A Leading Edge Partnership school

What is the Leading Edge Partnership programme?

Leading Edge Partnership programme

"Developing the capacity to pursue new and interesting ideas with fellow educational practitioners to have a real impact on the lives and life chances of young people" (Mr Stephen Mundy, Principal, Comberton Village College)

Leading Edge Partnerships provide capacity for practitioners to work together in order to tackle some of the more intractable challenges facing the education system in the drive to raise standards. The programme offers funding distributed via a lead school for use across their partnership to work on locally determined learning challenges. Partnerships are committed to working collaboratively to inspire, design, test and adapt professional practice to raise standards of teaching and learning where improvement is most urgently needed. There is a particular focus on partnering with schools struggling to raise standards and partnering in order to raise pupil achievement by addressing issues of under-achievement among pupils from poorer socio-economic backgrounds and from particular minority ethnic groups.

There are currently 205 partnerships in the Programme. This includes 103 partnerships in the first round (September 2003 until end August 2006) and 102 partnerships in the second round (September 2004 until August 2007).

The Local Partnerships:

At a local level lead schools receive £60,000 a year for three years for an agreed programme of activities. This money is given to the lead school through the Standards Fund but should be spent for the benefit of the partnership following joint decisions between all the schools. The lead school met certain performance requirements to be eligible for the programme and also submitted a bid on behalf of the partnership that was assessed and accepted.

The National Level:

At national level partnerships are invited to take part in a range of activities. At the start of their programme, all partnerships are invited to come together at a series of Innovation Exchanges in order to enter into dialogue with other practitioners and with policy makers about the key challenges of building effective partnerships. A National Collaborative has been established that unites over 20 lead schools from the first cohort in the use of rapid cycle improvement to develop and test strategies aimed at raising the performance of targeted groups of pupils. There is a Steering Group and related sub-groups that are predominately made up of teaching practitioners and which make recommendations on developments to the programme and the policy. An annual national event takes place for partnerships to showcase and discuss the work they have been doing and the impact it has had. These offers ensure that the programme is a demonstration of informed professionalism in practice and enables schools to share practices across the country as well as across their partnership.

Future developments and expansions:

Lead and partner schools will carry out their own evaluations of their work. The Department for Education and Skills will also extract knowledge so that partnership practices and the impact of partnership activities can be understood and shared. In addition, some schools will be involved in case study fieldwork activity.

The five year strategy made the commitment that high performing specialist schools will be able, at re-designation, to take on leading roles in the system. Information regarding the leading edge programme in the context of the new strategy will be available in due course. A further update will be available early in the New Year.