This article emerges from work undertaken with leaders from a local authority who took part in a programme entitled "Advanced Leadership in Integrated Children's Services Environment" or ALICSE programme. The aim of this course was to engage leaders and managers in thinking differently about their roles and to consider how they could…

School-to-school collaboration as a school improvement method has grown in importance in England in recent years, and there is some evidence that such collaboration can have a positive impact on both capacity to change and student attainment. Most previous work in the area has focused on the urban context, however, despite the fact that increasing…

This article reports findings from the first year of a longitudinal, mixed-methods case study of a large teaching school alliance in England. This national initiative is intended to drive improvement at system level by grouping schools around formally designated teaching schools. These "alliances" work collaboratively to share learning,…

The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education management,…

Challenge the Gap (CtG) is a school collaboration programme designed by Challenge Partners that aims to break the link between disadvantage and attainment. The main components of CtG are: (1) after-school workshops drawing on published research and evidenced practice; (2) focused in-school interventions with a selected cohort of disadvantaged…

The principle of schools collaborating to improve is one that has seen growing interest in recent years, and there is emerging evidence that in particular collaboration between high and lower performing schools can be an effective school improvement method. However, this evidence relates primarily to secondary schools, and little research has been…

The use of networks as a means of communicating knowledge and ideas and in promoting innovation among schools has emerged globally over the past decade. Currently, inter-school collaboration is not only at the fore nationally in England, but also has become integral to the school improvement agenda. However, networking theory is a disparate field…

Linking between schools in the United Kingdom and schools in sub-Saharan Africa has been a feature of the educational landscape for more than twenty years, but became a government priority between 2000 and 2010. Whilst the interest in Ireland was less, both countries resourced linking programmes primarily as a means of raising awareness of…

In England, federations are defined as groups of schools that have a formal agreement to collaborate with the aim of raising achievement and promoting inclusion and innovation. This paper presents a number of findings from the case study strand of a 3-year study investigating the impact of 37 federations (see Lindsay et al., 2007). Maximum…

This study examines the different types, and effectiveness, of collaboration used by providers to widen participation in further education and training in England between 2001 and 2003. The first section, an introduction, sets a scene for the study and definitions are offered for the main terminology--collaboration and widening participation. The…