Coronavirus: how to set your school improvement plan (SIP)

Last reviewed on 7 May 2020
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 37193

You still need to set the strategic aims in your school’s SIP for the year ahead. If you’re the chair, find out how coronavirus may (and may not!) affect this, what you should bear in mind, and what you can expect from senior leaders.

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Contents

  1. Follow your normal process
  2. Review the past academic year 
  3. Evidence you can expect 
  4. Set high-level objectives for the new SIP
  5. Interrogate the draft SIP: questions to ask senior leaders
  6. Monitor the SIP

Follow your normal process

Discuss the school improvement plan (SIP) and set objectives as you would normally. 

The main difference will be that you'll do this over a course of virtual meetings.

To recap, the process tends to be:

  • Governors and senior leaders meet to review the past academic year and determine key areas for school improvement
  • Governors set high-level objectives for the SIP
  • The headteacher and senior leaders draft the SIP and present it to the governing board
  • Governors interrogate the SIP
  • Governors approve the SIP (the full governing board should do this)
  • Governors monitor the SIP during the year

Your board might do things differently – for example, you may have committees or working parties which take care of some of the steps. However you do it, remind your governors how the process will work.

Here's the process above in more detail, and how coronavirus might affect things:

During

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