Oaklands School is a member of the Challenge Partners Network of Excellence (NoE).
Challenge Partners is a practitioner-led education charity that enables collaborative school improvement networks to enhance the life chances of all children, especially the most disadvantaged.
Challenge Partners was formed to continue the learning which emerged from the development of Teaching Schools that evolved out of the London Challenge. Since its formation in 2011, the outcomes for pupils in Challenge Partners schools have consistently improved faster than the national average.
Challenge Partners provides networks and programmes that facilitate sustainable collaboration and challenge between schools in order to underpin improvements in outcomes which would not be possible for a school, or group of schools, to achieve as effectively on its own. Programmes include both continual school improvement and high impact change programmes, the largest of which are the Network of Excellence and Challenge the Gap.
Challenge Partners comprises 450 schools in 39 local partnerships across the country, reaching over 200,000 pupils, with 21% from low income households (compared to the national average of 13.6%). They welcome all phases and stages: and are currently 57% primary, 21% secondary,19% special/AP and 3% other (all-through, middle, 16+); all governance types, 51% are academies representing 80 multi-academy trusts; and the majority are good and outstanding.
School leaders in Challenge Partners continue to play a major role in the development of the English education system. One that they aspire to be world-class, collaborative and practitioner-led.
Challenge Partners is supported by the Social Business Trust, a charity that supports effective social enterprises scale-up their impact, through their partner organisations: Bain & Company, British Gas, Clifford Chance, Credit Suisse, EY, Permira and Thomson Reuters.
Over the past four years, this distributed leadership approach has become a distinctive and deeply embedded aspect of the school’s culture and ethos. Through a strong distributed leadership model, the vision is authentically owned by all staff and consistently translated into practice. The culture is coherent, values driven and visible in daily interactions, decision-making and provision. Staff at all levels participate in classroom-based professional Development Partnerships (PDPs), engaging in action research to improve teaching and pupil progress. Each PDP begins with a clearly defined question linked to practice or outcomes. Action plans are developed collaboratively, reviewed across the academic year and refined in response to evidence. Teams share their findings at a whole staff end of year celebration, strengthening collective accountability and professional pride. Staff feedback confirms high levels of engagement and investment in this deliberately developmental model of school improvement. The curriculum vision is research informed and led by area of learning leads, drawing on child development, neurodiversity and educational theory. This is captured in detailed handbooks and underpins the school’s bespoke assessment systems, ‘Oaklands Progressive Assessment Ladder’ (OPAL). Co-constructed by staff, these systems reflect best practice and integrate recognised frameworks such as Autism Education Trust (AET) standards, developmental milestones and diagnostic criteria. Assessment ladders are reviewed regularly by School Improvement Teams (SITs), including governor involvement, ensuring they remain responsive to the evolving complexity of the pupil cohort. SIT documentation evidences the direct impact of this collaboration on curriculum refinement and assessment precision.
SITs engage all staff in advancing strategic priorities, building expertise while positively influencing wellbeing, retention and career progression. This shared purpose has resulted in measurable improvements in assessment accuracy and classroom practice.
The model has been shared externally through Challenge Partners ‘Growing the Top’ trios. It has been recognised by the Inclusion Quality Mark (IQM) and featured within a directory of schools exemplifying inclusive practice. IQM highlighted the positive impact on staff knowledge, confidence and professional fulfilment, contributing to strong retention. A clear and consistent professional language underpins this work. PDPs replace traditional appraisal with collaborative goals, enabling staff to learn with and from one another. Impact is evidenced through staff feedback and sustained improvements in pupil progress.
Impact on Outcomes:
The SITS include staff from all pathways, contributing to collective pedagogical and subject expertise, and positively impacting on pupil outcomes. The impact of the SITs work is evidenced in pupil voice reports with positive feedback about the curriculum, and in parent voice relating to their children’s progress. All staff are actively engaged in PDPs. Having also been trained in positive behaviour support and mental health strategies, the impact of staff working together on PDPs has seen a continued reduction in the need for physical interventions across the school, with no physical interventions in the previous term. All classroom staff are also empowered to contribute to pupils’ personalised resilience building plans, the impact of which is evident in case studies and documented progress review meetings
Challenge Partners Review Report
Please click the link below to read our latest report from Challenge Partners.
Building Foundations for Fulfilling Futures