Introduction

The Aspire School Improvement Model is in place to ensure that all Aspire academies are working together to improve outcomes for children. Central to the model is ensuring appropriate levels of

• monitoring and challenge
• support and system leadership
• intervention (where needed)

Our School Improvement Model relies on a strong evidence base based primarily on an academy self-audit tool completed in the summer term and on regular analysis and reviews. It therefore contains both proactive and reactive elements to effectively support the needs of our individual partner academies.

As reflected in our Scheme of Delegation, we remain committed to the principle of ‘earned autonomy’. Partner academies who are successfully delivering positive outcomes for children - such that overall performance would be judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in Ofsted terms, we will adopt a ‘light touch’ approach. Those successful academies, however, retain the right within our model to request support in specific areas, so that, although required meetings and data submissions will be minimal, requests from the academy could lead to a number of additional visits or reviews throughout the year to further develop their practice.

Our grading of each academy will not be based solely on the academy’s last Ofsted inspection, which, in some cases, could be many years ago. At the end of each academic year, a grading will be decided by the CEO – in discussion with the headteacher and subject to confirmation by the Board – which will then determine the level of support to be applied in the new academic year. This principle of the Board having the right to grade an academy differently to its last Ofsted inspection is established in our Scheme of Delegation as follows:

Key:
Category: 1 = Good/outstanding;  2 = Requires improvement;  3 = Inadequate/sponsored These may be changed for individual academies by the MAT Board Category 3 LGB may have no or minimal local representation

School Improvement – Completing the Jigsaw

In terms of piecing together the ‘jigsaw’ of school improvement, we believe that the following areas are of critical importance. In the most successful (category 1) academies, leaders have the capacity to address these areas with minimal external support or intervention; in category 2 or 3 academies, external input will be required to ensure that these areas are being considered and addressed.

Our full School Improvement Model is described in the following document which details:

• The annual level of support for our academies including a termly activity summary
• Our School Improvement Team
• Our school improvement review strategy
• The additional support provided for academies new to Aspire