The idea of collaborative advantage is well-understood in business, but less so in schools. When organisations pool resources and expertise in a strategic manner, the whole can become more than the sum of its parts.
The best multi-academy trusts and school federations have shown the power of this approach, but it is a lever that we need to pull more widely, across all schools, in all localities.
Moreover, in education secretary Bridget Phillipson's speech to the Confederation of School Trusts Conference in November (DfE, 2024), a renewed focus on collaboration within the Department for Education came through loud and clear.
She said: “It’s about partnership, and government is here in partnership with you. That’s what our Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence teams are here for too – led by the best teachers and leaders in the country, facilitating new support and spreading excellence.”
This approach is not new: I have seen what can be achieved through school partnerships here in the North East, where around 60 collaborative projects ran out of my school in 2023/24, reaching more than 10,000 children from more than 100 schools, including my own.
Moreover, the success of this cross-school approach is not an isolated case: the Schools Together website lists more than 5,000 case studies of good practice.
The lessons learned by the schools and regions already leveraging the power of partnerships are hugely valuable. For those school leaders looking to initiate partnerships from scratch, I can recommend the four “pillars of partnerships” as recommended by Schools Together as a good starting point.
These four pillars are mutuality, sustainability, impact, and tackling disadvantage. Here are my reflections on how to build these.
1, Mutuality
Like any relationship, partnerships between schools must be approached in a spirit of humility, openness and respect. If there is a power imbalance from the outset, an unhealthily one-sided, transactional dynamic can grow over time.
The key is to find shared areas for development along with individual priorities that can be supported by mutual resource or expertise. Every school has something they are working on, and every school has something to offer others.
Perhaps start by bringing a group of headteachers or CEOs together in an informal setting, under Chatham House rules. This is a great way to share specific development areas and to highlight where the power of partnerships might be leveraged. The pillar of “mutual benefit” is key in those early, exploratory conversations and meetings.
Think of a graph with “internal impact” (on your school) on one axis, and “external impact” (benefit to other schools) on the other – the sweet spot is a project that can be plotted high on both axes.
Our sixth form “voluntary service” programme is a good example: the 100 participating sixth-formers develop soft skills by providing weekly one-to-one reading support in local primary schools, and the young readers benefit from great role models and regular reading support: win-win.
This being said, we shouldn’t discount a project that feels heavily one-sided, as long as the wider partnership brings reciprocal benefits elsewhere. For example, consider the coding clubs we run for primary schools – these sessions are valuable to local primary schools where they lack the equipment, expertise and space that we can offer as a large secondary school. This may seem like a one-sided “high external – low internal” impact at a project level. However, we then benefited hugely from visiting this group of schools to learn how they had employed the Zones of Regulation approach in their pastoral and SEND provision, something we have now incorporated into our systems and training: win-win in the longer term.
2, Sustainability
Historically, school partnerships have relied on pockets of spare capacity and the goodwill of a small number of passionate individuals in a locality. This can lead to a piecemeal approach: projects may exist one year and disappear the next when a particular member of staff leaves a role, or when the timetable slack no longer exists.
The best projects are longitudinal and sustained over a number of years – as we all know, very few educational interventions bear fruit immediately, in the short term.
In the excellent report entitled Turning the Tide, published by the Staff College and the University of Manchester (Ainscow et al, 2023), the role of a charismatic and well-connected local leaders is highlighted as both a strength and a weakness of the best partnerships.
Most partnerships need a driving force to gain some initial traction and momentum, but there can be a problem when this individual moves on or is drawn into other work-streams.
The best partnerships are wary of this potential pitfall and use the initial momentum-building period to build infrastructure, governance and steering groups to future-proof the programme and to guarantee longevity and coherence of approach.
Furthermore, in my local partnership work, we have been successful in securing external funding thanks to early “proof of concept” around particular pilot projects.
This funding has allowed us to turbo-charge programmes to grow through funded teacher time, physical resources and pots for transport and back-cover for participating external staff. Perhaps consider approaching local charities, foundations and businesses for a small donation to kick-start a pilot project: this may start with catering, transport or even free venue hire, but can then grow into larger donations and in-kind support over time.
3, Impact evaluation
The most robust partnerships bake-in impact evaluation from the first planning meetings. It is crucially important to plan the success criteria as well as the practicalities. Not just “what we will do”, but “how we will know if it worked”. Schools can learn a great deal from the charity sector in this respect.
In charities, theory of change is regarded as the gold standard for impact evaluation. This is an approach where a long term objective is agreed, and the plan then works backwards through the causal steps needed to achieve the goal. It is a methodology with its own terminology and merits a whole book rather than a paragraph (this won’t stop me trying, though – see the key terms in bold below!).
For example, one of the objectives in our theory of change is to develop and grow teachers. The outcome associated with this objective is to produce more new teachers via our SCITT for maths and physics teachers. The key performance indicator (KPI) is the number of graduating trainees and, ultimately, how many trainees gain jobs and remain in the profession in the longer term. As a strand of activity this is relatively straightforward to measure in terms of impact, i.e. there is high certainty of impact.
As Fiennes (2012) has shown, we should design impact measurements based on the nature of the project (or “activity” in theory of change):
- Where the activity has low certainty of impact, there should be high participation, and merely counting participants may be appropriate – think one-off events, career fairs etc.
- Where there is high certainty of impact, there may be low participation, and we can drill-down into more robust measurements such as exam grades, swimming certificates, music certificates achieved etc.
4, Tackling disadvantage
In this final pillar, we consider how to choose the participating schools and sub-groups of students within schools. Where we can pool resource, it should surely be those students in greatest need who benefit the most.
In fact, some of the best existing collaboration between local schools and organisations has been around sharing best practice in using Pupil Premium funds.
In this aspect of school strategy, the idea of competition between schools would seem bizarre: Why would we not share what works with our most vulnerable children? It is exactly this kind of mindset that we should bring to all aspects of partnerships, from academic attainment to pastoral support, to extra-curricular opportunities and everything in-between. Why wouldn't we always share ideas that benefit our students across all of school life?
Final thoughts
In the spirit of collaboration, I’d love to hear from others on the partnership journey via the contact details below. Let’s share notes – what is there to lose?
- John Smith is director of partnerships at Royal Grammar School in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He is a board director of the ONE Trust in Outer-West Newcastle and a member of the Strategic Board of the National Maths and Physics SCITT. You can contact him via LinkedIn. Find his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/john-smith
Further information & resources
- Ainscow et al: Turning the Tide: A study of place-based school partnerships, The Staff College, University of Manchester: 2023: https://thestaffcollege.uk/publications/turning-the-tide
- DfE: Bridget Phillipson’s speech to the CST, 2024: www.gov.uk/government/speeches/bridget-phillipsons-speech-to-the-confederation-of-school-trusts
- Fiennes: It Ain't What You Give, It's the Way That You Give It, Giving Evidence, 2012.
- Giving Evidence: https://giving-evidence.com
- Schools Partnerships Alliance (SPA): https://schoolpartnershipsalliance.org.uk
- Schools Together: Offers more than 5,000 case studies of cross-sector partnerships: www.schoolstogether.org