Cumbria LA Programme for Monitoroing, Support, Challenge and Intervention for School

Children’s Services

Cumbria Local Authority’s programme for monitoring, support, challenge and intervention for school improvement

Updated : December 2007

Cumbria Local Authority’s programme for monitoring, support, challenge and intervention for school improvement

This is an updated version of the previous policy to include the revised DCSF statutory guidance for Schools Causing Concern (May 2007) which gives the statutory powers and responsibilities of Local Authorities in Part 4 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006.

Introduction

The purpose of our programme of monitoring, challenge, support and intervention is to work with schools to improve the five outcomes for children and young people. The programme ensures that we can:

·  gather up-to-date intelligence about all schools and settings;

·  identify and share innovative and effective practice;

·  identify, as early as possible, issues of concern;

·  act quickly where issues of concern are emerging to prevent them developing into serious concerns; and

·  work intensively with schools causing concern to tackle and remove the causes of these concerns as quickly as possible.

The DCSF Guidance reinforces that schools have prime responsibility for their own improvement and for making the best use of the universal programme of support and challenge the LA provides to all schools. However, the LA adopts a differentiated approach where the level of support, challenge and intervention is in inverse proportion to the school’s success and capacity to improve. In all cases, targeted support is planned with the objective of developing the school’s own capacity to improve.

It is the collective role of all members of Children’s Services to guarantee that no school has difficulties or serious concerns without the LA being fully aware of the situation and to put processes in place to support the school to bring about necessary improvements.

Objectives

1. To ensure that the LA has the most up-to-date intelligence on the status of all its schools by:

·  sharing information about school performance from all services and teams across the LA;

·  considering the information;

·  where there is sufficient evidence, making judgements on the schools;

·  where there is insufficient evidence or conflicting evidence, commissioning further information gathering or agreeing to maintain a watching brief.

3.  Where concerns are confirmed, to carry out a risk assessment of the status of the school, to quantify the support required and to agree appropriate action to secure improvements.

(for example:

·  by providing priority access to school improvement programmes, such as the national strategies;

·  by sharing the concerns with the headteacher and discussing remedial action;

·  by inviting the governors to address the issue with an action plan;

·  by carrying out a formal review of the school’s provision to provide recommendations for action).

3. To share successes identified in order to:

·  celebrate achievement;

·  provide examples for others to disseminate, adopt or adapt; and

·  subsequently, provide for the Director a paragraph describing the issue, the success and those responsible, for the Director’s complimentary letter.

4.  To identify trends in themes or issues, which need further attention and improvement, monitor the inherent risks and to commission appropriate action by:

·  analysing the issues raised in discussion about individual schools;

·  identifying the common trends;

·  consider the risks of inaction as a criterion for LA intervention;

·  deciding which are priorities;

·  communicating this information to the School Improvement Team for them to identify appropriate action.

5.  To inform the LA planning processes from which the LA strategic plan and Improving Educational Outcomes (IEO) Plan are defined, by feeding priorities into:

·  the half termly meetings of the IEO Management Group;

·  the annual revision of IEO and the Service Plan.

·  creating programmes to meet these priorities;

·  using reports to DMT, Cabinet and Members’ Scrutiny Panel.

Consequential Remit for all teams in the Directorate:

To consider, on a half termly basis, all of the schools they have had contact with:

·  to discuss these schools;

·  to identify any issues facing the schools;

·  to monitor the risk to the school of failing to act;

·  to consider the issues against the criteria agreed for identifying concerns;

·  to propose, via the team’s representative on Area Schools Standards Group (SSG), an appropriate level of monitoring, support and intervention for any school with issues which meet the criteria, or with other issues which give rise to concerns, small or large;

·  to propose at the Area SSG meeting, any action they consider appropriate for their team or other team in the LA, to provide support to a school; and

·  to propose for commendation any school, member of staff or of governing body, who deserves complimenting for an achievement or success, small or large.

Intended outcomes

·  That the LA will know all its schools well;

·  That any concerns affecting the potential outcomes for pupils in schools will be known to the LA;

·  That the LA will act resolutely on this information;

·  That schools in difficulties will receive timely and appropriate help to resolve the difficulties;

·  That schools where there are serious concerns will receive prompt help, or, if they are unwilling to receive help, appropriate intervention, to prevent the issues from deteriorating;

·  That staff in schools will receive timely and appropriate commendation for collective or individual success and that where this is appropriate, their success will be recognised by the whole education community and used to inspire successful practice in others;

·  That the analysis of issues, both those causing concern and those receiving recognition for success, will inform the planning and risk assessment process and the LA’s improvement activities.

Principles and Processes

·  Items relating to an individual school will usually have been discussed with the Headteacher and/or Chair of Governors in advance of any decisions about LA action.

·  This discussion will be initiated by the officer who has the concern; or by their line manager. If the officer believes, following this discussion, that the matter should be passed on to the Area School Standards Group, they will tell the Headteacher and/or Chair of Governors that they intend to do this.

·  Any decisions of Area SSG relating to individual schools will be communicated to that school (usually by the link school improvement officer) immediately.

·  Outcomes resulting in a change of a school’s designated level of support will be communicated in writing by the Principal School Improvement Officer, separately to the Headteacher and Chair of Governors and in relevant cases the link or senior school improvement officer will attend the next meeting of the Governing Body to explain the context of the change.

Confidentiality and Openness

·  Members of the LA will respect the confidentiality of information gathered about a school.

·  All details minuted at meetings about an individual school will be shared with the Headteacher and Chair of Governors (Governing Body) of that school.

·  Details on an individual school will only be shared on a need to know basis of those who will support subsequent action, and feedback to the officer who raised the concern in the first place. In the case of celebrating successful practice details will be shared as appropriate with the consent of the school/teacher.

·  Aggregate information on all schools in the county will be reported to the Directorate Management Team, and through DMT to the Lead Member for Children’s Services and to the County Council’s Scrutiny Panel.

Evaluation of the LA processes

The Directorate Management Team in consultation with the schools will evaluate the impact of the LA's action and establish the baseline position from which we are intervening through risk assessment, in order to secure the accountability of all LA intelligence gathering through:

·  monitoring the long term outcomes;

·  comparing the LA’s information with the results of Ofsted inspections;

·  the success of the "no surprise” strategies; and

·  evaluating the effectiveness of the LA’s processes through the use of the agreed ‘Performance Framework for Children’s Services Authority Service to Schools’.

LA POLICY FOR SUPPORTING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT – DIFFERENTIATED MODEL

Introduction

Schools have responsibility for their own improvement and for making the best use of the universal programme of support and challenge provided to all schools. The LA recognises that school improvement is most likely to be sustained when school managers identify their own priorities for raising standards and are given the maximum possible control over the resources required to achieve this. In order for this to happen, schools need to be well developed in the practice of rigorous self-evaluation. In most schools the LA’s rôle is simply to encourage schools in this process.

The LA has statutory responsibilities in relation to the promotion of standards. It must monitor and come to a view about the appropriateness of standards achieved. Furthermore, it is required to support or intervene in schools (or ensure that an appropriate external agency is commissioned to do so) in inverse proportion to the level of success achieved. In some schools additional support is thus necessary.

Even when required to intervene, however, the LA will seek to develop schools’ capacity for self-evaluation and sustaining their own improvement. In all schools, the aspiration is that the school should take responsibility for its own improvement and that the school develops the internal capacity to make the necessary improvements

Strategy

This strategy assumes that the majority of schools are successful in providing good quality education for pupils and achieving high standards. Where this is the case, monitoring will be confined to the minimum necessary. It is expected, however, that the many successful schools in Cumbria will additionally invite officers to observe good practice and to provide support and challenge to the school’s own self-evaluation procedures. The outcome of this range of visits will allow for the identification and dissemination of successful practice across schools and for successful schools to support and help less effective schools and colleagues..

In other schools where, for a variety of reasons, provision is not as good as it should be, the LA will work with the school to identify the most appropriate means of improving matters. In the case of serious concerns, where the school and LA cannot agree a plan, the LA has statutory powers of intervention. The LA will act in all such cases, according to the needs of the school and for the benefit of the children in the school. Intervention will ensure that improvement is secured as quickly as possible. It will ensure that those schools which are less successful in aspects of their work receive additional external support.

In reality, of course, even the most successful schools can improve; even schools causing concern will have positive features. The policy does not seek to categorise any school as wholly successful or wholly ineffective. It is a convenient way of determining where the balance lies. In particular, it needs to pick up as early as possible those situations in which areas for improvement outweigh strengths, either because of their number or their significance. For that reason, in includes ‘transitional stages’ at which emergent causes for concern will be assessed.

Any strategy for school improvement requires the LA to know where to intervene and where it can afford to leave matters to the school. The use of descriptors matched to levels of monitoring, intervention and support is not about ranking schools or ‘naming and shaming’. It is a means to an end; the end being to provide additional support to schools which need it. The intention is also to enhance that support by ensuring that it is timely and well-focused on aspects of provision needing improvement.

The policy ensures that all schools know why they are or are not receiving additional support. Any judgements made, interventions proposed and outcomes observed will be discussed with headteachers and governors. Indeed, headteachers are also encouraged to identify their school’s need to change category where they are aware of it. The policy is also intended to be responsive to changing circumstances. During the course of the year various indicators might suggest that the school’s needs should be reviewed. Schools might thus move around the matrix during the course of a year according to particular circumstances.

If a school appears to be giving cause for concern as a result of perceptions rather than ‘hard data’ – for example, officers’ professional judgements or persistent complaints from the local community – the LA will investigate these concerns before coming to a judgement about whether intervention is necessary. The school (or department in a secondary school) will be subject to a sharply focused review by appropriate school improvement officers. The purpose of the review will be to analyse the nature and validity of any concerns and, if appropriate, propose a programme of action to resolve them. Both the analysis and any recommended action will be shared with the headteacher and governing body, who will be asked to prepare an action plan indicating how they intend to remedy the situation.

Sources of evidence

The following approaches will be maintained and developed to ensure a good evidence base is available against which to evaluate the quality of education provided by each school:

i) analysis of external evidence (‘hard data’), including

·  statutory assessment and examination data

·  value-added analysis

·  school targets and schools’ achievement thereof

·  Ofsted reports

·  Raiseonline reports

·  evidence from the Primary and Secondary National Strategy programmes

·  the School Improvement Plan

·  attendance and exclusions data

·  school budget information

·  internal audit reports

ii) monitoring visits by link school improvement officers and others to evaluate and discuss

·  the schools analysis of assessment data

·  the school’s willingness to set appropriately challenging targets

·  future strategies for school improvement including target setting

·  the quality of school self-evaluation

·  progress against the school’s stated priorities and targets