Local authority approaches to supporting school improvement: Supporting improvement through self-evaluation and quality assurance

Methods to evaluate school performance and review the quality of education

Most local authorities have well established systems in place to monitor and evaluate the quality of education provision in their schools, but the effectiveness of these systems varies. Common features of effective and embedded practice include:

• programmes of formal visits by officers to every school across the year

• regular discussions between officers and school leaders about attainment and other data

• school reviews, often including peer school leaders

We found practice to be highly effective in just over half of local authorities. In these authorities, local authority officers know their schools very well and have a clear understanding of each school’s strengths, challenges and improvement needs.

School leaders feel well supported as well as challenged robustly by local authority officers. Their involvement in quality assurance reviews in other schools is helping to build professional capacity and contribute to the creation of a shared understanding of national standards across local authority and school teams.

Overall, the majority of local authorities should continue to develop comprehensive approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of their quality improvement strategies. This includes implementing more robust approaches to moderate the work of central teams, such as how accurately officers evaluate school performance, and the quality of feedback they provide to headteachers. This is necessary to ensure better consistency, a shared understanding, and equity of approach across central teams.

In a few authorities, a minority of headteachers feel that the quality of support and challenge they received from central officers is inconsistent or not sufficiently robust or frequent enough to help them to improve.

A few local authorities have identified the need to strengthen their systems for evaluating and reviewing school performance. In these authorities, there are some early signs of positive new approaches being implemented. For example, refreshed frameworks for improvement provide clearer guidance and expectations, including clarity on the roles and responsibilities of central officers and school leaders. These approaches have the potential to support a more effective cycle of continuous improvement.

Evaluating and improving the quality of learning, teaching and assessment

A minority of local authorities can demonstrate through robust data that their quality assurance strategy is directly supporting schools to improve the quality of learning, teaching and assessment. Many more local authorities are developing and improving their systems to achieve this.

Where practice is well established, embedded and leading to positive impact, there is a shared understanding between central officers and school leaders that the quality of learning, teaching and assessment is directly linked to outcomes for learners. There is a clear focus on improving the quality of learning, teaching and assessment in the work of central officers. For example, during quality assurance visits to schools, outwith cyclical programmes of ‘deep dive’ school review, officers will routinely: 

• observe learning and teaching

• speak with focus groups of children and young people

• meet with groups of staff to discuss improvements in pedagogy

• importantly, share messages about their findings with school teams

In a minority of local authorities, there are clear and embedded approaches on using robust and reliable data to inform decision-making, policy and practice. Many other local authorities are developing and improving their processes in this area. In local authorities where this is working particularly well, central teams prioritise developing school leader and staff capacity to use data effectively to improve outcomes for children and young people. For example, ‘data leads’ or ‘data champions’ in each school are trained and supported to interpret and use data and to disseminate practice.

Officers in central teams meet school leaders regularly across the school year to discuss a range of attainment, attendance and exclusion data to determine school performance and how well the school is improving. In a minority of local authorities, headteachers have access to and use data for their locality and authority, as well as their own school. This is helping to support an ethos of collective efficacy and shared self-evaluation for improvement. A minority of local authorities have identified the need to continue to develop the use of data across their central and school teams.

In a minority of local authorities, evidence demonstrates that strategic approaches are improving standards in learning, teaching and assessment in primary schools, but less so in secondary schools. There is a need to ensure that practice in effective and robust self-evaluation for improvement is shared across, and between, primary and secondary schools. Professional learning for school leaders, including middle leaders in secondary schools, will help to achieve this.

Local authorities that have higher proportions of speakers and learners of Gàidhlig have substantial, bespoke support for schools that offer Gàidhlig Medium Education. In the most effective practice, central teams give schools feedback on the distinctive features of Gàidhlig Medium Education and on pedagogy. They use a range of evaluative strategies, such as visiting classes, analysing learners’ work and assessing learners’ progress through focus groups.

System leadership

A few local authorities have undertaken significant work over recent years to develop system leadership approaches. In these authorities, positive and effective relationships underpin the work of all staff. This arises from strong, strategic leadership, driving forward a well-understood, shared vision for collective improvement. Local authority senior leaders, officers and headteachers feel strongly that a culture of trust, respect and empowerment is central to effective system leadership. Reasons for local authorities adopting this approach include developing a vision for shared commitment for raising standards. However, they also include the fact that financial constraints mean that the numbers of staff in central teams, in almost all geographical areas, are diminishing. Therefore, building capacity within school teams in using robust, data driven self-evaluation, strengthened by peer collaboration, is helping these local authorities to continue to raise standards and produce better outcomes for children and young people.

Key principles for the successful implementation of collective endeavours like these to improve all schools include ensuring that there is a shared understanding across all schools on the purpose and rationale for collaborative improvement and collective accountability. Building on this shared understanding, school leaders need to be skilled in robust and accurate self-evaluation, based on sound judgements and reliable data. Relationships need to be strong enough for school leaders to be able to benefit from providing, receiving and acting on constructive feedback from their peers. Most local authorities are undertaking positive work towards achieving these aims.