Working with Schools
A Partnership Approach
School engagement in the Aimhigher programme is a key priority for the funders. The targeting process for Aimhigher has the potential to complement the personalisation of the curriculum in line with the principles of Every Child Matters.
Schools can use Aimhigher partnerships to enrich the curriculum, provide support for learners and make HE more accessible by providing ongoing, sequential interventions as part of the Higher Education Progression Framework.
Monitoring Impact
Area Partnership Committees devolve Aimhigher funds to schools in non-ring fenced allocations and also provide a variety of other interventions ‘in kind’.
Partnerships are continuing to devise methods for monitoring the impact of the Aimhigher resource upon the target cohort in schools. One way of assessing this is to look at the extent to which Aimhigher features in school improvement plans or in the dialogue between schools and their School Improvement Partners (SIPs).
Information about the Aimhigher programme and how it can help to address school priorities has been provided for inclusion on the SIPs website and is available by clicking on the link below:
SIPs website text (March 08)
About SIPs
A SIP provides challenge and support to a school (working primarily with the head teacher but also with governors), helping to agree priorities and targets to improve pupil attainment, attendance and behaviour, and then broker support if needed. SIPs’ work is underpinned by analyses of pupil attainment data and by the school’s self-evaluation.
SIPs are accredited by the National College for School Leadership, following online assessment and participation in a two-day residential development and assessment event. SIPs are drawn from local authority advisers and serving and ex-head teachers. There is a strong emphasis on ensuring that a significant proportion of SIPs are serving or ex heads. The local authority must use its best endeavours to ensure that three out of four SIPs are current or former secondary school head teachers, or that three out of four of its secondary schools have SIPs who are current or former secondary school head teachers.
Local authorities select SIPs, appoint them to schools and are responsible for their performance management. SIPs are employed or engaged by local authorities and each SIP works within the context and priorities of the local authority, devoting on average five days to each school.
Local authority management of the SIP programme is quality assured and backed up by a national infrastructure (which includes a SIP co-ordinator for each region) and SIP CPD provided by the National Strategies contractor (Capita SCS). The SIP programme therefore provides for local flexibility within a national standard and framework.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) provides a financial contribution to local authorities for introducing and running the SIP programme. This can include the cost to a school of the time a serving head spends being a SIP. Funding comes with conditions of grant, which include a requirement to appoint a certain proportion of serving or former head teacher SIPs, plus a range of administrative requirements for running the programme.
