ocial: Schools are adopting specific behaviours to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, implementing community centered strategies for parent involvement, monitoring of progress and providing individual learning support; schools have systems in place for early identification and intervention. Pupil premium awarded to raise attainment and also different strategies are used to engage with the disadvantaged families to increase parental engagement and improve academic performance.

Technological: Smart apps and devices are fast and furious, schools are confronted with challenging issues from online risks such as violation of privacy or fraud, schools are expected to educate children by raising awareness about these risks and how to avoid them, however budget restrictions is causing to be a barrier on latest ICT equipment and software.

3.4 Explain how a range of analytical tools can be used to investigate & address key management issues within a school:

Using analytical tools widens the approach of thinking, enabling SBMs to solve a problem, be predictive and be implementable. I believe the aim of using analytical tools is to sharpen the focus of the analysis and to ensure methodical, balanced approach, e.g. SWOT- helps to focus on internal and external factors, which SBMs can use to identify issues as well as barriers and solutions, useful to spot danger and improve weakness. PESTLE tool can be used to analyse various external factors, which impact schools.

SWOT (Appendix 3) Increase parent engagement by holding quarterly workshops: analysis clearly indicates the benefits of this objective and it will add much value to the school. It has highlighted the budget strain for additional workshops but the opportunity highlighted a possible solution parent’s contribution, another weakness could be lack of staff, however PTA involvement can tackle this. The analyses tool has highlighted issues on both the internal and external factors and also solutions.