Support for every part of running a school

School improvement partners for schools, trusts and local authorities

Most leaders do not need telling that something needs to improve. They can usually name it before we arrive. What is harder is finding the time to stand back from it, and finding someone who has seen how other schools in the same position worked their way out.

A school improvement partnership gives you that person across the year rather than for a day. We agree the priorities with you, visit regularly, look closely at the things that will make the biggest difference, and give leaders and governors an honest read on whether the plan is working. Between visits you have someone at the end of the phone who already knows your context, which is often the part schools value most.

From our experienceThe schools that improve fastest are not the ones that do the most. They are the ones that choose two or three things, do them properly, and check honestly whether they worked.

Curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment reviews

Curriculum work is never finished, and that is the thing nobody says out loud. A school gets one subject into good shape and two others quietly slip while attention is elsewhere. Subject leaders are often teachers with a title and a bit of release time, being asked to lead something they have never been trained to lead.

We look at what is actually planned, what is being taught, and what pupils have remembered a term later, which is a very different question from what was covered. That means lesson visits, work scrutiny, and talking to the children themselves. Assessment comes into the same conversation, because plenty of schools collect a great deal of data that changes nothing, and the useful question is whether it tells a teacher something they did not already know.

From our experienceOne of the most common things we find is a curriculum that is strong on paper and inconsistent in practice. That is rarely a planning problem. It is usually a subject leadership and training one.

Inclusion, behaviour, attendance and wellbeing support

Attendance is the hardest problem in most schools at the moment, and leaders are tired of being told it matters. What helps is working out which children are missing, why, and which of those reasons a school can actually do something about, then being relentless about that group rather than about the headline figure.

Behaviour is much the same. Most schools have a policy. Fewer have a culture where every adult responds in a way pupils can predict, which is what children who struggle most need in order to feel safe enough to learn. Running through all of it is inclusion: how the young people closest to the edge of your provision are getting on, and whether anyone would notice if one of them quietly disappeared. Staff wellbeing belongs in the same conversation, because the adults hold all of this together.

From our experienceSchools that turn attendance around usually do it one family at a time, with somebody whose actual job it is. It is rarely the letters that make the difference.

SEND and alternative provision consultancy

Specialist settings are held to the same standards as everyone else and a good deal more besides. Leaders in independent special schools, alternative provision and pupil referral units are balancing education, care, therapy, placements and commissioners, often for young people whose previous school could not keep them.

We work in these settings constantly, so the support is grounded in what they are actually like rather than in mainstream practice adapted at the edges. That covers whole school SEND and the quality of EHCP outcomes, commissioning and quality assurance of AP, reintegration, setting up new or internal provision, and registration where a provision needs to become a school.

From our experienceEvery school's circumstances are different, and this is where that is most true. Two AP settings with the same numbers on paper can be doing completely different work.

Safeguarding audits, reviews and support for schools

A tidy single central record has never on its own kept a child safe. What matters is whether staff notice, whether they report, whether anyone follows up, and whether a child in your school would know who to tell. That is what we look at, alongside the records.

The work ranges from a full audit against KCSIE or a section 175 and 157 return, to an SCR check, safer recruitment, supervision for designated safeguarding leads, and ongoing consultancy when something complicated is unfolding and you want a second view from someone who is not in the building.

From our experienceDesignated safeguarding leads carry more than most people realise, often without anyone supervising them. Supervision is the thing schools tell us afterwards they wish they had put in sooner.

Independent reviews, audits, investigations and compliance

There comes a point in most schools where the internal view has gone as far as it can. Leaders are close to the work, governors are relying on what they are told, and everyone would be reassured by somebody from outside looking properly and saying what they find.

Some of this work is routine assurance: policies, the website, health and safety and premises, data protection, financial reviews against SFVS and ICFP. Some of it is more sensitive. An independent investigation gives you somebody genuinely at arm's length when a complaint or allegation needs handling properly, which protects the people involved as much as it protects the school.

From our experienceMany leaders tell us they expected a review to feel like an inspection. The difference is that nobody is deciding anything about you. The conversation is about what happens next, and you are in it.

Inspection readiness and health checks

Waiting for a call is its own kind of pressure, and it tends to push schools towards rehearsing rather than being ready. The two are not the same, and inspectors can tell the difference quickly.

A health check gives you an honest read on where you would land today and what would make the most difference before then, whether you are inspected by Ofsted, by ISI, or under the British Schools Overseas framework. It is also the right piece of work when a material change is planned and the regulator will want to see that you have thought it through.

Leadership support, appraisal and school governance reviews

School leadership is a job people are often promoted into and then left to work out alone. A new head has nobody in the building doing the same role. Governors and trustees, meanwhile, are volunteers being asked to hold professionals to account on subjects most of them have never worked in.

We support both sides of that. Headteacher and chief executive appraisal, done so it develops the person as well as holding them to account. External reviews of governance, clerking, and help recruiting and inducting the trustees a board is actually short of. And the strategic work around it: vision, admissions and pupil numbers, academy conversion and trust growth.

Free school applications, bid writing and education funding

Some of the most important moments for a trust or school arrive with a deadline attached: a central wave for new free schools, a local authority presumption competition, a significant change that needs approval, or a funding round that could pay for the project children have been waiting for. The ideas are usually strong. Finding the time to turn them into a convincing application is the hard part.

We work alongside your team from the first idea to submission and interview. That means testing feasibility honestly, building the evidence of need, writing in plain and confident language, and making sure the education plan, staffing and finances tell one consistent story. We also help schools and providers evidence the social value they create, which increasingly counts when commissioners and funders make decisions.

From our experienceThe applications that succeed are rarely the longest. They are the ones where every section clearly answers the question and keeps the children the school will serve at the centre.

SEND sufficiency, place planning and research for local authorities

Local authorities are making high stakes decisions about places, provision and funding in a system under real pressure. Specialist places are full, high needs budgets are stretched, rolls are rising in one area and falling in the next, and statutory duties for childcare and play still need to be met well.

Our research and sufficiency work gives officers, members and partners an independent, evidence-based picture to plan from. We combine careful data analysis with the practical insight of consultants who have led and inspected schools, special schools and alternative provision, and we always listen to children, families and settings as part of the evidence.

From our experienceNumbers tell you where the pressure is. Visiting provision and listening to families tells you what would actually make things better for children.

Independent, international and British schools overseas

Independent schools answer to a different framework, a different inspectorate and, usually, directly to a proprietor or a board with its own expectations. Advice written for the maintained sector only takes you so far.

We work with independent schools, proprietor bodies and British schools overseas on compliance with the independent school standards, on opening a school and getting through registration, and on retained advice across the year for schools that would rather have somebody on hand than commission each piece separately.