organisational capacity
Supporting school improvement through peer review across Greater Manchester
‘The expertise from Isos Partnership colleagues enabled us to develop a comprehensive process for our peer reviews.’
— Cathy Starbuck, Assistant Director (Education, Work and Skills), Salford City Council
The brief
In the summer of 2018, education leaders from the local authorities that make up Greater Manchester came together to consider how they could develop a collaborative process for supporting school improvement. We were commissioned to facilitate a planning day for senior education leaders from the Greater Manchester authorities through which they could reflect on support for school improvement across Greater Manchester and explore how this could be strengthened by developing an innovative peer review that could operate across the ten local authorities.
What did we do?
Drawing on our expertise of supporting local education systems to develop strategic approaches to supporting school improvement and build effective local education partnerships, we designed a planning workshop through which senior leaders from the Greater Manchester authorities could:
confirm their shared understanding of the strengths and challenges across Greater Manchester;
agree a set of core expectations and principles that would guide this new approach; and
co-develop a concrete proposal for how a peer review process, focused on support for school improvement, could operate across Greater Manchester.
We spent time planning the session with education leaders, and developed a logical set of questions, options and examples from other local areas and parallel fields that allowed Greater Manchester leaders to co-design and agree:
a peer review framework – one that would be simple to use, but would provide a consistent structure for exploring and reviewing how support for school improvement operated in a local area;
what a standard peer review should look like – an outline for two-day peer review, with local authorities working in trios (and one quad), including who would be involved, how the time could be used most effectively, and what outputs and feedback would be provided; and
a timetable and agreed set of practical actions for putting this approach into practice.
We agreed that it would be vital, both for the individual local authorities and the wider learning across Greater Manchester, that there should be a co-ordinator role to oversee the peer reviews, and that there should be some wider training for colleagues who would be involved in the peer reviews. We worked with the two co-ordinators and facilitated a training session for senior leaders and heads of service from across the 10 Greater Manchester authorities in the autumn of 2018. We used this session to test and refine the framework and plans for the peer reviews, and to ensure that colleagues felt confident about the approach, when they were launched in early 2019.
What difference did we make?
We created a process whereby senior education leaders were able to co-produce from scratch an easy-to-use framework and design a process for peer reviews of local authority support for school improvement. The first full cycle of peer reviews – where each local authority will have been both reviewee and review – took place during the 2019 calendar year. The feedback, both from the reviewers and reviewees, has been extremely positive, with many reflecting on the value of having a means to reflect on their own practice, hear the feedback from their peers, and benchmark and learn from effective practice from across Greater Manchester.
What did the client say about the work?
‘The expertise from Isos Partnership colleagues enabled us to develop a comprehensive process for our peer reviews. The workshop that they facilitated enabled Greater Manchester colleagues to work through the fine detail of the reviews to ensure we had thought through the process thoroughly and gave us a consistent approach. The session allowed us to have honest conversations about what the peer reviews were trying to achieve and helped us to further develop the trust and relationships we need to ensure the peer reviews add value. Their work with us provided great value for money.’
— Cathy Starbuck, Assistant Director (Education, Work and Skills), Salford City Council