Background

The Innovation Unit supports networking and collaboration as a radical answer to raising standards of teaching and learning in every school.

In the recent past, schools have tended to work in isolation from each other, driven by competition and league tables. Encouraging schools to work together offers an enormous opportunity for change and improvement by constructively unleashing the shared potential of schools and teachers.

We believe that networking can have a positive impact on all of the following areas:

• increasing attainment
• bringing schools and teachers together to share good practice, jointly tackling common problems and creating new knowledge
• providing pupils with a broader range of opportunities
• enabling joint professional development
• generating energy and enthusiasm
• building local capacity for continuous improvement
• improving morale, recruitment and retention rates.

The Impact of Networks

A recent systematic review done by the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education and the Network Learning Group at the National College for School Leadership found evidence that networks can be an effective vehicle for improving teaching, learning and attainment. It also found evidence that networks could add considerable value to what schools or other organisations can do on their own to improve pupil learning - from access to resources to expanded access to expertise and support.

Most of the effective networks targeted socially excluded, minority or underachieving students. The involvement of parents or businesses and community organisations was a noticeable feature of all effective networks. Indeed, parents emerged as key network partners - or targets, particularly in projects involving at-risk, minority or SEN children.

The size of the networks appeared to bear little relation to their effectiveness, suggesting that it's the quality of the collaboration between local clusters within the networks which is key. Another striking and consistent feature of the networks studied in the review was that collaborative professional development was the principal means of effecting transfer of knowledge and practice within networks.

The full report of the review The impact of networks on pupils, practitioners, organisations and the communities they serve is available to download in pdf format from the NCSL website.

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