Guidance

School improvement offer

What improvement support schools and trusts can get between September 2024 and July 2025.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 28 April 2021
• Last updated: 23 September 2024 — See all updates

Applies to England

Eligibility criteria

You can get support if your school meets one of the following criteria between September 2024 and the end of February 2025:

• it had an overall effectiveness grade below ‘good’ before September 2024, is reinspected between September 2024 and the end of February 2025, and receives a requires improvement sub-judgement in either the leadership and management or quality of education areas
• it is judged to be ‘causing concern’ between September 2024 and February 2025
• it was previously eligible for intervention under the former 2RI+ policy, but the plans for structural intervention were not well advanced

We have informed schools in the last category that we are taking steps to revoke their academy order or remove the termination warning notice.

Support available to eligible schools and trusts

Your school or trust can get up to 10 days of support from a system leader.

This will normally be either a chief executive officer (CEO) of a high-quality MAT, supported by their wider team or a national leader of education (NLE)

They will help your leadership team to review the improvement plan for your school and ensure actions are in place to rapidly improve the education and experience of children.

Eligible schools that are part of a MAT will usually get support at trust level rather than school level.

However, the school will get direct support if you and the system leader agree that would be more effective.

Next steps

If you’re eligible, we’ll contact you within the term you become eligible.

For maintained schools, we’ll first contact the local authority.

Where schools are part of a diocese, we’ll contact the diocese first. 

Where schools are part of a trust, we’ll contact the trust first.

Contact

Email school.improvement@education.gov.uk.

Published 28 April 2021
Last updated 23 September 2024 + show all updates

1. 23 September 2024

   Retitled and updated for the time period September 2024 to February 2025.

2. 5 October 2023

   Updated the sections on eligibility criteria and support available for the 2023 to 2024 academic year.

3. 2 September 2022

   Page updated to show the improvement support which schools and trusts can get in the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

4. 28 April 2021

   First published.