Notes on Leading and Managing Year 4 RAISE Activities

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Notes on Leading and Managing Year 4 RAISE Activities Notes on Leading and Managing Year 4 RAISE Activities

A group of schools will agree the overall funding for the project with the local consortium co-ordination panel.
The group should identify a convenor who will call an early meeting of representatives of participating schools.
The convenor should ensure that all schools are aware that:
- any RAISE funding they receive is not to support core school activity but participation in a collaborative developmental activity;
- they will be expected to engage in rigorous collaborative enquiry or research;
- the focus of activity will be on capacity building to improve the context in which future cohorts of socio-economically disadvantage pupils will learn;
- their activity should be outward looking, with a view to producing a product that will, also, benefit practitioners outside the group of participating schools.
The group should agree on how it will allocate the available funding between the participating schools. In doing so, the group should consider the individual levels of involvement that each school will have. Some schools may be more loosely attached to the project; one school is likely to lead the initiative and/or host a key worker.
The lead school will receive the total money available for the particular activity. The group should agree how the lead school will pass on grant money to other participating schools. They should also agree on a system for accounting for the spending of grant money.
The group should decide how it will staff the project; for example, whether full-time or part-time, whether by secondment or by short-term appointment.
The group should produce a spending plan to cover all aspects of the project, including:
- staffing (as above);
- activities within individual schools;
- any support or services that the group may wish to commission from other agencies (including, if appropriate) the local authority;
- professional or organisational development activity;
- monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the initiative;
- group planning and preparation time;
- meetings of participating schools or links with other initiatives within or outside the consortium;
- dissemination activities.
The group should agree the expected benefits that current disadvantaged pupils will derive from the initiative (the outcomes) and the ‘publishable products’ (the outputs) that the initiative will generate. The latter must include a thorough evaluative group report on the year’s activity, drawing out lessons for the future. All participating schools should agree to be willing to co-operate positively in contributing material for the regional RAISE website. The outputs may also include training material, guidance documents, teaching or learning resources, directories of supportive agencies, and accounts of good practice.
The group should identify external agencies with which it will seek to work during the period of the project.
Subsequently, the group should consult with the regional co-ordinator and local authority RAISE contact to agree how they will package and present the outputs of the project. Wherever possible, groups should look for thematic links with other initiatives that would produce mutual enrichment and lead to joint packaging of material.
Over the summer term 2009, the group should have discussed its initiative to clarify funding arrangements and to refine the project plan initially agreed with the consortium co-ordination group.
If the group considers it necessary to allocate time and funding to complete the production of the project report or other products of the initiative during the autumn term 2010, this should be specified and agreed with the consortium co-ordination group, prior to the start of the autumn term 2009.
The group may allocate funding to ‘second’, ‘employ’ or ‘buy-in’ personnel to carry out any administrative, leadership, managerial or evaluative functions that are essential to the project. However, the group should, also, explore the possibilities of links with post-graduate higher education students or staff who may wish to undertake research related to the RAISE project.