Developing Capacity for Sustained Improvement

Developing Capacity for Sustained Improvement focuses on strategic thinking and capacity building for sustained improvement for leadership teams. It provides a forum for working with peers individually or in teams to enable planning for long term and sustained development and improvement. DCSI has been a huge success - teams from a range of schools in the South West have been able to contribute significantly to raising the standards in their school as a result of their participation. Feedback has been very positive:

Ashley Down Junior School: "Time for thinking/discussion with other schools and SLT. The focus on developing a plan for action with a leadership capacity link - impact for school development. Thanks very much indeed - a high quality piece of professional development for me and the leadership team - I know this will make a difference to our school."

Northleaze Primary: "Time to reflect on where we are now and where we need to go next. We needed the facilitator to guide our thoughts and give direction. Most interesting part was Session 4 about people management and this provoked much interesting discussion. Thank you for an excellent two days."

Who is DCSI for?

The programme is aimed at all leaders in schools from a range of professional backgrounds, with significant middle or senior management experience.

How will I benefit?

You will benefit by:

• Creating time to reflect
• Gaining confidence to try things out in school
• Sustaining your learning as a leader within your school
• Being challenged and stretched as a leader to adopt better habits and develop relationships
• Interacting with and learning from specialists in a range of fields

How will this benefit my school?

The programme has been a powerful lever for change in the pilot schools and has helped to generate substantial improvement. Examples of changes in participating schools include:

• Improved development planning with a longer-term perspective, more coherence and a greater sense of control over the agenda for change
• A more determined and systematic focus on learning
• A preparedness to be more radical in securing the next stage of improvement and the confidence to do some things differently
• Improved effectiveness of the senior leadership team and their relationship with middle leaders
• Added value from working together in schools in various types of partnership, eg LIG collaboratives, networked learning communities
• An opportunity to celebrate the successes of whole-school development, to plan and to implement the next stage of development

What will this programme cover?

The programme is structured over 12 to 18 months and has three stages:

• Two-day residential workshop for thinking and planning, typically with four or five other leadership teams
• 12 to 18 months for implementation, using the network from the residential workshop and/or existing networks of schools for further collaborative learning. The programme includes one-and-a-half days consultancy during stage two, tailored according to the key development issues
• One-day review event to celebrate progress and plan the next stage of development.

The programme involves pre-workshop activities, including a survey of the current capacity for sustained improvement and some background reading. The first part of the workshop stimulates thinking around five key components of the capacity building model:

• Futures - what might our school be like in five, ten or more years time?
• Foundations - are the essential management activities of our school robust?
• The learning school - is our main focus learning for both pupils and adults?
• Relationships and teams - have we spent sufficient time on the processes of change and the quality of relationships?
• Leadership - is it shared effectively throughout our schools and are we as a team leading learning and change?

Eligibility:

This programme is available to:

• Senior leadership teams (SLTs) from primary, middle, secondary and special schools and pupil referral units
• SLTs in partnerships, collaboratives and related groupings
• SLTs working with middle leaders
• Leadership teams of the partnerships themselves, eg networked learning communities and LIG collaboratives