Improvement Planning

Key Deliverable: You need to create an Improvement Plan for your PEF Project, and submit it to your Senior Education Officer.

A key part of the process will be determining the outcome you wish to see your project delivering, and defining the evidence that will prove the success of your project.

To assist in this process, you'll need to use the Improvement Planning document. You can find a link to the document here.

This page will walk you through each step of completing the Improvement Planning document.

Even if you have multiple projects you are wishing to deliver, you only need to complete one Improvement Plan document.

Once completed, the Improvement Plan will need to be shared with the central Education team.

1. Delivery Plan action

The Education, Learning & Attainment Delivery Plan lists 15 actions.

These are:

Deliver Year 3 of the Scottish Raising Attainment Challenge
Deliver the Early Year’s agenda
Deliver the authority’s duties in relation to GIRFEC
Develop literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing within the curriculum
Implement broad-ranging school improvement to raise attainment and achievement
Develop effective leadership to drive improvement
Raise teacher professionalism in literacy, numeracy and aspects of Health & Wellbeing
Design and implement WDC’s strategy for assessment in schools
Develop the Parental Involvement Strategy in all sectors
Develop the use of performance information to support school improvement
Deliver our regenerating learning programme
Design and deliver strategies for succession planning and recruitment
Develop the learning workforce capacity across all sectors
Deliver the ‘Scotland’s’ young workforce programme
Implement proposed changes to school governance arrangements

Your Improvement Plan item will fit underneath one of these 15 actions. Simply choose the one that is the best fit.

2. Focus Area

This is best defined as the broad area that your improvement plan item addresses.

For example, if you have chosen 'Delivery Plan action 4: Develop literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing within the curriculum', your focus area may be 'numeracy', or 'numeracy at second level'.

The focus area exists as a broad audit tool, to help you see at a glance the broad areas your Improvement Plan is covering.

3. SMART Action

The SMART Action defines the outcome you wish to see delivered.

Key to this are two things:

a) imagine you have delivered your project. What does success look like?

For example, your project could be to move all of your paper based maths resources to ourcloud. Can you describe what this will look like once it has been achieved?

b) Your action needs to be SMART.

Specific:
Measurable:
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound

For example, a SMART target could be: By June 2018, all paper based maths resources for P4 - P7 will be converted to Google Forms and Docs in ourcloud, and categorised according to subject, level and approximate stage.

In the example above, the action is specific ('paper based maths resources' & 'P4 - P7'), it is measurable ('all paper based' & 'categorised according to subject, level and approximate stage'), it is achievable (there is plenty of time built in to achieve this, and it only covers the upper school), it is realistic (it is not looking to move all the school resources online), and it is time-bound (by June 2018).

4. NIF Driver

Your action should be directly attributable to one of the 6 drivers from the National Improvement Framework.

These are:

School leadership
Teacher professionalism
Parental engagement
Assessment of children’s progress
School improvement
Performance information

Things are often not so straightforward though. If you feel your action contributes to more than one driver from the NIF, then simply select the one that you feel is most related.

For example, you may be delivering a project that is working with parents to help understand and support assessment taking place in school. Think about your project - is the outcome more focused on parents than assessment? If so, then 'parental engagement' may be the best fit.

5. HGIOS?4 Quality Indicator

Your action should be directly attributable to one of the 15 Quality Indicators from 'How Good is Our School? 4'.

These are:

1.1 - Self-evaluation for self-improvement
1.2 - Leadership of learning
1.3 - Leadership of change
1.4 - Leadership and management of staff
1.5 - Management of resources to promote equity
2.1 - Safeguarding and child protection
2.2 - Curriculum
2.3 - Learning, teaching and assessment
2.4 - Personalised support
2.5 - Family learning
2.6 - Transitions
2.7 - Partnerships
3.1 - Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion
3.2 - Raising attainment and achievement
3.3 - Increasing creativity and employability

Things are often not so straightforward though. If you feel your action contributes to more than one QI from HGIOS?4, then simply select the one that you feel is most related.

For example, you may be delivering a project that is raising attainment through partnership working. Think about your project - is the outcome more focused on partnership than attainment? If so, then '2.7 - Partnerships' may be the best fit.

6. Responsibility

This defines who will be held responsible for the delivery of the project.

This can either be a named individual, or a specified group.

There may be a number of people working in the project, but who is the person who has overall responsibility for the delivery of the outcome? Is it one individual, or is it a working group? Is the chair of the working group responsible, or do they report on behalf of the group to a higher board?

For example, the DHT has been tasked with leading a working group looking at IDL. They report on the progress of this group to the SLT. In this case, the DHT is the responsible individual.

In another example, a group of Head Teachers have formed a working group with terms of reference within the Area Learning Community. The progress of the working group is reported at the Area Learning Community. In this case, the working group is the responsible group.

7. Timescales

This defines key points in the delivery of your action.

An end point to the action should be identified. This will be the point that you can see in the future when the action will have been delivered, and you are able to measure the success of the project.

Milestones may be identified along the way. A milestone is a key point in the delivery of your project.

For example, your project to relocate teaching areas in the school may have two distinct phases. Phase one may be identified by the relocation of Primary One to their new room, with phase two being completed on the moving of Primary Two to their new location. In this example, milestone 1 could be 'Primary One relocated', with milestone 2 being 'Primary Two relocated'.

8. Resources

A key section of your Improvement Plan, you need to consider a number of aspects to include here:

Human Resources
Procurement
- Fabric/Physical Resources
- Learning & Teaching Resources
Partnerships

9. PEF

Does your project relate to the Pupil Equity Fund? If so, simply check this box to identify it in your Improvement Plan.

Any projects you consider delivering relating to the Pupil Equity Fund will be subject to external scrutiny.

For any project that you are looking to spend Equity Funding on, you'll need to complete a 'Project Plan' and commit to the cycle of reporting for the management of the project.

10. Measure(s) of Success

This section simply answers the 'how will you know your action has been successful?' question.

Look ahead to when you have delivered your action(s). How will you be able to demonstrate success? For this reason, many projects begin with a baseline assessment or stakeholder survey. This provides the evidence required to show the state 'prior' to your intervention. Concluding your action with another assessment or survey will provide the evidence required to show the state 'post' intervention. The difference simply put is your measure of success.

For example, your action may focus on improving the performance of Primary 5 pupils in fractions, decimals and percentages. From your attainment profile, your baseline GL assessment shows the performance of the class prior to the intervention, and you conduct a further assessment following your intervention. You aim to show a 5% improvement over time for this cohort of children.

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