Schools - impact of Regional Improvement Collaboratives on pupils and practitioners: review

Part 1: Introduction

About this Review and Report

On 22^nd June 2023, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills announced that there would be a rapid Review of the impact that Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs) have had on supporting pupils and practitioners. This review was commissioned as part of the education reform programme, to further inform decisions on roles, responsibilities and relationships across the system in the delivery of educational improvement support.

To support the education reform programme and timeline, it was decided that this would be a ‘rapid review’ to deliver headline findings in October 2023. This review has therefore been undertaken by the Scottish Government, liaising with RICs, COSLA and Education Scotland. A review co-ordination group, comprising representation from Scottish Government, COSLA, ADES, Education Scotland and RICs was established to support the delivery of this review.

This report provides a summary of the detailed evidence captured in this review. This includes:

• a selection of evidence, information and examples from the RIC Evidence Returns, to support the review key themes and conclusions
• a summary of key themes identified in the review interviews (with RIC Leads, Managers and Workstream/Programme officers) and focus group sessions (with school leaders, practitioners and other partners).

Context

About the Regional Improvement Collaboratives

In September 2017, Scottish Ministers and COSLA Leaders agreed to establish six RIC areas across Scotland, to strengthen collaborative working in the delivery of educational improvement support to children, young people and practitioners. Through the design and delivery of regional improvement plans, supported by collaborative networks, robust evaluation and feedback, RICs were established to:

• strengthen and focus collaborative improvement to ensure that educational improvement support is responsive to local, regional and national needs.
• reduce unnecessary duplication and ensure coherence between authorities and Education Scotland in the provision of professional learning, leadership support and guidance to schools, ELC settings and practitioners.
• provide a practical framework and capacity for the sharing of innovation and best practice between authorities, schools and practitioners.

The RICs involve between three and eight local authorities and each of Scotland’s 32 authorities is a member of a RIC. The six RICs and their member authorities are:

• the Forth Valley and West Lothian Regional Improvement Collaborative - Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Stirling, and West Lothian Councils.
• the Northern Alliance - Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Highland, Moray, Orkney, and Shetland Islands Councils.
• the South East Improvement Collaborative – City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Fife, Midlothian, and Scottish Borders Councils.
• the South West Educational Improvement Collaborative - East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and Dumfries and Galloway Councils.
• the Tayside Regional Improvement Collaborative – Angus, Dundee City, and Perth and Kinross Councils.
• the West Partnership - East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire, and West Dunbartonshire Councils.

The RICs are not statutory bodies. They operate within the context of the statutory responsibilities for educational improvement that sit with each local authority. Each RIC has therefore developed its own internal governance arrangements and detailed programme in agreement with lead officers and elected members across their region. In accordance with the agreement between Scottish Ministers and COSLA Leaders, the strategic priorities of each RIC are supported by local, regional and national evidence. Further information on links between local, regional and national priorities are set out in Part 2 below.

Education Scotland

Through their Senior Regional Advisers (SRAs) and Regional Improvement Teams (RITs), which overlap with the RIC areas, Education Scotland works regularly with, and provides a range of support to, each RIC across the school year. While the detailed engagement between RICs and their Education Scotland RIT will differ across workstreams, programmes and RICs, a number of the RIC activities highlighted in this report will include support provided by Education Scotland.

Education Scotland also provide support to each RIC in the development of their regional plan/s, and in facilitating cross-RIC engagement. SRAs also sit on RIC Boards to further support partnership working between RICs and Education Scotland.

Education Reform

This review is of relevance to the reform of our national education bodies. A key aspect of those reforms is to ensure that our national bodes work coherently and responsively with schools, local government and other providers in delivering the best possible learning support and guidance to our pupils, schools and early years settings and practitioners.

National Support and Funding

The Scottish Government has provided additional funding to support regional capacity building, with the distribution linked to each RIC’s improvement plan/s. Initially, Scottish Government funding to the RICs totalled around £5 million over the 2018/19 school year. During the pandemic, and at the start of the current Parliamentary term, arrangements moved to a financial year model (April-March), with a total of £6 million SG funding provided annually to the RICs since 2019/20.

When considering the reach and added value of RIC activity, it is important to reflect on how the £6 million annual funding provided by the Scottish Government compares to education spend in Scotland. For example, combined gross expenditure adjusted for Local Finance Returns (LFR) purposes on pre-school, school and community learning spending in Scotland was £6,863 million in 2021/22^[2].

Evidence provided by RICs include examples of support provided to each stage of learning, and by that measure the dedicated funding to support RIC capacity and programmed activity equates to less than 0.1% of wider education spend.

Review method

This review involved the following elements.

Desktop review

A review of the findings of previous RIC reviews, policy statements and evaluations were undertaken as part of this Review. A summary of the key points from this exercise are set out in Part 2.

RIC Evidence Commission

The majority of new evidence considered under this review was provided by each RIC in response to an evidence commission based around the following four evaluation themes:

1. How does your RIC ensure that your improvement plan/s and annual report/s are driven by local contexts and local, regional and national priorities?

2. How do you know that the RIC professional learning and improvement offer meets needs, and leads to improvements in learning, teaching and assessment?

3. To what extent is your RIC working with partners to effectively and impactfully deepen learning across your region?

4. How is the funding from Scottish Government prioritised to support school leaders and practitioners?

Each RIC was asked to provide an evaluative statement and supporting evidence under each of these themes, with a particular focus on articulating and evidencing the impact of regional working on pupils and practitioners.

Key themes, evidence and examples identified from the RIC returns to this commission, and the subsequent interviews held with each RIC (see below), are set out in the relevant sections of this report.

RIC Interviews and Focus Group Discussions

To further validate the evidence provided by each RIC, the Scottish Government met separately with each RIC – including RIC Leads, Managers and programme leads where appropriate - to discuss the range of evaluative responses and supporting evidence submitted to the Review. These discussions provided further background and, where appropriate and available, further evidence to support the Scottish Government’s detailed consideration of the reach, responsiveness and impact of each RIC’s regional plans and programmes.

This review also held three focus group discussions with individuals with previous experience of working with and/or being supported by a RIC. This enabled capture of their views on the impact and responsiveness of that support, validate where appropriate themes identified by RICs, share their wider perspectives on the visibility of and engagement in regional activities for their sector/s. It also invited their further views on how and where collaborative support could be strengthened further in the future.

The focus groups included:

• 11 school leaders
• 14 practitioners
• 4 local government officers
• 3 academics/university staff
• 5 Education Scotland officers
• 1 SDS officer
• 1 third sector representative

Views captured in these discussions are referenced in this report as being identified by ‘focus group participants’. Individual comments from these discussions are not attributable and have been reported carefully to reduce the ability to identify the participant or RIC area being discussed.

Additional Submissions

As summarised in Part 3 of this Report, Unions representing teachers and school leaders were also invited to submit any information which may be relevant for consideration in this Review regarding their members’ views and/or interactions with the RICs.

OECD Peer-Learning Activity

The OECD undertook a peer-learning visit to Scotland in May 2023 as part of the education reform programme. While the report and recommendations from that visit have still to be finalised and cannot therefore be included in this Report, a number of strengths relating to the development, position and further potential of the RICs were identified. Further information on that event will be published in due course.