This is what users say about SIP.

Birchwood Community High School, Warrington

Willesborough Junior School, Kent

Kingsmead Technology College, Staffordshire

Grange Valley Primary School, St Helens

Couldsdon High School, Croydon

Our Lady of Mount Carmel First School, Worcestershire

The John Kyrle High School, Herefordshire

Great Sankey Primary School, Warrington

Tytherington High School, Cheshire

Lampton School, Hounslow

The Bankfield School, Widnes

King's High School, Bournemouth

St James RC Junior & Infant School, Wigan

"SIP has been an integral part of our School Development plan for many years and is an excellent tool for tracking planning, implementation and monitoring. It also helps Heads of departments to become better managers and, best of all, it saves time and increases professional effectiveness. It has certainly contributed to raising achievement in our school and I am sure it could in yours."

Sheila Yates, Birchwood Community High School (Leading Edge School)

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"After years of searching, I've found the ideal software tool for structuring my School Improvement Plan. SIP: School Improvement Processor combines my whole school improvement priorities, post OfSTED action plan and colleagues' performance management targets into one cohesive document. It is simply the most cost effective, time saving piece of software that I have yet purchased. It’s brilliant!"

Mike Smith, Headteacher, Willesborough Junior School, Kent

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"Here at Kingsmead Technology College we have found that through the use of The School Improvement Processor, we have been able to:

• Provide a clear structure for our priorities and an easy way to cascade them from whole school objectives to team plans and individual targets
• Move to a position where all success criteria are measurable and specific
• Ensure greater accountability through specifying single, named, post-holders responsible for the achievement of targets
• Strengthen our line management arrangements through focused discussions of progress towards targets, against timescales
• Keep the plan ‘alive’ through the easy production of half-termly task sheets for all staff, and line manager’s progress checks
• Budget our plans and establish training requirements across the College
• Report up to the minute progress to governors and other stakeholders

We still have to evaluate the impact of our plans and record progress in our SEF. These things will come as we embed the system into our cultures. The bottom line however, is that planning is faster, more relevant to our own and national priorities and the implementation of plans remains a high priority for staff through the ease of monitoring.

I would be delighted to endorse the product, and the support offered by the team at Greenhill, including their newsletters and the rapid response via telephone or e-mail correspondence.

I am totally sold on this piece of kit and need no incentive to endorse it to others. Moreover, if anyone from Staffs wants to see how we use SIP just name a day.”

Mike Donoghue, Kingsmead Technology College, Staffordshire

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"SIP is a very useful tool. It is excellent for cross-referencing individual and team action plans against school priorities. I particularly value it when working with governors. They have said how much they like the clarity of the way SIP lays out the School Priorities and the clarity of thought that using SIP fosters.

I find I am using SIP more frequently of late, probably because of the heavy emphasis now on producing evidence for virtually every aspect of what we do in school - an impending Ofsted visitation certainly focuses the mind on such considerations, but also because it does help with strategic planning. I particularly like the Multi Year View and find it a valuable and very helpful tool in the review and planning process. It also lends itself well to presenting information to Governors, local authority officers and others, in an easily digestible format."

Phil Hall, Headteacher, Grange Valley Primary School

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"We have been using SIP at Coulsdon for 3 years now. It has been an extremely helpful tool in structuring and organising our SDP, ensuring that targets are clear and focused on success criteria and in particular enabling a consistent school wide approach to pupil progress for performance management. If you are considering adopting this sort of system then I am would recommend SIP as worthy of serious consideration – it has worked very well for us and the support and service from Greenhill has been swift and efficient.”

"This is an extract from the written feedback from an HMI who visited us as part of a multi-LEA look at 14-19 provision. It reflects our use of SIP.

...The visit to Coulsdon High School revealed a number of strengths:... The very good school improvement plan has very clear targets and detailed plans. Departmental plans are clearly linked to the school plan, ensuring consistency of approach.

Colin Mackinlay, Headteacher, Coulsdon High School

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"We have been using Greenhill’s School Improvement Planner software for the last two years and have found it to be an invaluable tool. It is versatile and powerful enough to be used effectively in both Primary and High Schools.
SIP is quick to set up and use (with an excellent interactive support tool) and, importantly, integrates easily with Performance Management for teachers. We make particularly good use of the reports section which enables the user to tailor reports for a variety of audiences including SMT, Governors, Line Managers and Team leaders. The Multi Year view facility is another of the many useful features contained in the program. The whole package has obviously been very well thought out and the back up service for advice and support has been first rate. "

Tony Tamburo, Headteacher, Our Lady of Mount Carmel First School, Worcestershire

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“Our Ofsted Report of February 2004 commented,

… .. Systems for self evaluation which have been introduced at all levels are increasingly effective and link appropriately with continued professional development and school improvement planning.

Following the inspection I set about seeking further improvement in school planning systems and found the SIP - the School Improvement Processor. We are currently reviewing our first year’s use. I find the system very beneficial for deciding upon school priorities and linking these to departmental and year improvement plans. I feel that the experience we have gained will lead to sharper planning for next year and I envisaged the SIP being used as a framework for our reapplication for Specialist College Status. “

Nigel Griffiths, Headteacher, John Kyrle High School (Specialist Technology College)

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"Warrington LEA has provided Greenhill Software's SIP program for a number of its schools because it is able to bring together the school development plan, performance management objectives and supporting CPD opportunities. We considered that it would be very helpful in providing accurate plans for raising attainment for 2004 with clear accountability routes, targets and deadlines. Feedback from schools indicates that the software and the development model it implements are making a significant contribution to improving effectiveness."

Susan Squires, lately Chief Advisor, Warrington LA

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"SIP has made a significant contribution in our school by saving us time and reducing the amount of paperwork. During the last two years SIP has helped the Leadership Team to organise their records for staff performance management. Targets, success criteria, training needs, costings and meeting notes can be easily entered into the SIP database, often during the review meetings with staff. We are particularly impressed by the ease of access to all records, which are well organised and stored together, for maintenance and monitoring purposes. As Headteacher and CPD Coordinator, I use SIP regularly and can easily obtain an overview of all performance management records, built up during each cycle, and effectively monitor all staff INSET needs.

We are particularly impressed by the print out facilities that SIP offers. Members of the Leadership Team are able to use SIP and navigate the pull-down menus to compile impressive reports for review meetings. In addition, members of staff can receive useful summaries of their own progress. Recently SIP has helped to support staff with their applications for Threshold Assessment.

During the last two years we have only scratched the surface using SIP in school. Our next step is to use the extensive applications SIP offers with our future School Development Plan."

Jim Courtney, Headteacher, Great Sankey Primary School.

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“In our OFSTED inspection in May inspectors were impressed by our integration of the School Development Plan into SIP - we no longer have a paper SDP - SIP facilitates the whole process, including. performance management.”

Kevin Harrison, Deputy Head, Tytherington High School

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This is the conclusion of a longer article written for Managing Schools Today

"All-in-all then, Greenhill Software have produced a highly functional application that links well with Ofsted and the SEF. It also enables managers to monitor all aspects of the planning process: target setting, action planning, implementation and evaluation. It is, in my view, a product whose time has come."

Paul Derlaki, Assistant Head, Lampton School, Hounslow.

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"SIP has provided our school with a consistent and transparent means of linking together our whole school management systems. This has ensured a consistency and quality of information for Governors. It has helped create a central drive for improvement which was recognised celebrated by OfSTED (Jan2007)."

Carole Owen, Headteacher, The Bankfield School, Widnes

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"The use of the School Improvement Processor has enabled all staff to focus on the essential priorities for school improvement – actions in the classroom. We have used the software to stimulate debate about what really matters. It has sharpened our practice and builds in extremely useful monitoring functions. It is sufficiently versatile to be used with any school management structure and generates professional documents. Ofsted commented on the clarity and focus of the reports. I would recommend you consider this software as a move to working smarter.”

Alyn Fendley, Headteacher, Kings High School, Bournemouth

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I find the School Improvement Processor to be an invaluable tool which can be tailored to meet the needs of any school. Recently I have started to use the program for Performance Management objectives and this is proving to be very useful in both directing efforts towards achieving outcomes for children and also in reducing bureaucracy.

Paul Rigby, Headteacher, St James RC Junior & Infant School, Wigan