Summary

This section introduces the concept of Education Improvement Partnership, looking at what they are and why they were introduced, their underlying principles and most importantly, what they can do.   

Introduction to EIPs:
There has been a long history of schools and other agencies working together to improve outcomes for children and young people. School networks can take many forms and serve many purposes. The concept of Education Improvement Partnerships (EIPs) is designed to give some unity and sharper purpose to the idea of collaboration in the education service.

We hope that the idea of EIPs will stimulate:
• the expansion of high quality collaboration
• the rationalisation of partnership activity where appropriate
• the devolution of responsibilities and resources from local authorities to groups of schools and other partners

We see EIPs as having the potential in a variety of contexts, including:
• 14-19 provision
• behaviour improvement and alternative educational provision
• the development of childcare and extended services    

To download our EIP prospectus please click here ( 1.0 Mb). 

Purpose

An Education Improvement Partnership should set out its aims within the following framework of objectives:
• school improvement: raising attainment and improving behaviour and attendance in all schools within the partnership;
• personalisation of provision for children and young people;
• delivering on the outcomes of Every Child Matters in all schools and through childcare and extended services.

Principles 
 
The Education Improvement Partnership should define the common purpose underpinning its joint activities and how it intends to pursue its over-arching aims.

The Education Improvement Partnership will often serve a defined local community of learners and should operate on an inclusive basis. Every school in the defined locality should be encouraged to participate.  

The members of an Education Improvement Partnership should be equally committed to success for all children and young people. This commitment could be demonstrated both through the partnership's inclusivity and through mutual accountability, and could be supported through the establishment of a shared partnership fund to which each member contributes a specified sum.

Where functions are being delegated from a local authority, the Education Improvement Partnership should have a joint agreement (by way of a protocol or service level agreement) with that authority to deliver an agreed, specified set of functions. Appropriate funding would be devolved from the local authority to the partnership in accordance with those functions.  

In these cases, it must be clear how this joint agreement fits into the wider Children's and Young People's Plan for improving children’s services across the area – and within the children's trust arrangements which will underpin it and deliver improved outcomes.

The members of the partnership will be mutually accountable for shared functions and for the outcomes it delivers in connection with those functions. The partnership will want to develop a strategy which is broad-based, raising attainment amongst learners, promoting efficiency through workforce reform, and combating bureaucracy to maximise the benefits of collaborative working for teachers. It could benchmark itself against other partnerships through self-evaluation and peer review to measure the impact that partnership working is making on learning and teaching across the group of schools and other partners.

Functions 
 
Improving services and opportunities for learners should be at the heart of everything an Education Improvement Partnership does. Sustaining improvement depends on making progress across the board: raising attainment, improving standards of behaviour and levels of attendance, and ensuring the safety and well-being of children and young people both in and out of school.  

Partnerships will also set out from different starting points and with different capacity, depending on previous experience. They may start by identifying a function on which they have already begun to work together, and once the partnership has become more established, it could then go on to take on other functions in order to improve provision around all the priority areas set out above.   
 
The following section describes how working in an Education Improvement Partnership could help schools meet priority demands and make a fuller offer to learners and their families across the board. More examples, and specific case studies, will be available on this website: this will be a living site, updated as we receive case studies from you.

Related topic links - Setting up an EIP,  Funding an EIP, EIP Resources and Case Studies.