Membership of Education Improvement Partnerships, (EIPs) should be flexible to suit the needs of the partner institutions and their learners. However, in order to meet a wide range of demands, especially those around 14-19 reforms, behaviour improvement, and provision of extended services, partnerships will need to include, for example, FE colleges, work-based training providers, early years settings, such as nursery schools or accredited childminder networks, and other private and voluntary sector providers, business partners and sports clubs as well as primary and secondary schools, special schools, City Technology Colleges, academies, PRUs and independent schools. Cross-phase models would be particularly advantageous, providing for the community of pupils throughout their school lives, from 0 - 19.

Diversity of membership within a partnership will be a powerful way of meeting the needs of all the children within it, unlocking resources and approaches. It will also be a way of widening access to the specialist expertise of, for example, schools in Leading Edge partnerships and Specialist schools.

Most EIPs will have a geographical basis in order to deliver local benefits. They may of course extend across local authority boundaries, and schools may be members of more than one partnership or network. None of these arrangements however are designed to preclude schools from being members of other partnerships which are national or international.

Not all providers within one EIP will be affected by the same issues at the same time. The best response to local need might be for smaller groups of schools within one EIP to work together on issues which affect them more than their neighbours at a particular time. Whilst all members of the partnership should work, ultimately, towards improvement across the board, there is no obligation on all those in the partnership to be working on exactly the same areas all the time - local need should be the guide here.

It is important that EIPs are founded upon inclusive principles: that is, that no schools are left out in a given locality. Size will depend on local factors, context, and the functions which it is proposed should be collaboratively assumed. In LIG collaboratives and Excellence Clusters between 5 and 30 schools has been shown to be a good workable size, and all specialist schools are used to working with 5 or more partner schools. However, there is no rule on this and the size of your EIP should be for local decision. Local authorities will have a role to play as brokers here. A diverse mix of schools, colleges, and other providers, in terms of specialism, resources and strengths is likely to provide a strong basis for raising standards across the partnership as a whole.

Setting up an EIP can seem a daunting task. It is not surprising then that since the launch of EIPs Prospectus back in March 2005 we have had numerous enquiries and given advice to a great number of people who would like to know more about how to go about creating a partnership. The following article by Pat McDermott, Head of St Josephs Catholic School, is an excellent account of the advice we provide and the throught processes involved in establishing a partnership. As such, we would definitely recommend you to have a look. To view, please click here ( 181 Kb).