Challenge the Gap: Challenge Partners

The Education Endowment Foundation has awarded a £960,000 grant to Challenge Partners to develop a school-to-school programme of whole-school approaches to narrowing the gap between free school meal pupils and their peers.

The programme will be delivered through ‘learning threes’ of schools whereby 15 outstanding Challenge Partner schools with expertise at narrowing the gap will each work with two other schools. It will reach 135 schools – primary and secondary – over two years.

This programme will build on the evidence base of what works in raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils, and will seek to share this best practice across the participating schools. Challenge Partners is a new network of schools committed to school-to-school improvement, building on the success of initiatives such as the London Challenge.

Six members of staff from each school – leaders, teachers and other professionals (for example teaching assistants or governors) – will take part in half-termly workshops with a group of other schools. The workshops will focus on approaches that are critical to narrowing the gap, such as the use of data to target pupils and monitor progress and the importance of high quality teaching. Between the workshops, participants will share their learning with other staff in their schools, supported by the other schools in their trio. Following the pilot year, the outstanding staff in all these participating schools will lead a further two schools through the programme.

The EEF will commission an evaluation to measure the impact the programme makes, to test whether schools can work together to successfully narrow the gap and raise attainment. If so, harnessing the power of school-to-school work could prove to be a cost-effective, sustainable way of improving standards.

Manchester University will independently evaluate the impact of the approach.