The School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) is a collaborative school improvement strategy that promotes new ways of working across classroom, schools and local authorities to tackle educational inequality. Data and collaborative enquiry are used to innovate, test and refine new approaches to tackle the attainment gap. The programme aligns with and reinforces a number of key educational policies and programmes including Curriculum for Excellence, Teaching Scotland’s Future, the SCEL Fellowship Programme and Raising Attainment for All. All of these are underpinned by the same key concepts of co-production, professional learning and enquiry.
The School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) is a solution-focused approach to raising attainment with a focus on innovation to tackle educational inequality. It draws on the wealth of international educational research and practice demonstrating that the most effective school improvements are locally owned and led by teachers and school leaders working in partnership and collaboration with like-minded professionals. The partnerships aim to develop a shared commitment to improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people. Research evidence indicates that well supported partnerships can lead to significant and sustained improvement, including raised attainment.
In the spirit of action research, the programme aims to encourage staff to learn from each other, experiment with their practice and monitor and evaluate change. School Improvement Partnerships take forward action research and involve a process of collaborative enquiry thereby creating leadership and professional learning opportunities.
The core principles of the SIPP are:
- Partnership working across schools and local authorities with a focus on exploring specific issues relating to educational inequity.
- The use of action research and evidence to identify key challenges, experiment with innovative practices and monitor developments.
- The creation of leadership opportunities and professional learning of staff at all levels.
- A commitment to reciprocity and mutual benefit to all involved.
- The development of arrangements to support long-term collaboration and new approaches to capacity building.
- Explicit links to strategic improvement planning in schools and local authorities.
- The involvement of a diverse range of partners.
The key features of effective of the SIPs are:
- Targeting achievement of a small key group of learners.
- Understanding the importance of context and local ownership.
- Using evidence to inform practice.
- Teachers leading change through professional enquiry research.
- Learning from similarity and diversity.
- Moving practice and expertise around the partnership.
- Building relationships and networks across the cluster and authority.
