School Improvement Partner (SIP) programme

As part of the Government's 'New Relationship with Schools' (NRwS), the School Improvement Partner (SIP) programme was developed to challenge and support school leaders as they assess how well their schools are performing, plan for the future and identify the support their school needs to raise levels of achievement for all its learners. The impact of the SIP programme on progress and standards for all learners is monitored and evaluated through the National Strategies.

SIPs are defined in the Education and Inspections Act 2006 as having been accredited and as following the role and job description as set out in The SIP Brief (2007) (link opens in new window). In summary, every local authority (LA) is required to deploy a SIP to every school it maintains for an average of five days per year for each school. SIPs carry out the LA's statutory duties to challenge, support and monitor their schools. In doing this they will:

interrogate the school's performance and other data
challenge and support the school on its self-evaluation
identify a small number of key priorities for improvement from the self-evaluation
ensure the school adopts high-impact strategies to improve its priorities
broker support to assist the school in its improvement
help the school monitor and evaluate the impact of its actions and the support it has engaged, or that has been engaged on its behalf by the LA.

SIPs provide challenge to the school leadership team. They support further improvement in the school through the quality of the school improvement dialogue, and the knowledge, skills and understanding they bring to the role. SIPs respond to what the school is telling them through their school self-evaluation (SSE) and school improvement planning.

As part of an agreement with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), LAs are responsible for appointing SIPs to all their mainstream schools, special schools and pupil referral units (PRUs).

The SIP programme operates for academies and every academy has an accredited SIP. The maintaining authority for academies is the DCSF (which is the main funding provider). The DCSF academies division manages these SIPs in the same way as LAs manage the SIPs of the schools they maintain.

Partners engaged in the SIP programme are: