School Improvement Team

What does School Improvement offer?

The key responsibility for the service is to ensure that all children in Walsall have access to high quality educational provision.

This is achieved through individual support for schools and settings, the delivery of relevant training, and the maintenance of the LA’s statutory duties.

The aims of the Service

• Raise standards in all maintained nursery, primary, special and secondary schools, and speed up the progress pupils make so that their achievement at matches or exceeds national figures
• Make sure that the interventions and support provided for maintained nursery, primary, special and secondary schools enable all schools to provide and then maintain a good or better standard of education
• Use assessment information and other performance indicators to identify those schools at greatest risk of decline, and exercise the appropriate LA powers of intervention
• To support/challenge schools to close the achievement gaps between disadvantaged pupils and others, and improve the achievement of pupils who have special educational needs or disability so they make at least as much progress as other pupils 
• To make sure that the resources and personnel used to support and challenge schools are targeted to those where there is greatest need

What will we provide?

• Many schools at some time need external support to ensure they are able to meet the needs and demands of their children, young people and communities
• Walsall Council works with ‘Challenging Education’ to deliver its school improvement offer to its maintained schools. The challenge and support offered is in proportion to a settings need
• Support for all schools, but particularly schools causing concern, is designed to empower schools to improve by their own efforts rather than depending on external providers

Partnership Working with Walsall Schools and Clusters

• Challenging Education work within our school clusters to broker schools to school support and to share and exhibit good practice across those networks
• Our school improvement partners will also ‘pair up’ schools when working on borough wide project such as Raising Attainment of Disadvantaged Young people (RADY)

More information

Please contact Nick Perks – Quality Assurance Teams Manager. nick.perks@walsall.gov.uk