SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
Introduction to ABINGDON LEARNING TRUST
Introduction from our CEO
Our school improvement strategy balances school autonomy with the resilience that working together as part of the same Trust brings. This strategy has headteachers and governors, who know their schools best, working with the Trust executive to agree an annual challenge and support programme.
This programme may include the school offering expertise to other schools in the Trust; or working with experts within and beyond the Trust, to refine and hone aspects of professional practice; taking part in professional networks; or leadership development. It all depends on what is needed to ensure a great education for every child and young person.
You will see our values of QUALITY, OPPORTUNITY, COLLABORATION, AMBITION and COMMUNITY throughout this document as we leverage expert skills and knowledge across the Trust, and beyond, to bring the very best to our pupils’ and students’ education experience, in each of our schools.
Dr Fiona Hammans
CEO Abingdon Learning Trust
Our PURPOSE
To be a force for educational change so that children, staff and our wider communities can learn and live better, thriving now and for the future.
Our VISION
We will nurture curiosity, ambition, resilience and courage; support a deep-rooted compassion for others and our world to enable choices and opportunities for a happy and successful life.
Our MISSION
1. Deliver ambitious and high quality education for every child and young person through collaboration and opportunity across our schools and communities
2. Commit to long-term relationships with other educators and wider society to bring depth and breadth to the education offer for pupils and students, and for enhanced staff development
3. Secure maximum value and impact from our resources working together and make a greater contribution for the good of all our young people, our economy and our communities.
School Improvement GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The key priority for our Trust is to secure the best possible outcomes for our children and young people. We deliver this through our belief that local leadership and governance can best determine the school improvement priorities for each of our schools which in turn is supported by our Trust wide accountability framework that is structured around the key principles of support and challenge.
Aligned Autonomy
At the centre of our work with our schools is our commitment to Aligned Autonomy. Each school within the Trust has its own distinct ethos, something that is overtly encouraged and celebrated. There is alignment across the schools within the Trust with respect to core values, expectations, systems, operating procedures, and in commissioning services. We foster individual school responsibility, independence, and identity; but use the Trust to frame priorities, share great practice, support school improvement and provide exceptional central services. This approach frees schools to get on with what really matters: running great schools.
High quality professional development
Having recognised that there is a unique character to each of our schools we also want to foster our sense of collective identity as a Trust and our commitment is to use expertise from all our schools to facilitate improvement in individual schools and across the Trust more broadly, leveraging our work to the maximum effect for all pupils. We firmly believe in developing high-calibre staff and nurturing talent. We are committed to providing a range of development opportunities, partnerships and support to enhance staff skills, talent and expertise within their own school, throughout the Trust and across the wider education system. Providing quality professional development opportunities is fundamental to the development of highly effective classroom practice, high pupil outcomes and exceptional leadership.
Characteristics of HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS IN OUR TRUST
Our Trust’s School Improvement Strategy identifies how we will work with our individual schools and the collective group of schools within the Trust. It aims to provide clarity around our expectations of what makes a highly effective school in the pursuit of enabling all our children and young people to achieve their very best. We have identified five essential elements and their associated characteristics that describe our Trust wide expectations. These are:
Vision, Culture and Leadership
Across our Trust wide communities, there is/are
• Clarity around our vision and values and high levels of staff commitment to strategies in place to secure the vision.
• Committed, highly visible school leaders, with ambitious goals, supported by a strong leaders at all levels of the school community.
• Effectively communicated, realistic, detailed expectations of ‘how we do things around here’ are understood clearly by all members of our communities which ensures consistent working practices throughout our schools and across the Trust.
• High expectations of all students and staff, and a belief that all children and young people matter equally.
• The understanding that accountability is crucial –every member of staff across our Trust understands their role in helping all children and young people make the maximum progress during their time in our schools.
• Leaders ensure that the professional development of our staff is at the centre of our work to engage, develop and retain talented staff within our schools and across our Trust.
• Attention to detail and thoroughness in the execution of school policies and strategies.
Our curriculum
We share these curriculum principles across our Trust.
• We are ambitious for the children and young people that we serve, providing access to opportunities within the classroom and beyond, so that they can achieve greater progress than they would elsewhere.
• Our curriculums are carefully designed to:
o Be ambitious, academically challenging and rigorous for all children and young people across our schools.
o Offer a wide breadth of academic subjects, alongside the development of essential skills that help our children and young people grow to become confident, independent individuals and excellent communicators.
o Be coherent, well-sequenced and knowledge-rich that provides both breadth and depth.
o Be constantly evolving and to ensure it challenges students to attain academic success, alongside building the global awareness to develop into educated, empowered citizens.
• We want our curriculums to ensure that no student is denied access to powerful knowledge that can support them to be academically successful, happy, confident and enquiring children and young people.
Our Teaching
Teaching is most effective in our schools when:
• Teaching and learning activities are well planned and enthuse, engage and motivate students to learn, and foster their curiosity and enthusiasm about the world.
• Assessment informs teaching so that there is provision for support, repetition and extension of learning for each child/young person.
• Our classrooms are inclusive and welcoming learning environments characterised by our shared commitment to meeting the needs of all our learners.
• We know our classes and the individual children and young people we teach well so we are able to make the right adaptations that support their learning and intervene appropriately to accelerate progress.
• We have consistent learning routines that reflect our high standards and aspirations.
• Our learning environments are ordered, with a purposeful atmosphere, and our students feel safe.
• There are strong links between home and school, and the importance of parental involvement in their children’s learning is recognised, valued and actively encouraged.
Developing effective learning behaviours
Across our schools we recognise that positive learning behaviours and high levels of attendance are essential foundations for success at school and recognise that:
• Securing effective teaching and learning requires positive relationships in order to create an inclusive environment in which children and young people feel seen, understood and safe. We do this at each of our schools by ensuring consistent, shared language around expectations , activity, routines, and strategies that reflects our shared values.
• A proactive, positive and supportive approach to behaviour benefits all pupils and can reduce the potential for challenging behaviour. This includes:
o Encouraging and rewarding positive behaviour
o Explicitly prompting, modelling and reinforcing positive behaviours
o Understanding reasons behind negative pupil behaviour and intervening to support.
Securing continuous school improvement
• Across our Trust we are committed to the development of highly effective leaders, teachers, and support staff and to ensure our educational provision is highly effective for every child and young person regardless of their attainment or needs.
• Accurate self-evaluation by our school leaders is an integral part of each school’s work and leads to the identification of priorities for school improvement. School’s quality assurance processes will assess the impact of these strategies in securing on going improvement. Each of our schools will publish their quality assurance strategy which will include:
o A clearly defined policy for quality assurance as part of the structure of strategic management
o Processes for the design and approval of the curriculum in terms of content, sequencing over time and intended learning outcomes
o Clearly defined standards for classroom pedagogy, behaviour and its management and assessment of learning
o The management of information and data to ensure that analysis and use of data informs progress, intervention and challenge.
• From our regular reviews and reflections, we constantly push for improvements in our work and understand that there are always elements we can improve to enhance our children and young people’s education.
• At Trust level our quality assurance processes comprise of challenge, review, and support in equal measure. As a Trust we will work with our schools to determine the right level and the right support as a result of our impact assessments of their work.
• High quality professional development is at the heart of our improvement practices and will reflect the needs of individuals linked to our appraisal practices, the professional development of teams within school, whole school needs and the Trust.
Determining the right level of support and INTERVENTION IN TRUST SCHOOLS
These five essential elements and their associated characteristics that describe high performing schools in our Trust are used as a benchmark to frame our discussions with school leaders on their school selfevaluation, the improvement priorities they have identified and how the Trust can support them in delivering on their priorities.
Our school improvement strategy has two elements.
A Core school improvement work
B Support and Intervention
A. Core School Improvement work in partnership with our schools
Our core school improvement activity comprises of three elements
(i) Quality Assurance (QA)
Quality assurance visits are primarily to observe, collect and discuss emerging data, holding schools to account for pupil/student outcomes. QA visits will take place termly and will usually be completed by the Director of Education. Quality Assurance visits will follow the same basic pattern for each school in order to ensure a consistent and clear overview of performance and may reflect a Trust wide priority for example the implementation of the Vulnerable Learners Strategy. QA outcome reports will be shared with the Trust Senior Executive Team, the Local Academy Committee and the Educational Standards Committee of the Board.
(ii) School Improvement Activity (SIA)
School Improvement visits involve working with school leaders to understand and review progress, develop and improve practice – for example strategic planning or supporting and/or validating the schools quality assurance processes, reviewing behaviour, attendance practices. The focus for School Improvement visits will be agreed with the HTs of individual schools and findings shared with the Trust Senior Executive Team and the Local Academy Committee. The table below indicates the type and range of school improvement activity that could be undertaken.
Leadership and Management
• Review school context and emerging issues
• Review each school’s Self Evaluation and strategic priorities at identified points in the year
• Quality assure the school’s Pupil Premium Spending Plan and Sports Premium (where relevant) and impact assessment of the plan at identified points
• Take part in the school’s quality assurance activities
• Support wider Trust work on ensuring safeguarding is effective
• Provide identified support for LAC, as and when needed
Quality of Education
• Assess the quality of the curriculum intent, implementation strategy and impact
• Agree Curriculum Model Statements annually
• Review the school’s approaches to the teaching of phonics (where relevant) and reading
• Discuss the school’s tracking/wider assessment information particularly vulnerable pupils including those with SEND and actions the school is taking in enabling them to make effective progress and produce work of high quality as well as strong outcomes in national tests/exams.
• Explore how leaders are ensuring staff become experts in delivering the curriculum and using assessment effectively.
• Review the use of alternative provision
Behaviour & Attitudes
Personal Development
• Review the impact of the school’s work on pupils’ behaviour and attitudes and strategies in place to develop pupil’s motivation and engagement in learning
• Review the school’s current suspensions, exclusions and attendance data (including comparisons to previous terms/years) and strategies to promote attendance and reduce use of suspensions/exclusions
• Discuss the school’s approaches promoting the personal development of pupils including the provision of PSHE, RSE and SMSC
• Review the effectiveness of the school’s approaches to CIEA
(iii) Trust Challenge and Support Meetings (TCSMs)
TCSMs are a Trust mechanism for holding the Head Teacher and Local Academy Committee Chair to account (the challenge) on progress made by the school and an analysis of the impact of the school’s work to date in raising standards and any additional school improvement activity (support) the school would value/needs. The precise focus and frequency of TCSMs will depend on the level of support that the school is receiving from the Trust and the time of the year the meeting takes place. There will be a written outcome of the meeting which will capture the salient points from the discussion and actions. There will also be an explicit reference to the Trust’s judgement on the progress of the school to date as a result of the discussion held at the meeting.
B. Support and Intervention
We have adopted a tiered model that seeks to understand the needs of each of our schools and identify the support that best reflects need. We recognise that schools might be at a different place on their journey to becoming a high performing school. Where schools are demonstrating a high level of success and strong capacity for further improvement, it is important that they are able to operate in conditions that enable them to continue their work and share their expertise across the Trust and the wider education system as a whole. Such schools have much to share for the benefit of others. However, some schools might be in a more challenging position. In this case the Trust will maintain a higher level of involvement in order to secure rapid improvement. Depending on the categorisation of each school – Priority 1, Priority 2, Priority 3 or Priority 4 (highest priority) the appropriate school improvement activity is identified with the Headteacher and their Local Academy Committee Chair.
Determining the right category for each school
Prior to the start of each academic year schools are reviewed against each of the Trust KPIs and a range of wider success measures that are linked to the school’s improvement plan. The initial assessment, including outcomes against key performance indicators, initial analysis of unvalidated data including IDSR (where available), recent findings from external visits, the School Improvement Plan and the school’s own self-evaluation will be developed by the Director of Education and shared with the HT and Local Academy Committee chair at the initial TCSM in September. Using the prioritisation factors the right level of Trust support is identified. The prioritisation criteria are below.
Determining the right level of support and intervention in Trust Schools – school improvement activity (SIA)
Core
Core +
• The school is evaluated as good with strong capacity for improvement (considered to be outstanding by Trust leaders) or outstanding at its most recent inspection (pre Sept 24 or outstanding in at least three areas.
• A school which could be commissioned to deliver support to other schools either for school improvement and / or effective leadership training.
• Led by highly effective system leaders and governors with the capacity to support other schools and undertake outreach work.
• Safeguarding is effective.
• Self-evaluation is robust and accurate.
• Robust school improvement plans are targeted at the right priorities.
• Outcomes consistently above national standards including those of vulnerable groups of pupils.
• Provision for all groups of learners, including disadvantaged and SEND is good or outstanding.
• Teaching at all key stages is highly effective and the school’s curriculum is ambitious and meets the needs of its pupils.
• Judged to be ‘good’ in its last Ofsted inspection (pre Sept 24), or all areas judged ‘good’).
• Maybe judged to be ‘requiring improvement’ in previous inspection (prior to Sept 24) however the school has good capacity within leadership and is highly likely to be judged ‘good’ if inspected or evaluated by external consultants.
• One which has good leadership and local governance and has capacity to support another school.
• Self-evaluation is accurate and school improvement plans are targeted at the right priorities.
• Teaching, including assessment, across key stages/subjects is effective and the school’s curriculum meets the needs of its pupils.
• Performance outcomes are close to national standards and data indicates improvement.
• Vulnerable groups are performing as well as, or better than, other pupils.
• Some initial concerns around one or more - attendance, behaviour, exclusions, complaints, governance, HR or finance may have been identified that require close monitoring.
• Safeguarding is effective.
• School performance data review
• Quality Assurance of SEF X2
• Quality Assurance of SIP X2
• 2 Light touch Trust Challenge and Support meetings (CEO, DoE, HT and CoG)
• Light touch Trust Reviews
• School performance data review
• Quality Assurance of SEF X2
• Quality Assurance of SIP X2
• 2 Trust Challenge and Support meetings (CEO, DoE, HT and CoG)
• Trust Reviews
• External Review
• PP/SP Plan Reviews
Enhanced Support
• Currently judged as ‘good’ but is highly likely to be judged ‘RI’ in one or more areas if inspected or evaluated by external consultants/Ofsted.
• Judged to be ‘requires improvement’ (RI) by Ofsted in its last inspection if before Sept 24.
• One which has been in the past ‘causing concern’ and is showing early signs of improvement but is not yet consistently performing well.
• One where there is new and/or inexperienced/new senior leadership or concerns about leadership including middle leaders. Local governance requires further development and support.
• Self-evaluation indicates priorities but plans may need to be sharpened and pace of improvements clearer.
• One where there is a decline in pupil performance over time.
• Vulnerable groups may not be effectively supported.
• Teaching and learning is inconsistent. Assessment systems and processes are not yet robust and reliable
• Standards do not compare favourably to those nationally.
• One in which safeguarding is effective.
• One where there are concerns around one or more - attendance, behaviour, viability, exclusions, complaints, governance, HR or finance have been identified.
• School performance data review
• Quality Assurance of SEF X3
• Quality Assurance X3
• 5 or 6 Trust Challenge and Support meetings (CEO, DoE, HT and CoG)
• Termly trust monitoring and reviews
• External Reviews (foci to be agreed)
• PP/SP Plan Reviews
• Commissioned audits and targeted action plans
Intensive Support
• School is considered high risk and vulnerable:
o judged as RI for the last two pre – Sept 24 inspections.
o judged as serious weaknesses or special measures or at risk of being judged serious weaknesses or special measures if inspected or evaluated by external consultants.
• Leadership capacity is limited – for example one where there is new and/or inexperienced senior leadership, leadership team vacancies or concerns about leadership.
• Safeguarding is/could be ineffective.
• Teaching does not meet needs of learners and assessment processes are under developed
• One with high persistent absence (PA) and attendance is significantly below the national average.
• Standards do not compare favourably to national for a sustained period.
• Vulnerable groups are not be effectively supported and teaching and learning is inconsistent.
• There are significant concerns around one or more – attendance, behaviour, suspensions, complaints, governance, HR or finance.
• Meets risks 4/5/6 outlined in Trust Risk Register – Education.
• Team around the School in place
• Monthly Progress Review meetings (replacing TCSMs)
• Quality Assurance of SEF X3
• QA of Rapid Improvement Plan X6
• Termly Trust monitoring activity and reviews
• External Reviews (foci to be agreed)
• PP/SP Plan Reviews
• Commissioned audits and targeted action plans
