England is widely recognised as an extreme example by international standards of high-school-autonomy-high-accountability quasi-market reform.  The 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) introduced parental choice and gave the newly constituted school Governing Bodies responsibility for both resources and, through the emerging framework of a National Curriculum, national tests and the Ofsted inspection agency, performance.  This broad policy direction has been pursued by successive Conservative and Labour governments so that by the time of PISA 2009, schools in the UK were judged to be among the most autonomous in the world (OECD, 2011). 

Given this focus on quasi-markets and competition, it may seem strange that England has pioneered models of school to school support and now sees networking and collaboration as central to the success of its ‘self-improving school system’ reform efforts (DfE, 2010; Hargreaves, 2012; Earley et al, 2012; House of Commons Education Select Committee, 2013; Sandals and Bryant, 2014;).  How and why has this occurred and what are the emerging lessons for policy makers and practitioners more widely?  

This paper explores the development of school to school support and partnerships in England.  It is arguable that school partnerships have moved centre stage in English policy over the past decade and that they are now a defining feature of the Government’s approach to system improvement.  Most schools engage in partnerships that are informal and emergent, based on shared interests, concerns, or simply personal relationships.  Even partnerships that do have a more formal basis face sometimes fraught political and inter-personal adaptive challenges (Kamp, 2013).  The focus here however is on more formal arrangements that tend to be structured through a policy-driven process.  These generally fall into one of the following categories (though these are not mutually exclusive): 

• structural governance models, such as multi-academy trusts/academy chains and federations;
• designations based on formal criteria, such as National Leaders of Education (NLEs) and Teaching Schools; and
• role related partnerships, such as where an Executive Head oversees two or more schools (but not in a formal federation). 

Key to this development has been the emergence of a cadre of what are called ‘system leaders’, broadly defined as leaders who work beyond their immediate school to support the improvement of the wider system. 

The need for such lateral school to school partnerships has become apparent in the face of evidence that neither top-down centrally imposed change, nor pure competition and marketization can achieve sustained improvement (Lubiensky, 2009; Waslander, Pater and van der Weide, 2010; OECD, 2015).  Instead, the aim has been to ‘unleash greatness’ (Mourshed et al, 2010) by asking school system leaders to work together in ways which transfer knowledge, expertise and capacity within and between schools so that all schools improve. 

There is emerging evidence that such models can prove effective in addressing underperformance and improving outcomes, in particular in some of the most challenging schools, as well as a growing understanding of how system leaders operate in order to be effective (Higham, Hopkins and Matthews, 2009; Chapman et al, 2009; Chapman et al, 2011; Hill et al, 2012; Hutchings, Francis and De Vries 2014; Muijs, 2015).  But England’s ‘self-improving, school-led’ system also faces significant challenges, at both conceptual and practical levels, which this paper reviews (Coldron et al, 2014; Hatcher, 2014; Greany, 2014).  It concludes by outlining some implications for policy, research and practice.    

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