The Scottish government’s review of its Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs) has found much to praise, despite announcing last year that their funding would be cut.
RICs’ support for schools has been evidence informed, has “continued to expand and deepen” and was “evaluated strongly” by participants, the rapid review, published last week, stated.
The review also said the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was expected to highlight the future potential of RICs when it publishes the findings from a peer-learning visit to Scotland in May 2023, carried out as part of the education reform programme.
It said: “While the [OECD] 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.”
RICs were introduced in Scotland in early 2018 “to strengthen collaborative working in the delivery of educational improvement” between local authorities. Six were created, involving between three and eight local authorities.
Centre of Teaching Excellence to receive RIC funding
However, in November 2023, the education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, said she planned to “taper” funding for RICs and instead invest that money in a new Centre of Teaching Excellence, having signposted the government’s intention to create the new centre at the SNP conference in October.
Announcing that funding for RICs was to end, Ms Gilruth cited the review which, although not published in full until last week, was set up to provide “headline findings” by October. She said it had found that although RICs had “increased the improvement and leadership support they provide”, the number of staff and schools receiving support remained “a minority”.
But while the review does say that “the number of staff engaged in regional activities at any time remains a minority” and that only approximately 30 per cent of schools were engaged “in some form of RIC activity across a school year”, it makes clear that the RICs’ limited reach is due, in the main, to their limited budgets.
The government’s international education advisers said they still saw a role for RICs but called for the way they were funded to be changed, saying it should be “over a three-year period rather than the existing one-year cycles”
Funding ‘major barrier to increasing RIC reach’
The review said the £6 million annual funding received by RICs equated to “less than 0.1 per cent of wider education spend” but that “further significant expansion of regional supports to the majority of pupils, practitioners and establishments would require further investment and/or the redeploying of additional resources”.
All RICs told the review that capacity and funding “were major barriers to further increasing RIC reach and impact”.
The impact of inflation “on the ability to sustain and/or expand current levels of activity” was also highlighted, as was the “year-to-year approach to funding, which limits longer-term planning”.
RIC remit to support schools and teachers
The review found that RICs were most likely to provide support aimed at strengthening teaching and learning in schools and nurseries, which it said was in line with their remit “primarily to enhance the improvement support that is provided to establishments and practitioners”.
It also found that RICs were providing online learning support for pupils - including materials and virtual classes - through provisions such as the West Partnership Online School; they were tackling shared challenges, such as deteriorating attendance; and they were providing support in relation to developing the pupil voice, as well as “supporting learners in areas such as health and wellbeing, Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) and other subject support”.
It said: “Participant evaluation has been consistently strong across the RIC programmes, where that information has been provided by participants and submitted to this review, including in respect of the relevance of the RIC support provided and the positive impact on participants’ knowledge, confidence and/or professional practice.”
The review added that “all RICs expressed the view that many of these programmes would not have been delivered without the additional capacity, structured approach and networks that their RIC provides”, and that this view “was also expressed in the focus group discussions with school leaders, practitioners and other partners”.
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