We trace the recent development of the Oxford Education Deanery as an expansion of an initial teacher education partnership to include wider school-university collaboration in professional development, and in research. The current policy pressures in England are described on both school-university partnerships for initial teacher education, and on schools and universities generally. Then, using cultural historical theory, we show the recent development of a complex alliance through shared understandings of motives, which created common knowledge expressed within a common narrative. We argue that such re-imagined school-university partnerships offer an optimistic future for teacher education.