HOW TO CRAFT AN EFFECTIVE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN (SIP)

The primary purpose of any school is to prepare every learner to read, write, and calculate. And so, all schools are expected to make every learner succeed academically. To do this, schools need a good plan that defines its targeted work to raise achievement for all of its learners.

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLANNING PROCESS

A process that schools can use to set goals for improvement, and make decisions about how and when these goals will be achieved is school improvement planning. When schools focus on specific goals and strategies for change, a school’s school improvement plan (SIP) will lead to a lasting improvement in learner achievement levels.

Literature suggests that as many as two thirds of the improvement plans developed by schools do not yield the intended results, amongst other things, because …

• The plans are not specific and detailed enough. It is unclear what exactly was intended to occur.
• The plans are not results-oriented. It is unclear what would happen as a result of each activity/strategy.
• The plans are not monitored. It is unclear who would do what and when to implement the plan.

Schools must produce an annual SIP as required, in terms of the national Policy on Whole School Evaluation (WSE). By the end of the 2017 academic year, all schools were expected to have produced a SIP for implementation in the 2018 academic year.

IS YOUR SIP ACTIONABLE? Four questions posed below may be used to ascertain how close your school is to an ideal SIP—one that is actionable and which breaks down year‐long goals into achievable quarterly, weekly, and even daily objectives, allocating time, resources, and actions to achieve those goals.

LESSONS FROM HIGH PERFORMING SCHOOLS: High performing schools have some useful insights about how school improvement planning is initiated to set out the changes a school needs to make to improve the level of learner achievement, and how and when these changes will be made.

ELEMENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE SIP IN HIGH PERFORMING SCHOOLS

In their SIPs, high performing schools follow four distinct but related steps to promote focus on continuous school improvement. These steps are listed and briefly discussed below:

• Establish problem areas
• Set goals and performance targets
• Develop and implement strategies or a plan of action
• Monitor progress in achieving set goals

STEP 1: ESTABLISH PROBLEM AREAS

High performing schools clarify problem areas to increase the chances that the strategies that the school selects will produce the desired results.

At this stage of the school improvement planning process, schools need to address the following question:

How well are we doing?

In these schools, addressing this question precedes any school improvement planning process and involves the following:

Conduct needs assessment of their current practices and results (involving all relevant stakeholders) in order to:

• know their starting point; and
• gather information about the school and its learners systematically so that they can determine what needs to be improved in their school.

Analyse the collected information to establish problem areas and to accurately gauge their strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement

Prioritise the needs as indicated by the analysed information

STEP 2: SET GOALS AND PERFORMANCE TARGETS

At this stage of the school improvement planning process, schools need to address the following question:

How well should we be doing?

After conducting needs assessment and have a clear sense of where they are currently, schools that work begin to …

• Define challenging but feasible or achievable goals which focus everyone’s attention on the most important levers and indicators of progress
• Set goals and performance targets to indicate the level at which the school would like to be performing on a given goal by a given time

STEP 3: DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT AN IMPROVEMENT PLAN

As a third step in the school improvement planning process, schools that work develop and implement strategies or a plan of action to help them towards achieving their goals in each of the priority areas.

At this point in the school improvement planning process, schools need to address the following question:

What will we do to achieve our goals?

In high-performing schools, mapping out strategies for progressing to where they want to be includes …

• Developing strategies or actions the school will take to raise learner achievement for all of its learners
• Identifying effective strategies to help the school to work towards achieving its goals in each of their priority areas
• Prioritising or limiting strategies (to be implemented at a time) that can yield better results, faster
• Establishing time lines, responsibilities and milestones for monitoring progress over time
• Communicating the plan and expectations for what role each staff member plays in the implementation of the school improvement strategies
• Implementing improvement strategies as planned

STEP 4: MONITOR PROGRESS IN ACHIEVING SET GOALS AND TARGETS

During this final stage of the school improvement planning process a school needs to address the following question:

Are we there yet?

Schools that work understand that what gets monitored gets done and so they assess whether they are on target to meet their achievement goals. Specifically, these schools…

Gather information as the improvement strategies are implemented and compare it to the same sources of information gathered to conduct needs assessment. This information is collected regularly to:

• indicate whether the school is making sufficient progress toward its end goals.
• track the progress of each learner toward the attainment of proficiency in different subjects.

Monitor progress by:

• building into the SIP a series of checkpoints for formal evaluations of the plan in progress
• developing milestones to evaluate if learners are progressing satisfactorily toward meeting the set targets
• building in opportunities for review through regular (at least monthly) status updates

Act on needed changes if the rate of progress does not indicate that the school is on track to hit is set target. This includes:

• assessing, reflecting and adjusting practice based on data indicating what is working to ensure that goals are met, and revising implementation strategies based on the same kinds of information as that used to determine the original goals, focuses, strategies and time lines