education (LLE[2]) or a National Leader of Education (NLE) or other staff from the LLE’s or NLE’s school;
  • Support for learning and teaching, including professional development for staff and support from consultants, particularly with English and mathematics;
  • Leadership training for middle and/or senior leaders; and
  • Funding for additional staff or resources and in some cases, building work

In addition there were also School Improvement Partners. They were individuals employed in local authorities to challenge and support schools leaders. They are broadly equivalent to Quality Improvement Officers.

Learning and teaching was supported in a variety of ways:

  • The Teaching and Learning programmes (Outstanding Teacher Programme (OTP) and Improving Teacher Programme (ITP)) run by Facilitation and Teaching Schools;
  • Coaching from members of staff from the NLE/LLE’s schools, Advanced Skills Teachers or consultants; and
  • Specialist advisors.

The key factors in the success of any of these strategies were:

  • Opportunities to observe outstanding teaching and share practice;
  • Coaching taking place in the teacher’s own school with the pupils they regularly taught;
  • Time for reflection; and
  • The expertise, communication skills and attitudes of those facilitating courses or providing coaching.

Examples highlighted by respondents were releasing a depute to be non-class committed which allowed the depute to carry out coaching and mentoring for targeted members of staff. The main areas of spending were on staff development (cover costs for participants, NLE/LLE, consultants, staff to go to partner school) and appointment of additional teaching and/or support staff.

What can we learn and apply from City Challenge?

City Challenge focussed on improving learning and teaching and leadership. They took a very structured approach and designed bespoke improvement programmes for selected schools. They invested in additional staffing which freed up staff for additional training and they shared best practice. They also gave more staffing to schools which gave them more flexibility to match resources to need.

It was very successful in London where investment was made over a prolonged period. It was less successful in Manchester and the Black Country.

Given our current financial position, we are not able to invest in additional staffing to support improvement actions in the same way as schools were able to as part of City Challenge.

City Challenge used a coordinated approach to support schools which were selected as needing support. They put together a Project Improvement Board, which consisted of external representatives, the headteacher, consultants and others depending on the needs of the school. The Project Improvement Board met regularly to monitor progress, evaluate the effectiveness of planned actions and review and change the plan accordingly. This sustained level of interest and focus resulted in marked improvements[3].

National Developments

On 27th March 2013, the Cabinet Secretary announced six actions to drive improvement nationally.

  1. Improvement Partnership Programme – a nationally coordinated programme to partner schools so that they can share best practice. This is partnering schools with very similar characteristics but which perform very differently and can learn from each other.
  2. Class sizes and teacher numbers– a consultation paper is to be issued. The Government remains committed to progressive reductions in class sizes in primaries 1 to 3, and in areas of greatest deprivation.
  3. Data to drive up improvement – this is the development of the Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool which is to be launched in 2014.
  4. Improving Parental Involvement – Education Scotland have been asked to bring together the data in Scottish Schools Online, Parent Zone, inspection reports, local school plans and a range of other materials into an easily understood one-click web-site that helps parents to make sense of this range of material.
  5. Leadership – consider the use of very effective school leaders supporting other schools.
  6. Innovation – to encourage innovation in the system.

Glasgow needs to engage in this debate as many of these ideas are not well-developed. Some may not fit the context of Glasgow. For example, the idea of partnering schools to share practice is a sound one. Partnering of schools needs to be flexible and matched to need.

Glasgow has always maintained the position that classes of 18 as is the Government policy at P1 to P3 are not our preferred approach to meeting children’s learning needs. We spend more than £4.5 million on nurture in early years and primary and more than £5 million on English as an additional language teachers for early years, primary and secondary. This £9.5 million provides additional teachers and pupil support assistants targeted to need. The teachers are not included in class size calculations for P1 to P3. Our headteachers consistently request additional staff to be given to allow them to target the staff to greatest need. They do not want to be told what size each class should be.

May/June 2013

During May/June 2013, the Executive Director led a series of consultation events to consider Education Services’ next steps to continue to improve outcomes for children and young people. These events included a half day session with the Directorate, an afternoon with QIOs, meetings with groups of heads and a meeting with representatives of EIS.

In addition, around 30 heads, QIOs, parents and teachers participated in a session which reflected on our progress with Curriculum for Excellence and provided advice on next steps.

Further research

The OECD report Synergies for Better Learning was published in April 2013. It identified six key areas for education systems to focus on when improving learners’ performance:

  1. Student assessment systems
  2. Teacher appraisal
  3. School leader appraisal
  4. School self-evaluation
  5. School external evaluation
  6. Local and national ‘system’ evaluation

The central argument of the OECD report was that countries should build integrated national systems which have learning as the central focus. The challenge of the OECD report is to ensure the various elements form one coherent system. The report’s authors give a number of examples of other national performance improvement frameworks which appear to provide unified and coherent systems.

Next steps for Glasgow

One of the keys to our success to date has been our unrelenting focus on learning and teaching. We have worked hard to align our priorities – ensuring that all are facing in the same direction.

If it doesn’t contribute to learning and teaching then we don’t do it.

Drawing from current research and consultation with stakeholders, the following is proposed:

Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge

We will develop new approaches to quality improvement which will recognise and build on the significant progress we have made in the last five years.

Our approaches will empower schools and nurseries to identify their own priorities for improvement. Our focus will be on helping them design bespoke solutions for their communities.

We will build on the success of the trios of heads. Using the success of the focussed approach to evaluating 5.1 in secondary schools, we will extend this work to early years and primary. For example, from August 13, secondary heads will work in their trios looking at 1.1.

We will reduce the number of QIOs we have in our central team. We will redirect resources to create more Leaders of Learning posts and to make funds available to release staff to target further improvements in learning and teaching.

We will no longer carry out a planned programme of quality reviews and redirect the support to undertake more validated self-evaluation exercises in partnership with schools and nurseries on priorities identified through their own self evaluation processes; a more intelligence-led and proportionate approach to support and challenge.

We will continue to place the professionalism of staff at the heart of our plans.

We will continue to invest in learning and teaching through staff development programmes such as Improving Our Classrooms and Improving Our Playrooms and we will develop a programme for specifically improving learning and teaching in secondary schools.

We will continue to invest in the development of leadership through our Leadership strategy.

During October 2013 to February 2014, eight local improvement groups will be established: two in the North West and three in each of North East and South. The groups will be chaired by the Head of Service or Area Education Officer and will have membership drawn from QIOs, heads from the local area and at least one from another area in the city along with a representative from a partner local authority. Improvement planning days will be organised where heads from a range of establishments will come together to share and agree their improvement priorities and professional development needs for the next two years. The findings from these improvement planning days will be considered by each of the local improvement groups. The local improvement groups will feed their findings into the Education Improvement Group (EIG) which is chaired by the Head of Service (Quality Improvement).