In this second article Simon Renshaw – Leicester & Leicestershire Teaching School Hub continues his description of the development of the East Midlands South Hub which is one of the founding Hubs in Challenge Partners and a Teaching School. The article concludes with comments from Dame Sue John which places the work of the hub within the framework of Challenge Partners and sets its approach within the context of the Education White Paper. 

Organisation and Communication

Strong relationships require equally strong structures. From the outset, our role has not been simply to run meetings, but to curate purposeful spaces for collaboration.

Alongside termly Hub meetings, we host webinars throughout the year, featuring expert input aligned with school improvement priorities. Communication is proactive and multi-directional, supported by shared calendars, agendas, digital materials, and social media engagement.

As the Hub has grown, dedicated administrative support has become essential to maintaining coherence and efficiency.

Leadership is deliberately distributed. A highly valued steering group—embedded within the annual Hub action plan—ensures that decision-making is collective, sustainable, and reflective of the group’s breadth of expertise. This distributed model underpins the Hub’s resilience, ensuring that its work does not depend on a small number of individuals.

Collaboration and Impact

Our work is grounded in local need and informed by evidence from QA Reviews and accredited Areas of Excellence. While many priorities reflect national concerns—attendance, behaviour, curriculum, and SEND—we also place strong emphasis on identifying and amplifying “bright spots” within the network.

At each Hub meeting, a school shares an area of excellence or a noteworthy outcome, providing both inspiration and practical insight. These contributions frequently lead to deeper professional dialogue and collaborative work across trust and local authority boundaries.

QA Reviews play a central role in shaping our priorities. The synthesis of findings—including, most recently, AI-assisted analysis across all Hub reviews—feeds directly into our action planning. This enables us to match expertise across schools, identify shared challenges, and ensure that collaboration leads to tangible impact.

We were early participants in the Challenge Partners SEND Developmental Peer Review pilot, bringing together schools from Leicester, Coventry, Shropshire, and Bedford. This work enabled schools to benchmark provision, engage in high-quality peer learning, and drive whole-school improvement in SEND practice.

Participation is intentionally inclusive. When themes such as AI, behaviour, SEND, or inspection reform arise, schools are encouraged to involve the most relevant colleagues. This creates multiple entry points into the Hub and ensures that learning reaches deeply within each organisation.

Growth and Advocacy

Between 2014 and 2020, membership remained stable at around 15–19 schools. From 2020 onwards, as relationships deepened and confidence in the model grew, membership expanded significantly, reaching 34 schools by 2023. Today, the Hub maintains a mature and stable community of approximately 32 schools.

We see ourselves as active contributors to the wider Challenge Partners network, advocating for the collective moral purpose it represents. For us, growth has always meant depth before breadth. While we warmly welcome new schools, we are equally clear about the expectations and responsibilities of meaningful membership.

“As we reflected on our development as a hub, it became clear that the next step was to learn alongside a community that shared our commitment to excellence. Our conversations with the East Midlands South Hub confirmed that this collaboration would offer the right balance of challenge, inspiration, and professional generosity.”

Beth Gregory, Assistant Principal, Chipping Campden School

Our advocacy aligns with the wider civic mission of our lead school. Through the Mead Institute of Professional Learning and the Leicester and Leicestershire Teaching School Hub, we contribute to professional development and research that strengthens regional capacity. In this sense, the Hub operates as an anchor institution, modelling the civic leadership that underpinned the London Challenge and the original Teaching School vision.

Looking Ahead

As national and local challenges continue to evolve, the East Midlands South Hub remains adaptive. What endures is our commitment to building a learning organisation rooted in shared purpose, trust, collaboration, and collective moral responsibility.

Fifteen years on, the Hub represents a rare continuity of vision. By combining strong local capacity with the collaborative model of Challenge Partners, we continue to carry forward the ambition of the original Teaching School movement.

As the RISE Universal Offer takes shape nationally, and sector-led collaboration becomes increasingly prominent, our hope is that this approach—grounded in voluntary partnership and “upwards convergence”—can inform how the system supports more schools, and ultimately more pupils, in the years ahead.

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The Hub’s work set within the context of Challenge Partners

Dame Sue John, Executive Director of Challenge Partners and a co-founder of the charity writes –  Much in the recent White Paper aligns closely with the work of Challenge Partners over the past fifteen years, as demonstrated in this case study of the East Midlands South Hub which is one of our most established and successful hubs. The emphasis on a “self-improving system,” underpinned by disciplined innovation, rigorous research, and the promotion of leading practice, reflects principles that have long defined our approach.

Challenge Partners was founded by practitioners in 2011 on the belief that sustainable school improvement is driven by the profession itself. The ingenuity of leaders within the hub and their unwavering commitment to sharing expertise to raise standards for all pupils, particularly those most disadvantaged exemplifies this belief in action.

Schools and trusts within the hub are not inward-looking institutions; they operate with deliberate outward focus, sharing knowledge, challenging one another, and providing structured support to secure improvement.

At the heart of this model is a nationally organised, rigorous, peer-led review process that identifies what truly works. Only evidence-informed, replicable leading practice is promoted. Mediocrity is neither accepted nor recycled.

The impact is clear. On average, schools within Challenge Partners consistently outperform national benchmarks at ages 11 and 16. This advantage is especially pronounced for disadvantaged pupils over a sustained five-year period, during which national outcomes have declined.

We urge policymakers to draw on the lessons of this case study and to recognise that hard-edged collaboration, rooted in professional accountability, peer support, and constructive challenge is a proven driver of improved leadership and stronger outcomes for all young people.

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We are extremely grateful to the following for their contributions to the two articles about the development of the East Midlands South Hub.  The main author was Simon Renshaw from the  Leicester & Leicestershire Teaching School Hub.  Other contributors are – 

Claire Beach – Principal – Heatherbrook Primary Academy – Learning Without Limits Academy Trust

Dave Bennett MBE, Executive Headteacher – The Winstanley School – LiFE Multi Academy Trust

Anna Fisher, Principal – Lancaster Academy – Learning Without Limits Academy Trust

Beth Gregory – Assistant Principal – Chipping Campden School

Clare Harley, Vice Principal – Countesthorpe Academy – LiFE Multi Academy Trust

Sarah Ridley – CEO – The Mead Educational Trust

Carolyn Robson CBE

In addition we would like to thank Dame Sue John, Executive Director of Challenge Partners for her contribution to this article.

These articles contribute to the growing evidence published in this journal of how collaborative learning communities of schools can enhance their students’ learning. 

Take care and stay safe 

George 

http://georgeberwick.com