Partnerships
Challenge Partners is an education charity, led by practitioners, through which schools
collaborate to improve each other and the education system as a whole, so all children benefit.
We work with schools across the country, and focus on school improvement, leadership development and knowledge exchange. Our programmes are grounded in evidence of what works, regular quality assurance, and sharing the collective wisdom in our schools.
The schools in our network get great results: boosting exam and progress scores, improving Ofsted grades - and, most importantly, transforming children's life chances.
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Bexley Education Improvement Partnership (BEIP)
The BEIP schools educate over 8,100 pupils and students – a sixth of all the pupils and students in the London Borough of Bexley – working in 9 primary and 3 secondary schools. Pupils and students mostly live in the north of the Borough; a community rich in diversity of culture and an exciting, progressive place to be. However, in some important respects, they face greater challenges than their peers elsewhere in the Borough:
- the proportion of these pupils and students known to be eligible for free school meals or Pupil Premium funding is more than twice that in the Borough’s other schools
- the proportion who have statements of Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) or are supported at School Action Plus is twice that of the Borough’s other schools.
- English is not the first language of nearly a quarter of these pupils and students; in the Borough’s other schools it is only a tenth.
This is why the schools formed a partnership thirteen years ago to work together to increase the opportunities for these children to succeed in life. This included:
- employing and training specialist Learning Mentors to encourage those children facing particular difficulties in learning
- setting up learning support centres to give extra support where needed
- providing specialist teaching and support programmes for the More Able or Talented
- running staff development programmes helping our teachers to tailor their teaching and learning skills more specifically for our children.