With Wootton Bassett’s support Wood Green moved from special measures to good in the space of a year: a fantastic result.
George Croxford, Wootton Bassett Hub, Wiltshire
This year has been very successful for our hub. Originally we were a hub of 4 schools, all of which were outstanding on joining, and have remained outstanding which is significant especially as many schools around here have since lost their outstanding status. In the space of a year we’ve gone from a hub of four to a community of 23 schools. We’ve achieved this through building our teaching alliance around the Challenge Partners programme. Our hub is quite diverse – we have schools small and large, we cover a big geographical spread and there’s a genuine diversity of schools. It’s a very open collaboration and there are no ‘rivals’, only supporters.
We now have members who were previously quite intimidated by the idea of having reviews, and avoided it for up to four years: those teachers are now our champions, they’ve absolutely loved the reviews process.
Challenge Partners was commissioned by the Department for Education to implement change in Wood Green School when it went to special measures. With Royal Wootton Bassett’s support Wood Green moved from special measures to good in the space of a year: a fantastic result.
Hub management is proving invaluable in sharing best practice and getting value for money. All the schools in our hub can get value from it – whether it’s contributing to the working groups looking at assessment and life without levels, or drawing on the research we’re doing into fairer funding. We’re pleased that our new schools are benefitting from being part of Challenge Partners - both secondary and primary alike.
