The Management of Resources to Promote Equity

HGIOS 4

Looking inwards The only way to effectively deploy resource is to first understand the varied needs across the school and build a school profile of need. To build a profile of the needs of your community you will need to: Understand the trends in performance of individual learners and groups Understand whole school trends and how these relate to areas for school improvement

Using whole school data Use value added data to identify broad themes. What is the school good at and what could be improved? Can you identify what has impacted on these trends? Have you changed approaches, the pace, the resource? Look at whole school tracking and monitoring data. Again, identify areas of strength and areas for improvement? If there are classes/departments who are bucking trends try to establish what they are doing so that this learning can be shared across the school. Are there any trends from quality assurance processes and have you shared best practice or modified policy to reflect this best practice?

Looking inwards at individuals and groups What does value added tell you about the progress of individuals? Why has there been a rising/lowering trend for some? Look at groups of learners e.g. LAC, boys/girls, ASN. How are these groups performing and are there commonalities? Look at target setting and tracking information. Are there trends that can be explored to understand what is working well and what needs to be improved? Has the agreed structure and balance of the curriculum been effective or is there a need to change? Discuss the needs of classes with key staff and agree where needs can be met through careful differentiation and where they may be a need for targeted support. Be mindful of the resource you have available, is it sometimes a case of building capacity to deliver effective universal support? Do staff require support in effectively differentiating?

Pulling it together to build a school need profile Start to identify groups of learners in need of additional support. Some will be already known to you but some may require a short term intervention based on the data Think about how the children could be supported to make best use of resource e.g. could you group children with similar needs? Could support staff be used to reinforce areas introduced by the teacher/SFL staff? Consider broad outcomes for each group – who is best placed to support and how is this intervention best delivered? Think about the needs of staff across the school and consider the 5 roles of SfL? Is there a need to protect time to fulfil these 5 roles and build capacity? Could your Educational Psychologist provide some support to meet some of the needs universally? Are there areas of the curriculum that will be a particular focus? Do you need to protect time to develop these areas?

Matching needs to your resource allocation Establish who is available to support and list the support staff and any members of staff delivering SfL from within the school Think about support from partners and ASG Partnerships. Could there be a role for Community Learning, Adventure Aberdeen, a therapist or specialist from across the Service? Would purchasing of a particular resource be beneficial? What level of support will the individual groups need to be successful? What will the role of the class teacher be? What will the role of the PSA/SfL/partner be? How will you ensure that all work is complementary? Is there a need to build capacity so that staff can confidently work in partnership? Start to work up timetables of support for a period of time. Be mindful that you may want to leave an element of flexibility to allow you to respond to changes. This block approach will allow you to consider an exit strategy for children who have responded positively You will want to use the particular skills of key staff but also consider how you will build capacity in others How will you measure the impact of interventions? This measurement will help you ascertain what to do more of or less of

Looking outwards Are other schools using effective approaches and how could you learn from them? Is it possible to release staff to shadow colleagues in other settings? The Inclusion Team can direct you to excellent practice in the city.

Getting effective whole school plans in place Make use of the staged intervention framework to identify the barriers to learning, do you need any particular assessment to further inform approaches? Agree the intended outcomes and how you will know that work is effective. You need to be able to measure the impact of approaches at the end of the block of work as this will allow you to reallocate resource based on needs Who will monitor the effectiveness of approaches and how will this inform changes in your approach? If there is evidence that approaches in one curricular areas are not effective, how will you work across the school to improve things?

Look forwards - Consider your capacity for improvement and next steps

Will your use of resource help to deliver on the totality of the curriculum?

What guidance do we have from Education Scotland?