Local authority approaches to supporting school improvement: Supporting effective improvement planning, and standards and quality reporting

All local authorities provide schools with guidance on self-evaluation, improvement planning and standards and quality reporting. This usually includes standardised templates for school leaders to use, exemplars of good practice and timescales for completion. Most local authorities provide comprehensive guidance and advice that is embedded in a strategic quality improvement framework, which sets out a wider vision for school improvement. In these authorities, central officers know their schools very well and have a clear understanding of each school’s strengths, challenges, and improvement needs. In improvement plans, headteachers are required to highlight how they will address local priorities as well as their own school’s needs.

In most local authorities, officers provide headteachers with a range of data and performance information to inform their self-evaluation processes. This includes data on attendance, attainment and positive destinations at local authority, cluster and school levels and for virtual comparators. Headteachers report that this data helps them to evaluate and benchmark their own school’s performance and to identify appropriate improvement priorities for their school.

In a minority of local authorities, officers recognise that school leaders would benefit from further support in evaluating school performance more rigorously against national standards and local frameworks. At school level, improvement planning processes do not always lead to better outcomes quickly enough. School staff are not always clear about how local authority priorities align with individual school priorities.

Education officers provide all headteachers with evaluative written feedback on draft school improvement plans and standards and quality reports in most local authorities. Where practice is most effective, central teams moderate the quality of this feedback to ensure consistency in the approach they are taking. This is a next step for a minority of local authorities. Some school leaders do not always feel that there is equity and the same level of rigour across central teams.

A few local authorities take a digital approach to reporting to stakeholders on standards and quality. All the schools in these local authorities produce standards and quality reports as interactive, digital publications, rather than paper-based documents. Headteachers report that parents, staff and learners have welcomed this more dynamic and inclusive reporting style. Teachers and learners contribute to the standards and quality report through videos, podcasts and photographs. As a result, wider school communities are now actively engaged in school improvement planning processes. They are involved in identifying and celebrating successes and in highlighting next steps. Headteachers and staff report that this consistent approach is helping to develop a clear cycle of improvement planning and reporting on standards across school teams.

Involvement of school leaders

Almost all local authorities involve headteachers in reviewing and refreshing approaches to improvement planning and standards and quality reporting. This includes through surveys, working groups and through regular headteacher meetings.

Almost all local authorities support their headteachers to work collaboratively in clusters, trios or quads to lead common areas of improvement. Local authorities share attainment and other data across cluster schools. Headteachers use this data to make comparisons and reflect on their own school’s performance. In a minority of authorities, work has still to be done to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach on individual school improvement.

In most local authorities, school leaders are encouraged to be involved in improvement activities beyond their own establishments. These opportunities include being members of validated self-evaluation teams and school reviews and engaging in peer moderation of school improvement plans and standards and quality reports. In a very few authorities, they also include school leaders working across the primary and secondary sectors.

Using data from school improvement plans and standards and quality reports to inform strategic decision-making and local authority support

In the majority of local authorities, officers collate information from individual school improvement plans and standards and quality reports to identify common areas of good practice, priority and need. They use this information very effectively to inform strategic decisions about local authority priorities, requirements for professional learning and targeted support for schools. This is helping leaders and officers in these authorities to maintain existing high standards, and to secure further improvement in the quality of school education for children and young people.

For the minority of local authorities, central staff should consider ways to share with school leaders how school improvement planning and the accuracy of their self-evaluation contributes directly to the wider service improvement plan. There is scope for local authorities to make this process more explicit for school leaders.

Most local authorities have identified the need to work with school leaders to support them in the use of evaluative writing. They are also challenging headteachers more about the evidence they use to support their own evaluations of the quality of education.

In a few authorities, school leaders are core members of governance boards and provide advice and guidance on the effectiveness of local authority policy and practice, including school improvement approaches. These types of collaborative approaches help to build the capacity of headteachers to evaluate the impact of planned outcomes on school improvement. This contributes to a sense of genuine partnership working and mutual respect between local authority senior leaders and school leaders.

Stakeholder involvement

The majority of local authorities have well embedded approaches to involving parents, learners, Elected Members and professional associations in informing policy and the work of central teams. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the ways that all local authorities engaged with stakeholder groups, and many forums were paused. In more recent years, some authorities have opted to maintain hybrid ways of engagement that were established during periods of lockdown. A few local authorities plan to now reinstate some forums and stakeholder groups.

In almost all local authorities, Central Officers and Elected Members reported to have productive and positive working relationships. Elected Members value the timely information and professional advice they receive from senior leaders. In a few local authorities, officers provide training sessions for Elected Members, for example on interpreting attainment data and on Gàidhlig. Elected Members appreciate this approach, and they feel better informed about school performance and statutory duties. During our visits to local authorities, Elected Members in all local authorities raised their concerns about the very challenging fiscal landscape and the resulting cuts to education budgets and some services. Central teams and school leaders across Scotland share these concerns.

Where practice is effective, local authority leaders hold regular meetings with the chairs of Parent Councils. Together, they discuss information about educational priorities and strategies to increase parental engagement in decision-making.  In other examples, parental engagement officers work with Parent Councils to promote sharing practice across schools. In a few local authorities, parents are invited to help to shape policy and practice, for example for reviewing approaches to inclusion and equity.

In a minority of local authorities, there is an embedded approach to stakeholder engagement. Local authority senior leaders make time to listen to the views of learners. Education officers gather the views of children and young people through their quality assurance activities, including during school visits and thematic reviews. Engagement with learners is sometimes promoted through community learning and development (CLD) and third sector partners. In a few local authorities, children and young people’s views have informed the implementation of council-wide priorities, such as tackling poverty and The Promise.