School action plans are vital for identifying and addressing issues that your school wants to improve.

Yet so often these documents end up on shelves, buried in cupboards or piled high in storerooms, slowly gathering dust, having been, at one time, the apparent new master plan for success.

But how can you produce an action plan that delivers on its purpose of improving your school?

How can you turn the admittedly daunting and time-consuming task of school evaluation and action planning into a living, breathing common purpose that drives all members of the school community in one common pursuit?

Here is a model for you to consider.

How to create an effective school action plan

1. Evaluate carefully

Start by actually understanding what needs fixing. A good way to do this using a school evaluation form (SEF) that is relevant to your context. Often a national or international inspectorate body will have a pro forma document that you can use.

Divide the focus areas among your strongest leaders and give them a term to review their area using the SEF and feedback on the areas of strength and weakness. From this, you can start to ask the question: “Does this area of school life need our full attention?”

You can then go through the responses and pick out the areas that are most in need of real change. Ideally, pick a manageable number - I would say five is perfect.

The extra bonus of doing this is that you will also be preparing yourself for your next inspection.

2. Get everyone involved

Any major changes need to be collaborative and have buy-in from everyone - otherwise, they will not succeed.

Resistance is much more likely when engagement is low, so you need to present to your staff about why you are looking to make changes and what the impact could be - selling them the vision of the improvements that it could lead to.

These meetings must include your admin teams and facilities teams, too - it is their school as much as everyone else’s.

3. Identify the best people to help

It is often tempting to keep change in the hands of those at the top, but I would be wary of this approach. You want to use the best people you have, wherever they are in the school.

For example, if you are looking to improve data analysis, then the person who’s best at doing this should lead this project. If you have a teacher who can lead a project to create better lesson-planning pro formas, give it to them.

You can still allocate a leader to oversee the overall progression of this, but the best ideas are likely to come from across the school, not a centralised committee.

Ideally, if you have carried out point two properly, then those best placed to help will be keen to get involved and share their expertise.

4. Time is precious

Once up and running, it is important to plot regular, frequent opportunities for the groups you have created to work together on their areas of school improvement so that they can actually get on with the task you have set.

They cannot be expected to do this in their own time, so allow them to have protected time to carry out their tasks.

You should ensure they know that they have the right to say no to any future demands made of them that do not fit the original brief of their work. If it’s a good idea you can note it down, but it can’t be allowed to sidetrack the initial school improvement task they are working on.

Using easy-to-access shared documents on a simple template also helps to maximise people’s time and reduce admin load. People should not be put off creating change by the documentation involved.

5. Celebrate success

Ideally, if you do all this and you embed the changes they suggest, you will see a meaningful impact.

If so, it is key that you recognise this and celebrate it, however you see best do that - perhaps with an informal after-school showcase or something more formal such as a presentation on the curriculum developments or a walkthrough of the new learning environments.

The key is that by doing this you make time to recognise the hard work and the positive impact that staff have had - and show that school improvement activities are taken seriously and have real impact. 

This can be key to creating a culture where people believe that efforts to make positive changes are taken seriously and supported by the school. This can be a huge boost for teachers and improve outcomes for pupils, too.

Jeremy Newton is deputy headteacher of King’s College School, La Moraleja, The British School of Madrid (part of the Inspired Education Group)