Contact: John Clarke, telephone: 01962 846464, email: [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 The County Council has taken a leading role in a national trial exploring new relationships with secondary schools. The DfES is intending that the new relationship will be rolled-out across the country in three phases, beginning in September 2005. As a trial authority Hampshire has been invited to join the first phase.

1.2 This work supports corporate aims. The new relationship is intended to lead to school improvement and thus to maximising the life opportunities of people in Hampshire through better educational achievement, in its widest sense. This, among other outcomes, contributes to economic prosperity within the county.

2 Background

2.1 A report to the PRC in October 2004 set the context for the new relationship trial. The Education Department invited ten secondary schools to be part of the programme, a cross section of schools in the county, and their headteachers have been working together, locally and nationally, with the County Education Officer and his deputy, to develop the various strands of the new relationship.

2.2 There are four inter-related elements to this trial - the School Profile, Self Evaluation, the Single Conversation and the School Improvement Partner.

2.3 The School Profile will replace the Annual Governors' Report to Parents. It will be produced annually and will contain some common data on each school, provided by the DfES, and further text written by the school to describe its broader work. There have been experiments with various models and a final version is now available.

2.4 Increasingly, a thorough and rigorous approach to self evaluation will be required in all schools. Extensive work has been undertaken with secondary schools in the county to prepare them for this new regime. Ofsted has produced a new Self Evaluation Form and this will be the core document on which inspection is based in the future and it will also be the subject of an annual discussion between each school and its School Improvement Partner. The two most important developments have been the approach taken to gathering evidence for self evaluation, where much more importance is placed on the views of key stakeholders, especially pupils, and the way in which school self evaluation is now aligned with the five outcomes of the Children Act.

2.5 The concept of the Single Conversation requires explanation. It is not `single' in the sense that there will only be one conversation: there will be a series throughout the school year. It is `single' in the sense that the external person who has the discussions with each school will carry into the school the issues and concerns of a range of organisations - the Children's Services Authority, for issues about school standards and provision, and issues around vulnerable children, in the context of the Children Act; the Local Learning and Skills Council, for 14-19 and post 16 issues; and the DfES, for issues relating to targets and the national strategies. The point of the Single Conversation is to streamline these contacts and make sure that schools have one person who can speak authoritatively on behalf of all these organisations. This has been challenging within the trial and further work will be needed as time goes on through the roll-out.

2.6 The person who carries all these messages into schools is the School Improvement Partner (SIP). The SIP has to challenge and support the schools, rigorously and sensitively, and in such a way as to add value and make a difference to the lives of pupils and students. On-going dialogue with the headteacher, senior team and governors is essential to achieve this. There will be an annual written report from the SIP to the governing body and a face-to-face meeting and the SIP will, generally, also act as the external adviser in the process of the performance review of the headteacher.

2.7 SIPs will spend two days a year with leading schools, five days a year for most schools and six days with weaker schools. The permanent staff of the LEA will continue to have responsibility for intervening where needed in order to ensure that weaker schools improve and the time taken to do that will be additional to that spent by SIPs. Although the Code of Practice governing LEA/School relations has not been re-written, the new relationship will sweep it away and contact between the LEA and its schools will be far more frequent than has been the case in the last five years.

2.8 There is now clarity about the background and experience needed to fulfil the role of SIP. About 75% of SIPs across the country will be serving or recently retired secondary headteachers. Most of the remainder will be people who are employed as permanent staff in the school improvement teams of local authorities. Permanent staff are able to act as the SIP to more schools than serving headteachers and it is likely, then, that about half the schools will have a SIP who is on the permanent staff and about half will have a SIP who is a headteacher.

2.9 Although each will have a relationship to the DfES through a regional structure, every SIP will be the direct employee of the County Council for the time they undertake this work and be subject to the normal performance management arrangements, selected by, and accountable to, the Director of Children's Services. In an important sense, then, SIPs are to be seen as full members of the county's school improvement team, with access to the same support structures as all the other staff, the same information systems, data sets and reporting mechanisms, and their work will be determined by the same protocols that govern everyone else. The County Council's ability to carry the expectations of the Hampshire community into schools in search of the five outcomes of the Children Act should be strengthened, not weakened, by the new relationship.

2.10 All SIPs will have to be accredited by the DfES following a period of training. Training and accreditation during the trial was hurried and inadequate and some people who were very well able to undertake the role did not receive accreditation. A fundamental review was undertaken and the new package looks more sensible. References will be written on potential SIPs and one of these must be from the local authority; all the initial training and assessment will be on-line and units can be retaken; people will only be encouraged to put themselves forward for the final assessment when they are ready.

3 Hampshire's approach to the roll-out

3.1 Hampshire's participation in the roll-out could be postponed until January 2006 or Easter 2006, but that would mean missing important opportunities. The county has to be involved at some stage and to delay would be to lose the momentum already gathered through membership of the trial and to lose the powerful position already established in helping to steer further national developments. It is proposed, then, to join the full roll-out in September 2005 and involve all Hampshire maintained secondary schools in the new relationship.

3.2 It is further proposed that, as far as possible, SIPs are recruited to work in Hampshire, from Hampshire - from secondary headteachers and from existing members of the school improvement team. There are three main reasons for this.

3.3 The evidence of the trial suggests it is difficult to manage this process if SIPs are not part of the Hampshire community. People from elsewhere, whatever their strengths, find it very difficult to keep abreast of issues in Hampshire: the local approach to the Key Stage 3 Strategy, for example; pupils with SEN and other vulnerable groups; and the approach to partnership through the headteacher conference arrangements. Given the number of schools SIPs from elsewhere might be working with - two or three in most cases - it takes too much time to make sure they are abreast of local approaches and priorities. The excellent rating for education is partly based on the success of the county in school achievement and school improvement and to disturb that would be risky.

3.4 As important is the opportunity the new relationship provides for building further capacity in the county and for succession planning. The evidence of the trial is that the SIPs learn as much as the schools they are working with. The opportunity for serving headteachers to work alongside colleagues in other schools, tackling real issues at the very highest level of professional thinking, is an opportunity that should be seized, for the benefits it can bring to both parties and for the learning opportunities given to deputy headteachers and assistant headteachers. The County Education Officer looks forward to a time when all headteachers will have a chance to become a SIP as an important part of their own development and refreshment, and that of other leaders and managers in their schools.

3.5 Thirdly, it will be possible to establish, through the new relationship, an integrated approach to school improvement where full time, permanent staff of the school improvement service work alongside Hampshire headteachers in pursuit of common goals - the goals of the Hampshire community -- where the routines and protocols are the same and well understood; where the different skills and experiences are appreciated and valued; and where people can be trained together. Through the new relationship trial and other initiatives begun about the same time - particularly a project funded by the National College for School Leadership where a group of 10 secondary headteachers has been working intensively with each other and in each others' schools - it is clear that there is, in Hampshire, the capacity and the culture to take this working together much further in the interests of Hampshire children. This is the great opportunity provided by the roll-out of the new relationship.

3.6 The scheme depends on the willingness of Hampshire's secondary headteachers to become involved with it and on the willingness of governors to release them for the time needed, about 20 days a year. About 15 will need to become accredited if this is to work properly, along with about six people from the full-time staff of the school improvement team. If it proves impossible to attract the headteachers, in the first year, some SIPs will have to be recruited from outside the county.

4 Legal implications

4.1 The impact of the new relationship, and the number of days allocated through it to the work that School Improvement Partners will undertake with most schools effectively overturns the statutory Code of Practice governing LEA/School relations. This sought to keep the level of visiting to effective schools to a minimum.

5 Financial implications

5.1 The County Council has followed the Code of Practice, to date, and its pattern of visiting to more effective schools means that the roll-out of the new relationship will cost more than what is currently done. The DfES has indicated that it intends to allocate extra resources to councils to support the new relationship but details are, as yet, unclear.

5.2 The budget for school improvement for 2005-2006 is set and the team will continue to carry out the activities set out and agreed by Members, through the Education Development Plan. 2005-2006 is the last year of that plan. It will be replaced by the Children and Young People's Plan and, when that is produced, account will be taken of the costs of the new relationship and these will be balanced against the costs of the remaining school improvement programme.

5.3 From September 2005 the roll-out will be funded through the HIAS business unit using the additional resource from DfES.

6 Personnel implications

6.1 None. Since the permanent staff of the school improvement team can train and work as School Improvement Partners, there is no threat to the core school improvement team.

7 Impact assessment

7.1 Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact has been identified.

8 Crime Prevention Issues

8.1 Not applicable

9 Views of the Local County Councillor

9.1 Not applicable

Recommendation

1. That the New Relationship with Schools is implemented for all secondary schools in Hampshire from September 2005 and the approach set out in this report be endorsed.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

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