Schools Together
Celebrating and encouraging partnership projects between independent schools, maintained schools and local communities.
This site showcases a sample of cross-sector collaborations. It also provides advice about setting up successful partnerships and helps schools to find partners and ideas for future projects.
Education Secretary Justine Greening said: "The benefits of partnership cut both ways. This isn't just about the independent sector working and helping to raise standards in the state sector. Actually, there are significant benefits for independent schools from being better linked in with the broader education system of which they are part.
"We as a government also recognise that different independent schools will be able to bring different things to working in partnership and that we shouldn't necessarily expect the same from all schools.
"For some schools, yes, we want to see them becoming sponsors, or opening a free school. For other schools, we want to see them playing a leadership role perhaps by having other involvement around school governance. For others, there are opportunities such as sharing expertise in subject areas or supporting teacher training."
Engaging in Partnerships
Schools have been engaged in partnerships for many years. The main motivation has been a desire to engage with other schools in the local community for mutual benefit.
Partnerships between schools have grown because more and more schools - maintained and independent - have had such a good experience with them. Teachers have shared training opportunities, observed each others’ lessons and exchanged teaching materials. Schools have supported each other’s curriculum development, careers advice, university preparation and subject specialist teaching. Sporting and drama facilities have been shared, with workshops and Saturday classes made available for children who are not pupils at the host school. Sharing these experiences is what this website is for, demonstrating the excellent work that is already going on and inspiring more schools to get involved.
Adding Partnerships
ISC schools can add details of their partnerships to this website. Please register and then follow the instructions to add projects.
Facts and figures
According to the 2017 census of ISC schools, well over 1,100 schools are involved in partnerships with state schools. 498 invite state school pupils to attend drama classes or performances and 614 host joint sporting events. 389 schools work on projects to improve the quality of teaching and learning with state schools and 179 schools support local students when they apply to university. Partnership figures can be seen here.
