Before Learn Sheffield was founded in 2015, “no one spoke for schools in Sheffield”, says Baroness Estelle Morris, former education secretary and co-chair of the Area-based Education Partnerships Association (AEPA).

“There was no one voice,” she explains. “There wasn’t the structure. The local authority could speak for maintained schools, but they couldn’t speak for academies.”

The same would be true for any area across England, explains Dame Christine Gilbert, former Ofsted chief inspector and Morris’ co-chair at the AEPA. Because while academisation has brought great collaboration to the sector, “inevitably, [trusts’] first responsibility will always be to the trust and the schools within it, rather than children and young people in a local area. Most are therefore not focused on building a stronger local system”.

And anyway, not every school is in a trust.

What is an area-based education partnership?

Enter area-based education partnerships (AEPs). These are localised companies that represent schools in an area and work together to support those settings. There are a growing number of such partnerships across England, represented by the AEPA.

For example, Learn Sheffield is an area-based education partnership with 184 members. Any publicly funded Sheffield school, academy or college can choose to join.

Its formation gave Sheffield schools a “front door”, Morris says: a single point of contact for any external party - be that health services or even a local museum or football club - to work with the city’s schools. Most importantly, it brought schools together, “because schools cannot survive in isolation”.

What are the principles behind area-based working?

“Partnerships enable schools to work for every child in their area,” Morris says. This is important because while teachers want their school to do well, “you don’t want your school to do well in an area that’s vastly underperforming”. Working together across a locality, then, aids progress for every student.

Because they are in the same local area, schools in AEPs understand each other’s contexts. They work with the same local services such as councils, police and health. School visits and in-person meetings are possible. All of this makes collaboration easier.

AEPs also “provide civic leadership” in local areas, adds Gilbert. She points to the ways in which partnerships worked during the pandemic, collaborating “with schools, parents, councils and their local communities” to support schools “in managing the challenges of the crisis”.

What kind of work do AEPs do?

AEPs work across different areas of school life.

Some connect children’s services to better support pupils. For example, in London, Camden Learning works alongside children’s centres, family hubs and safeguarding and social care services to run Camden Kids Talk, which aims to improve communication, speech and language from pregnancy to age 5. It was first launched in children’s centres and now runs in 15 schools.

Elsewhere, AEPs focus on leadership, such as Leicester Primary Partnership and Birmingham Education Partnership, which both run coaching, mentoring and networking for headteachers.

Increasingly partnerships are being commissioned by other public sector organisations to address local challenges. Learn Sheffield has been commissioned by Sheffield City Council to develop a local special educational needs and disabilities manifesto, which will inform thinking about the city’s strategic commissioning of special education, health and care services.

Meanwhile, Schools Alliance for Excellence was commissioned by public health services in Surrey to deliver a nurture programme in 100 schools, aiming to better develop children’s social skills, confidence and self-esteem.

Is there evidence that AEPs result in good outcomes?

Morris says AEPs have “the solidarity of a local partnership with the high expectations and rigour of a school improvement system”. They are supportive yet accountable, and choose to review their impact in different ways.

Camden Learning reports that progress has been made thanks to the communication, speech and language work, with the proportion of children with a language delay of one year or more decreasing from 58 per cent to 26 per cent among the nine schools using the Camden Kids Talk programme.

While in Surrey, 88 per cent of settings that the Schools Alliance for Excellence partnership previously identified as being “most at risk” were judged as “good” at their next inspection after receiving intensive school improvement support through the AEP.

How do the finances work?

Most AEPs are legal entities, usually a school company limited by guarantee or limited by shares, with schools as legal members.

Funding comes from schools - including from one-off, annual or multi-year member fees, and from payments for traded services, commissions from local authorities and other public organisations, and grants or awards.

AEPs are typically run by a full-time chief executive - often a former headteacher from the area - who works with a team of school improvement advisers. The board is made up of elected headteachers, along with local authority representation.

What is happening with area-based education partnerships now?

Morris says there is currently “a chance to rethink local school systems”, especially given the government’s upcoming Schools White Paper, which many expect will encourage partnership working.

Indeed, this is something in which some in government have already expressed an interest, with schools minister Georgia Gould (a former leader of Camden Council) last week praising the work of Camden Learning at the Schools and Academies Show in Birmingham. “There’s a lot that comes from collaboration,” she said. “So we are absolutely committed to more collaboration and to ensuring that health, schools and local authorities are working together to really ensure that all children are supported.”

Today the AEPA publishes a paper detailing its members’ experiences, which Morris says she hopes will be a sign “to teachers everywhere that we exist. There are lots of partnerships, and we’re very happy to work with others who want to create their own partnership in their locality”.

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