The headteacher at New Abbey Primary school wanted to make the school improvement journey inclusive, meaningful and transparent. She wanted to fully involve children, parents, staff, partners and the local community in taking forward school improvements.

About New Abbey Primary

New Abbey Primary is situated within the village of New Abbey, near the Solway Firth within Dumfries and Galloway. The school is a key feature of the local community. The current school roll is 38 across two multi-stage composite classes. Almost all children live between Social Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) deciles four to six.

What the school did

The headteacher took a well-planned, inclusive and creative approach to ensuring that all stakeholders have appropriate opportunities to contribute their views and provide feedback. For example, following feedback to the headteacher from staff on the pace of change being too fast, she adapted her approach to ensure that staff had capacity to lead and deliver on expected change.

In addition, in 2019 to 2020, a school improvement priority was to create the school’s vision, values and aims. The journey to develop these, and the final result, were highlighted as examples of good practice within the local authority. Headteachers continue to visit the school to learn about the process.

As part of the continued improvement journey, the vision, values and aims have been reviewed so that they remain up to date. As part of this process, staff have ensured that all stakeholders have been kept informed and engaged where appropriate.

There is a strong collective understanding of the school’s improvement priorities, why they have been chosen, recognition of progress to date and next steps. For example, the headteacher and staff:

• aim to make the process of planned school improvement inclusive, meaningful, and transparent
• focus on a Rights Respecting schools’ approach to ensure children’s involvement
• hold school improvement-focused assemblies
• share and explain next steps in improvement planning with stakeholders
• make use of’ pupil parliament’ groups, which include all children
• hold pupil council meetings with parent council
• run parental surveys to gather views
• develop a visual priority display in the school entrance area and use a traffic light system to update all stakeholders on school improvement plan (SIP) progress
• develop a pupil-friendly SIP
• encourage all staff to participate in a ‘How Good is our School? 4’ evaluation event and leadership evaluation, leading to informed target setting in improvement planning
• communicate school improvement features in newsletters, in every headteacher Parent Council report and on every staff meeting agenda

The sustained impact

There is increased awareness across various stakeholders of school improvement priorities, including why they have been chosen and how they are being progressed. An improved sense of ownership has been developed across the staff team. Those leading different aspects of improvement understand their role and are given protected time to take actions forward. This has strengthened the staff team, including non-teaching staff, and helped to provide a sense of ownership of school improvement priorities.

Parents are also responding positively to new approaches. The school’s most recent parent survey had a 62% response rate, with 100% positive feedback.

The children are more involved in the decision-making within school. They know they are central to school improvement and that they have a voice in what happens in their school.