Summary - This section provides background on Education Improvement Partnerships, or EIPs as they are commonly known, covering their origin, purpose, the expectations of what they can achieve and the various contexts in which they can operate.
There has been a long history of schools and other agencies working together to improve outcomes for children and young people. Focused and good quality collaboration between schools, FE colleges and other educational providers, and with other statutory and voluntary sector organisations, has proved an effective way to improve the delivery of services and raise standards of education within communities.
The Government attaches great importance to learning from effective partnership working. High quality collaboration is a key complement to the working of strong autonomous institutions. Confident schools want to collaborate with others in their community to drive a shared agenda for improving standards, to share resources and good practice, to ensure high quality provision for all young people and to underpin community cohesion.
School networks can take many forms and serve many purposes. The concept of Education Improvement Partnerships introduced in this prospectus is designed to give some unity and sharper purpose to the idea of collaboration in the education service. We hope the idea of EIPs and the information on this website will stimulate:
- the expansion of high quality collaboration
- the rationalisation of partnership activity where appropriate
- the devolution of responsibilities and resources form local authorities to groups of schools and other partners
We see EIPs having potential in a variety of contexts, including:
- 14-19 provision
- behaviour improvement and alternative educational provision
- the development of childcare and extended services
Please tell us your plans for partnership and where these will add greatest benefit. Later in the year, we will host a special conference for learning providers and local authorities making real progress with collaborative working of this kind.
Publication Date: May 2005
Last updated: July 2006 |
