Sharing ideas, insights and innovations among schools is a great way to help everyone improve - but it’s not always easy, especially when trying to unite staff across academies, maintained schools and local councils.
But we believe our work at Ealing Learning Partnership (ELP), in one of London’s most diverse and complex boroughs, is demonstrating how effective and impactful collaboration can be achieved - and at scale too, with 85 schools now involved.
Launched as a pilot scheme in 2017, ELP set out to unite all schools in the borough, regardless of whether they were local authority (LA) schools or part of a trust, around its central mission: “No learner left behind; no school left behind.”
The success is clear to see: academic outcomes are well above the national average across every key stage, and Progress 8 scores for local schools have been in the top five nationally for successive years.
Improvements in areas such as attendance, race equity and outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have also been achieved.
Since 2022 we have been part of the national LocalED 2025 initiative, exploring alternative models of local accountability in action. This has enabled us to compare our model with other areas and expand on our principle of “high challenge, low threat” peer-to-peer reviews, fostering trust, empathy and stronger relationships among school leaders.
Here’s how it works.
Harnessing the power of school partnership
A key principle of ELP is that it is a partnership and not a hierarchy. Schools have joined and remained committed because they have a direct role in shaping ELP’s direction and activities.
Indeed, core focus areas are led by committees of headteachers and local authority representatives, who collaborate to develop action plans. These plans are then approved, funded and monitored by a dynamic partnership board.
Furthermore, while we are council-wide, we recognise the unique geographical and contextual challenges of our local schools. As such, the ELP has five learning clusters, each encompassing 12 to 14 schools.
Each cluster is led by a local serving headteacher, who facilitates collaborative school improvement work. This might lead to projects using tools such as peer enquiry and review, spirals of enquiry, presentations and “open school” events.
Each cluster sets its own professional development agenda for the year, based on the needs of its schools. Current priority areas include EYFS, SEND provision and the development of our borough-wide AI strategy.
Self-evaluation and improvement projects on areas such as enhancing outdoor play, writing at greater depth and improving behaviour form a core part of the clusters, too.
The success of these headteacher learning clusters has led to the creation of the Sendco learning clusters, which are now in place to better mobilise expertise and drive staff development, addressing a broader range of learner needs.
Finally, leaders in every school are connected through structured, quality-assured networks that meet at least termly, led by both school-based and council-based leaders. These events cover areas such as teaching and learning, curriculum, SEND and safeguarding, and help leaders to create informal support networks, too
Our approach is rigorous, yet less “high stakes” than traditional models - shifting professional conversations from “proving” to “improving” through mutual support.
As such, the evolution of ELP’s widely adopted peer enquiry and review model fosters an enquiry-based improvement methodology and framework that allows for the creation of a much richer critique around what’s working well and why.
Following feedback from headteachers who trialled these models and were positive about the results, we’ve ensured that pupil voice is central to our work. For example, our use of spirals of enquiry gauges a pupil’s sense of belonging, their agency and their understanding of what they are learning and why, through a series of thought-provoking questions.
This helps headteachers to identify barriers to learning and arms them with valuable data to create a deeper and more meaningful form of self-evaluation.
Overall, by adopting a lower-stakes model of accountability, we’ve built strong reserves of trust so leaders are confident to share their strengths while also identifying and addressing areas for development
School leaders are proud of their contribution to the borough acting as “place makers” to bridge traditional system boundaries and foster a culture of mutual support.
This month 50 Ealing schools opened their doors to an annual “Festival of Learning” to share innovative and high-quality practice aligned with local priorities, ranging from race equity and effective governance to, oracy, AI and innovative approaches to inclusion.
Improving outcomes for all
The partnership also has a strong commitment to supporting groups of children and young people who may be less well served than their peers, including our work tackling inequity and improving outcomes for Black Caribbean and Somali pupils. Schools are active in disrupting bias and reviewing the impact of policies through the direct experience of pupils.
Some 90 per cent of schools in ELP have reviewed their policies and practices to better serve all learners. Many have established dedicated parent forums to improve the mechanisms for communication and coproduction.
There is also an area-wide dedicated programme to support progression to senior leadership for Black and minority ethnic middle leaders.
Ultimately, building a locality-based ecosystem that binds us all to a collective purpose takes extensive commitment, but it has the potential to be a highly cost-effective way of working with considerable rewards for all involved.
Julie Lewis is director of learning standards and school partnerships at Ealing Council. Tessa Hodgson, headteacher at Oaklands Primary School, founding chair of ELP and cluster lead. Dr Clare Rees MBE is principal quality and partnership lead 3-11 at Ealing Learning Partnership
Find out more about Ealing Learning Partnership and the Ealing Grid for Learning here. ELP’s work features in the LocalED 2025 independent evaluation report, Forging Local Coherence, by Professor Toby Greany and Dr Susan Cousin from the University of Nottingham. Download the report here.
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