6School development plans
(1)For the purpose of securing improvement in the quality of education which a school managed by them provides, an education authority shall, subject to subsection (6) below, ensure that there is prepared for the school, by such date in 2001 as the Scottish Ministers may, after consulting the education authorities, determine (one date being so determined for all the authorities) and thereafter by that date annually, after consultation with the persons mentioned in subsection (2) below and after the pupils in attendance at the school have been given an opportunity to make their views known—
(a)a development plan which takes account of the objectives in the authority’s annual statement of education improvement objectives published by that date in the year in question and sets objectives for the school; and
(b)a summary of the development plan.
(2)The persons are—
(a)any School Board established for the school;
(b)the teachers employed in the school;
(c)such persons so employed or working in the school on an unpaid basis as are not teachers; and
(d)such local bodies as appear to the authority to be representative of—
(i)such teachers;
(ii)such persons; or
(iii)parents of pupils in attendance at the school.
(3)The development plan shall include an account of the ways in which, and extent to which, the headteacher of the school will—
(a)consult the pupils in attendance at the school; and
(b)seek to involve them, when decisions require to be made concerning the everyday running of the school.
(4)The education authority shall ensure that there is prepared, without unreasonable delay after the expiry of the period of twelve months immediately following the preparation, in any year, of the development plan—
(a)a report as to what was done, during those twelve months, in implementation of the plan; and
(b)a summary of that report.
(5)The education authority shall ensure that the parents of the pupils in attendance at the school have access without cost to the development plan and the report upon request and receive copies of the summaries prepared by virtue of subsections (1)(b) and (4)(b) above; and any other person shall be entitled to have access to those summaries on request.
(6)The development plan prepared in any year after the first year in which such a plan is prepared for the school may be in the same terms as, or be a revised version of, that prepared in a preceding year or may be prepared anew; but the education authority shall from time to time review the implementation of the plan and if there is in any year a change of circumstances relevant to the plan and of such significance that they conclude that the plan should be revised or prepared anew then they shall ensure that the development plan next prepared is prepared accordingly.