Challenge Partners
We undertook our second annual review with Challenge Partners. Our membership to this organisation means that we are committed to regular reviews of the school that are led by an experienced lead reviewer and team of trained lead reviewers. We feel that this rigorous process of regular reviews is beneficial for the school in order to ensure that we receive a constructive critique of the work that we do; it is only through feedback that we continually improve.
The team of reviewers is with us for 3 days. On the first day, they had the chance to look through the school documentation, such as our plans for further school improvements, our evaluations of the school’s work, our curriculum and our data outcomes.
This was followed by two days of seeing the school in action, including observations of teaching and learning from Nursery to Year 6, and looking at children’s books right across the curriculum. The purpose of this was to ensure that they could check that the quality of teaching is consistently high every day.
Alongside these activities, they also held several meetings with school leaders to ensure we are developing robust plans for the school, that our judgements of the school’s work are accurate and to check that our monitoring of data and groups of pupils is rigorous. Most importantly, they spent time talking to lots of children to ensure their views about the school are heard.
We are absolutely delighted to report that after two vigorous days of observations across all subjects, and reviewing our data outcomes results, self-evaluation and School Improvement Plan, Elaine was evaluated as ‘Leading’ across the board. Please click on the link below to read the report.
Every observed lesson demonstrated an exceptionally high quality of teaching and learning experiences. Lessons included high-level questioning to probe and dig deeper, very well-established learning routines with a broad range of resources to support and challenge the learning including collaboration, rich discussions and thoughtful responses to feedback from our children who modelled fantastic learning behaviours and respect, exemplary relationships between staff and pupils which enabled all children to make strong progress.
They were particularly impressed with pupil leadership and how articulate and proud our children are of the school community. They also thought the breadth of our curriculum keeps pupils interested in life outside their own community and provides them with high aspirations of themselves and what they want to achieve.
To read our latest report, please see below.
What is Challenge Partners?
Challenge Partners enables collaboration between schools to enhance the life chances of all children in an ever-changing world
Challenge Partners offers a range of programmes. Each of them is based on a collaborative approach and aims to tackle specific issues. They are grounded on the evidence of what works, regular feedback and quality assurance, and collective learning.
By becoming a member we benefit from being part of a national community of schools and having access to a members' area which contains a bank of resources such as case studies of practice.
They also offer:
A collaborative network of over 350 schools nationally, organised into regional hubs, through which bespoke programmes that enable all schools to improve are delivered. Schools in the Network of Excellence take part in annual QA reviews and are supported to find collaborative solutions to challenges they are facing. The QA Review is a externally validated professionally-led peer review model focused on teaching and learning. Find out more.
To be directed to the Challenge Partners website please click here