TT1617 Evaluation Report

Conclusion
Opportunities for development
The Thurrock Education Commission pointed to evidence that children and
young people benefit most when schools work together. A sense of
collective purpose and concern for pupils across the area, shared by school
leaders across institutions needed to be fostered. To create this shared
commitment to raising standards, supporting services would need to
ensure that the structures were in place for
“school to school support to improve and not only share good
practice, but create it.”
(Gilbert and Hill, 2013, pg 9) 9 .
School to school support has been encouraged by the DfE.
“Schools working together leads to better results…Along with our
best schools, we will encourage strong and experienced sponsors to
play a leadership role in driving the improvement of the whole school
system, including through leading more formal federations and
chains.”
(DfE, 2010: 60). 10
Whether schools are part of formal partnership arrangements or not, interschool
working has been promoted as a means to drive up standards.
Research into Teaching School Alliances identifies the development of
trust, critical friendship and peer to peer support as being central to interschool
collaboration. 11 Ensuring that all staff are involved in partnership
work is important.
“whilst the commitment of heads and other senior staff is essential,
best practice seems to involve forms of collaboration that exist at
many levels.”
(Ainscow, 2014, p32). 12
9 Hayes, G. and Lynch, B. (2013) Local partnerships: blowing in the wind of national policy
changes. British Educational Research Journal, 39 (3)
10 Department for Education (DfE) (2010) The importance of teaching: The schools white
paper. London: DfE.
11 Rea, S., Sandals, L., Parish, N., Hill, R. and Gu, Q. (2015) Leadership of great pedagogy in
teaching school alliances: final report (Teaching schools R&D network national themes
project 2012-14). London: Department for Education (DfE).
12 Ainscow, M. (2014) Towards Self-Improving School Systems Lessons from a City
Challenge. London: Routledge.
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