Local authority approaches to supporting school improvement: Delivering universal and targeted support to improve the quality of education

Frameworks to support and challenge all schools

All local authorities have a framework in place to support improvement in schools. In most local authorities, improvement frameworks are clear, well-established and embedded in practice. All local authorities provide a tiered approach to support and challenge, recognising the need for universal, targeted, and intensive categories of support for schools, as necessary. The set of criteria used by central officers to determine the level of support for each school is generally well defined in almost all local authorities and is reviewed annually.

A few local authorities have reviewed and refreshed their improvement frameworks recently or are rightly in the process of doing so. Authority staff have initiated these reviews due to a range of factors, including changes to the leadership and structure of central teams; quality assurance and self-evaluation evidence, including external inspections; and the impact of budget cuts. Almost all local authorities ensure that their improvement frameworks are founded on principles of self-evaluation, taking appropriate account of local and national priorities.

Improvement frameworks are effective in securing continuous improvement in most local authorities. In these authorities, approaches are developed and refined collaboratively by local authority officers and school leaders.

In most local authorities, there is an established culture of collaborative working. Positive, trusting relationships between school leaders and local authority officers are evident. These relationships are important in facilitating the effective development, implementation and review of local authorities’ improvement frameworks. This supports central officers to ensure that improvement processes are clearly understood, transparent and responsive to need. School leaders value the visibility of local authority officers in their schools and welcome the feedback and challenge they provide.

It is very important to recognise that maintaining in-person relationships is a significant extra challenge for those local authorities with a high number of rural, remote and island schools. This can restrict the full implementation of improvement frameworks that require a balance of in-person and online activity. Barriers include significant journeys for central officers to remote schools, transport difficulties and challenges in the recruitment and retention of central officers and school leaders. In a few rural authorities, hybrid approaches to engagement between officers and schools are often hindered due to poor broadband or digital infrastructure.

Processes to identify support and challenge for all schools

Most local authorities have effective processes in place to identify and organise appropriate levels of support and challenge for all schools. In a few local authorities, these processes lack consistency and rigour and are less effective. Senior leaders in these authorities recognise the need for a more strategic approach to developing the capacity of their central teams. This has the potential to support an increased pace of change in schools where improvement is required. Senior leaders should ensure that they have clear oversight of which schools are receiving universal, targeted, or intensive support. This will enable them to monitor more effectively the impact of support delivered by central teams.

Across all local authorities, link officers play a key role in gathering intelligence and data about school performance. In a few local authorities, this role is also undertaken by a cluster lead or an experienced school leader who has been seconded for this purpose. The implementation of an agreed calendar of engagement between individual school leaders and their link officer is common practice across all local authorities. The frequency, nature and impact of this engagement is more variable across the country. There is a need to ensure a more consistent approach across teams, with a clear focus on improvement.

In a minority of local authorities, officers could strengthen further the quality of their feedback to school leaders, for example on improvement plans and standards and quality reports.

Most local authorities have an accurate understanding of the performance, capacity and context of each of their schools. In these authorities, officers ensure that their understanding of school performance is accurately informed by a wide range of qualitative and quantitative evidence. This enables them to monitor and maintain a strong understanding of each school’s capacity for improvement and areas of risk. Officers interrogate attainment, attendance and exclusion data regularly, looking for patterns or dips in performance. They review the impact of the school’s use of Pupil Equity Fund on attainment.

Staff absence, recruitment challenges and recent appointments, particularly of headteachers, is also monitored carefully. In addition, they review the number of complaints received and consider the views of parents following local authority-wide surveys. Where practice is most effective, they use regular discussions with school leaders to triangulate data to ensure its accuracy and rigour, making comparison against local and national benchmarks where appropriate. In the minority of local authorities where practice is particularly strong, it is this breadth of understanding that most accurately informs the local authority’s identification of schools requiring enhanced or intensive support.

A few local authorities offer headteachers a higher level of support. Headteachers recognise and value the enhanced level of guidance and resource associated with this and are keen to secure this for their school. As a result, these authorities are giving an increasing proportion of schools enhanced support. However, this can lead to an over-reliance on enhanced and targeted support in some schools, and an imbalance in resource provision overall. To redress this, local authorities should consider the effectiveness of their universal support provision. In authorities where universal provision is working very well, there is a more proportionate and targeted balance of central support across the schools.

All authorities make effective use of the outcomes of school inspections within their own authority. They use these to benchmark the accuracy of their schools’ self-evaluation activity. Occasionally, in a few authorities, the emphasis on engagement and quality assurance is placed most often on preparing for inspection. This can be at the expense of other effective, ongoing quality assurance activity that would be based on a range of measures.

Provision of advice and support

Most local authorities have effective systems in place to provide advice and support to schools. They use data in increasingly strategic ways to inform and determine the approaches to be used. This includes support to address both performance and pastoral needs. Headteachers value highly the pastoral support provided by link officers, reflecting that relationships are built on trust and respect.

A few local authorities find the provision of advice and support more challenging. This can be due to school-based staff’s lack of awareness of improvement frameworks, the cycle of self-evaluation for self-improvement, or the support provision available to schools. In a few local authorities, the central team do not have capacity to support high numbers of schools requiring targeted or intensive support. Increasingly, peer headteachers are being given a more prominent role in quality assurance activities, working in partnership with other schools to help address this.

Almost all local authorities make increasing use of a range of networks to provide support and challenge to schools. This includes peer and multi-agency support. A few local authorities take a ‘team around the school’ approach to strengthen and inform multi-agency planning. Informed by their careful monitoring and tracking of school performance, they identify common themes. Guidance, such as improving attendance, is then issued to all schools, making best use of time and resource.

Headteacher meetings and cluster improvement approaches are being used increasingly to provide universal support. A few local authorities have redesigned their headteacher meetings to incorporate regular evaluative activity. There is now a much stronger emphasis on strategic improvement in these authorities. They actively promote collaboration among headteachers, encouraging them to engage in open and honest dialogue. The sharing of effective practice is encouraged and facilitated.

Most local authorities share effective practice to support learning in a variety of ways. Local authority officers direct staff at all levels to identified areas of strong practice across schools. Authority-led conferences, seminars and headteacher-led forums provide beneficial opportunities to develop knowledge and share effective practice. Staff value these opportunities to hear about the implementation and impact of new initiatives and effective and embedded practice.

A few local authorities have a relatively high number of newly appointed headteachers. They understand the importance of providing enhanced support to build the capacity of new school leaders.

Experienced headteachers are often paired with a new colleague to provide mentor support. In almost all authorities, officers and headteachers have engaged in coaching and mentoring training that has strengthened their skills in delivering this support. This approach to leadership development contributes to the success of improvement frameworks.

All local authorities recognise the importance of having reliable and robust data for effective self-evaluation and quality assurance activity. Most local authorities provide advice and support about the use of data to build staff capacity and improve the accuracy of schools’ self-evaluation. This includes the provision of comprehensive data packs for each of their schools. A few local authorities implement effective support that links well with the national Pupil Equity Fund guidance. They use the expertise of their link attainment advisor to increase staff skills in using data to demonstrate impact.

Identifying schools requiring targeted support

The majority of local authorities have well-established systems and processes in place to identify schools requiring targeted support. They ensure that performance data for each school is maintained and updated regularly on a central database. This provides local authority officers and leaders with access to current performance information and intelligence. A minority of local authorities need to use data and intelligence more strategically. Doing so would help them to develop and maintain a clearer profile of risk, set within a structured risk matrix. This will enable them to provide a more equitable response to support provision, prioritising finite resources to where this is most needed.

A few local authorities use data very well to provide targeted support to raise attainment in literacy and numeracy, including closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Their use of a central database enables officers to share information with support providers such as a central pedagogy team, enabling them to prioritise bespoke support accordingly for individual or groups of schools.

Action planning, monitoring, and reviewing progress

Around half of local authorities that have identified schools requiring targeted or intensive support ensure that a clear action plan is in place to support improvement. The quality and effectiveness of these actions plans varies across the country. Local authorities find action plans to be most effective when priorities and the nature of the support to be provided are agreed in partnership with the headteacher. These set out clear goals, responsibilities, time limits and measures for success.

Around half of local authorities monitor the impact of action plans closely. A minority of local authorities need to strengthen further their approach to ensuring that targeted support leads to desired improvement. Where monitoring supports improvement most effectively, officers review progress in partnership with headteachers regularly and provide valuable feedback. Together, they agree next steps to ensure continuing improvement. The establishment of baseline measures by the staff involved help inform the rate of progress. Headteachers value this intensive support and challenge. Link officers take time to review data about their link schools and with each other. Working within an environment of professional trust, they feel able to challenge the quality and effectiveness of improvement actions and learn from each other. This provides opportunities for them to moderate the quality of their work.

A few local authorities need to develop further the skills of the central team to ensure a consistent approach in developing, implementing and monitoring the progress of school improvement. Officers need to be more precise about what will make the biggest difference to secure school performance. They need to ensure that headteachers act on the feedback and guidance provided more effectively.