The Ofsted report is a brutal read. “Too many pupils make inadequate progress because a culture of low expectations and insufficient challenge to stimulate pupils’ thinking limit what they can achieve,” it says. Then: “middle leaders do not have the skills needed to fulfil their responsibilities”. And: “leaders and governors have failed to make the improvements necessary to provide pupils with a good level of education”. It continues like this, relentlessly, for 11 pages.

Walking down the corridors of All Saints Academy Plymouth, the analysis from Ofsted was brought viscerally into perspective. There seemed to be no rules; pupils roamed in and out of rooms or chatted on their mobile phones. Work in lessons was more or less non-existent, and there was never an occasion when a whole class was focused on completing a learning task.

Clearly, something needed to be done, and fast. However, while superhero narratives make for great blockbuster movies, the lived reality of a “stuck” school is far more complex. The strategy of parachuting in super-duper headteachers and elite staff is neither practical nor sustainable. As a system, we need to embrace the challenge of building capacity at schools that, despite the very best intentions of those working within them, are struggling to improve.

Unfortunately, when the bat-signal goes out, calling for help, few rush to answer. Places like All Saints are viewed as an inconvenience. They become forgotten schools.

But when Moira Marder, chief executive of the Ted Wragg Multi-Academy Trust, was approached to support All Saints, she couldn’t turn a blind eye. What happened next was a truly collaborative model of school improvement that we think can be used widely across the system. Here, those of us who became part of it explain how it worked.

Moira Marder: We were approached by the Dartmoor Teaching School Alliance in April 2017 to provide informal support after the school received a “special measures” judgement. We put in place a plan to provide the intensive support it needed and deserved.

All Saints had the undesirable distinction of appearing on the Department for Education’s list of 100 schools that had never been rated “good”. This was a school that no one wanted. There seemed to be an acceptance that this was the education offer that you would expect in a community with high unemployment and low levels of aspiration. For us, this was not only unacceptable - it was a moral outrage.

But I also saw young people who were incredibly welcoming and engaging. They deserved much more - a better school, better opportunities and better life chances. One of our first steps was to get in touch with Ed Vainker, the executive principal of Reach Academy Feltham.

Ed Vainker: The first time I spoke to Moira was on the phone shortly after the Ted Wragg Trust had taken on All Saints. Since opening Reach Academy in 2012, we had focused entirely inwardly, devoting all our energy to the community that we serve in West London. However, we felt that we were ready to make a wider contribution.

There are a great many advantages to setting up a school from scratch; the benefits that brings cannot be easily translated to improving a well-established school. But Moira had a clear, sustainable plan.

I visited All Saints in spring 2018 and it became apparent that this could be a mutually beneficial relationship. We had a lot to learn from Moira, and we were ready to share some of the systems we had established around curriculum, teaching, behaviour and assessment. We agreed to start working together from September 2018, alongside Aidan Sadgrove of One Degree Academy.

MM: We decided on a number of significant changes that needed to be made. First, a new, aspirational curriculum had to be put in place. We used expert data management systems to identify children who were underperforming. New appointments were made in all core areas, especially English and maths. Where we could not appoint, we seconded our best leaders from other Ted Wragg schools.

Most importantly, we required a head who was ready to take on the challenge ahead of us. After a comprehensive recruitment process, we found Lee Sargeant.

Lee Sargeant: In the first term, I spent a great deal of time speaking with staff and students, and getting to know the school inside and out. This allowed me to act swiftly to ensure that key structures and processes led to school improvement.

For example, by implementing a clear behaviour-for-learning policy and procedures, we halved fixed-term exclusions compared with the same period the previous year. Ofsted visited in December 2018 and noted rapid improvements, particularly around structures.

MM: We want Lee to be able to focus on teaching and learning, and improving outcomes and opportunities, so the trust’s senior leadership team provides extensive support in crucial operational procedures: financial management; governance; data analysis; and HR.

And, to have a long-term impact, it is important that we build strong partnerships with like-minded organisations. For example, it’s important to us that we provide the most support to the vulnerable pupils who attend our schools. A partnership with CoachBright - a social enterprise using coaching to build resilience and improve outcomes for young people - is already having a huge impact.

EV: Where did we come in? One of the first contributions we made was introducing instructional coaching. Everyone in the school now has a coach and has a fortnightly drop-in with a trained team of coaches, followed by a debrief to identify an action step to improve teaching. We have also offered coaching and support for senior and middle leaders, and helped to refine the behaviour system as well as key routines and structures.

Of course, not everything that works in our school in Feltham is necessarily going to work at All Saints, but we believe that there are some “best bets” in terms of systems and approaches, and we have worked alongside the school to embed these.

LS: The coaching programmes have been transformational. Whenever I have found any emerging needs, Ed has been on hand to offer not only advice but also highly experienced senior leaders to help implement changes and drive improvements. This real-time support from leaders has been vital in driving up standards at the school and ensuring they are embedded.

MM/EV: We are delighted with the way the partnership has developed. For Reach, it has built our capacity and skill, challenged our leaders with a new type of opportunity and enabled us to have a different kind of impact beyond our school.

For Ted Wragg, it has brought some new ideas and energy to our work.

We have decided to partner for a further two years and expand what we are doing, taking the best of the project - instructional coaching and curriculum development - and inviting schools across the trust and beyond to work together.

Moira Marder is chief executive of the Ted Wragg Multi-Academy Trust, Ed Vainker is executive headteacher at Reach Academy Feltham and Lee Sargeant is head at All Saints Academy Plymouth

This article originally appeared in the 29 March 2019 issue under the headline “Collaborate to get a ‘stuck’ school back on track”