Positive about partnerships

Leighton Park School in Reading, Berkshire, is committed to engagement with its local community...

Senior Leadership Teams are all very aware that partnerships is the latest buzzword to sweep through our schools and for them, Partnership Programmes are becoming a ‘must-have’. But do you really need to factor this into your thinking when you’re deciding the next step in your child’s education? Or is it just a trend you can ignore?

Embracing a more formal approach and setting a strategy for partnership activities is the next step on a journey that many schools were already on. As a parent, you need to ask the schools you are considering about their Partnership Programme because the more robust it is, the better the experience your child will have of engagement with the community beyond their school. Society is becoming ever more diverse and it can only be advantageous to your son or daughter as they mature for their schools to facilitate positive experiences and interactions for them with different organisations, different communities, and different people.

Natasha Coccia, Assistant Head and Director of Outreach, at Leighton Park School, recognises the value of partnerships for both sides, reflecting, “Successful partnerships are hugely powerful. They can literally transform lives from tackling educational disadvantage in local schools to loneliness in the wider community. Partnerships expose our students to real world issues and help them foster valuable new skills. In turn we gain incredible expertise from partners who can improve our way of working.”

In the 1920s and 30s, Leighton Park had a scout hut on its school grounds. The hut provided a venue for local scout meetings that encouraged the School’s students to integrate with local lads from Reading. In the summertime the School organised adventure holidays to the countryside, experiencing outdoor pursuits, fresh air and plenty of fun.

In the 1970s, a group of Leighton Park students became fixated with the need for a particular community in Africa to have a landrover. They fundraised extensively, bought the landrover and subsequently drove it to Africa, in the days before risk assessments obviously! These days the School runs biennial trips to Tanzania and Uganda, returning to the same African communities each time providing labour for building projects and donating practical supplies of clothes, educational equipment such as PCs and funds for essentials such as a water tank.

Leighton Park is a Quaker School and the Quaker testimonies of Simplicity, Truth, Respect, Integrity, Peace, Equality and Sustainability have always been intrinsic to every aspect of School life. At the heart of those testimonies are the value they place on care and consideration for others and an awareness of relationships that extend beyond the School. There are many other schools, Quaker and otherwise, together with many other parents, who actively embrace these values too. For a lot of people the concept of partnerships is just an extension of ‘doing the right thing’ and for schools like Leighton Park, ‘doing more of what we have always done’. Despite being a current buzzword, the idea of partnerships is far from new.

Natasha is very conscious of this position, “From pit prop making and fruit picking camps for the war effort (we still have OL boys alive who remember these days), to taking refreshments down to Reading station to hand out when a train of refugees came through, outreach work and partnerships is in the DNA of Leighton Park. What we are doing differently now is embedding the work into the curriculum and making real space for the partnerships to happen with regularity so we can measure the impact. Partnership work now forms part of the strategic vision of Leighton Park and therefore we will see real growth in this area over the next three years as resources are being invested on a larger scale. This will include academic mentoring in literacy and numeracy at local state primary schools, sharing our expertise in STEAM with local KS4/5 students as well as providing co-curricular opportunities in music, the arts, sport and modern languages. Exciting times are ahead!”

Ideally, a partnership model should include a variety of organisations so that there is a greater impact on a broader cross-section of the community. For example, developing partnerships with a nursery or primary school, a secondary school, a university, an adult facility such a refugee support centre, and a care home recognises that there are groups of all ages that can benefit from the support and facilities a school has to offer. The benefit to students is a sense of pride in their own abilities as they support younger children in their learning journey, greater empathy and an improved open-mindedness as they develop relationships with older generations, and an acknowledgement of the importance of diversity and alternative perspectives at a time when the daily objective of many teenagers is simply to fit in as a clone of their peers.

Your child may even be happier as there is scientific research into a phenomenon known as ‘Helper’s High’ whereby altruistic deeds cause the brain to release endorphins. Partnership projects encouraging acts of kindness facilitate such altruism improving happiness levels and supporting students to develop a clear, confident sense of self.

The consideration of a successful partnership should also take into account where there is the greatest need. A primary school in a deprived area with significant development targets identified on their recent Ofsted report is more likely to benefit from a relationship with an independent school than the local prep. It is much more motivating for both parties to participate fully in the relationship when the benefits are clear. Through the school’s Partnership Programme, your son or daughter will see the difference they are making to the lives of others, shoring up their own sense of self-esteem and filling their resilience bucket. The partner organisation has access to the school’s skills, equipment or opportunities through an official channel which they would otherwise struggle to find.

Making a difference is really what partnerships should be about. As Natasha Coccia explains, “A successful partnership is mutually beneficial and has a positive and measurable impact on outcomes for students and staff. Successful partnerships between schools and community organisations need to have clear aims, objectives and success criteria to really pack a punch!”

So, as you consider schools for your child, add another question to your queries about league tables and lists of hobbies. Ask about Partnership Programmes, and make sure you satisfy yourself, for the sake of your son or daughter, “Will this school give my child an experience of partnerships that ‘really pack a punch’?

This article first appeared in the 2020/21 edition of Which London School? & the South-East, which you can view in full here: