Developing Successful School Partnerships: An Implementation Guide
Improved school outreach and partnerships is one of the central ambitions of the updated Access and Participation Planning expectations set out by the Office for Students (OfS).
However, developing these relationships can be difficult in practice. Institutions often face challenges getting schools to engage, allocating resources effectively and knowing what translates into outcomes.
This blog outlines 5 key areas practitioners can focus on to develop meaningful relationships with schools.
Setting Objectives
1. Identifying desired outcomes
Identifying objectives for a school partnership is fundamental to success. The first questions you should ask are: what is the aim of this partnership? What outcomes are you hoping to achieve?
This will likely relate to widening participation. Perhaps you are hoping to increase attainment in the local area or create opportunities for student recruitment in schools with large proportions of disadvantaged students.
Having a clear outline of your desired outcomes will create a clear vision for the partnership. Your objectives might include:
Reaching and recruiting pupils from diverse backgrounds
Establishing meaningful connections and building a positive reputation in the local community
Providing opportunities for academic staff to cultivate transferrable skills and build research networks
Communicating these desired outcomes is equally important. The University of Plymouth outline their objectives and criteria for school partnerships on their website.
Understanding the precise aims and objectives will orient your school partnership initiatives and enable you to evaluate their success. Outlining them clearly in your communications will ensure everyone working on the project, from senior leadership to ground-level practitioners, understand and are working towards tangible, shared goals.
2. Setting goals and reaching target students
Once you have defined your objectives, you can determine how those intentions best align with the needs of your target school(s).
Make sure to communicate your objectives with your target school from the outset and take into consideration their own aspirations for the partnership.
Research previously successful partnerships and adapt the strategies to suit your objectives. You may wish to share these with your partner school to give them examples of potential projects.
For example, you may decide to reach out to schools with students who need support undertaking the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) to set up a mentoring scheme, as this aligns with the research objectives of your institution and is an area in which the school lacks resources.
School-university partnerships have been criticised for appealing only to young people already likely to enter higher education, functioning merely as a recruitment tool. So, it may be useful to consider what support you can offer to reach students who are less likely to enter higher education.
The University of Exeter used a combination of cross-disciplinary activities to appeal to a broad range of students as part of their Empowering Partnerships, Enabling Engagement initiative. Activities included:
A lunchtime Ecology club
A family Open Day
Workshops with Sixth Form students exploring how to manage to the transition into university
The 'Tour de Maths' event, which demonstrated the importance of maths outside the classroom.
Using a multi-pronged approach will ensure your partnership creates opportunities to engage students from diverse backgrounds, rather than simply appealing to ‘gifted and talented’ pupils.
Engaging Stakeholders
1. Identify gatekeeper organisations and leaders
In any partnership, it’s vital to have senior leadership teams onboard from the beginning. After identifying your target schools, discern who the key actors are within your institution and the school who will support the project.
Make sure to communicate your motivations and desired outcomes. Including key stakeholders in these initial planning stages is crucial to ensuring smooth communication and shared values from the outset. It will also help to develop a network of advocates for your partnership.
You might consider collaborating with external organisations. Local government or charity organisations may have strong relationships with schools in your area. Connecting with them and gauging what you can do to make these partnerships more beneficial to your community at large will give you a good sense of what is achievable.
When engaging with external stakeholders, a collaborative approach that is co-designed by different contributors with mutual aims will be most effective.
2. Aligning strategies and overall delivery
Maintaining communication and shared vision throughout your project will dictate its success.
Designing a delivery plan which sets out Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will indicate what ‘success’ means in your project.
You should also aim to direct time and energy to relieving some of the logistical pressures placed on school staff. This might look like:
A handbook that explains your outreach programme and in detail, so teachers and academics are well aware of the timeline and what is expected of them.
Regular newsletters for stakeholders outlining upcoming events and reporting back on previous ones.
A collection of online resources developed by researchers that can be accessed in the classroom or at home, which teachers are also able to integrate into their normal teaching schedule.
You may find it useful to identify Key Responsibility Areas. This will indicate to participants what is expected of them and help with delivery.
Academic staff should also be aware of the timeline and objectives, and have access to useful resources. You might consider providing a range of video resources for researchers on how to communicate their work to different audiences. These might be developed in collaboration with teachers, who are able to share their expertise.
Figuring Out What Works
1. Trialling and testing your approach
A lack of resources or funding can be a barrier to building successful school-university partnerships. This is especially true for projects that attempt to widen participation as target schools often don’t have access to sufficient facilities.
Conduct research to understand what resources your target school are working with. Speak with teachers to find out what their pain points are. You may choose to do this on a subject-by-subject basis and then determine where you can offer support.
Working on a variety of smaller projects can be a useful way of figuring out what is successful and learning to allocate resources accordingly. Try out a variety of approaches, evaluating and adjusting them according to your findings.
The University of Cardiff drew on guidance from Teacher Advisory Panels to develop and pilot activities as part of their Enriching Secondary School Engagement programme. By monitoring the successes and failures of the pilot activities and responding to the advisory panels, subsequent cycles of the programme were expanded and eventually went on to win RCUK funding.
Collaborating with other institutions and pooling resources can also increase the potential of your outreach projects.
The University of Birmingham and University College Birmingham have developed a strategic partnership, with the objective of raising attainment in local schools. This project seeks to enhance teaching provision in the region and make local young people aware of pathways into higher and further education.
2. Provide more than academic support
It's worth considering what your institution can offer beyond the academic curriculum.
Embarking on a project that aims to develop critical thinking skills, for example, might fill some gaps in your target school’s provision and put your researchers’ skills to good use.
A great example of this is the University of Oxford’s Oxplore project: a free educational resource directed at secondary school students. Rather than focus on the curriculum, the resources encourage young people to think about ‘big questions’.
In developing your own unique approach, using the speciality of your institution can be valuable. If you’re an arts university, you might think about creative projects you could lead with local primary schools who otherwise lack resources.
This can have a resounding impact on widening participation. These projects will appeal to students beyond the ‘gifted and talented’ category and raise awareness of the opportunities that higher education can provide for disadvantaged pupils. They will also be key resources for students to draw on when applying to higher education courses and bolster their employment opportunities.
Evaluating your work
1. Collecting and interpreting data
Evaluation is fundamental to identifying successes and failures in your school partnerships. Obtaining this information will help you to develop your approach as you go and build long-lasting, effective relationships with schools.
You should consider multiple approaches to collecting data and feedback for your outreach projects. These may include:
Drawing on both internal and external evaluators.
Considering ‘soft’ outcomes, such as student enjoyment of participation and intention to progress to higher education.
Considering ‘hard’ outcomes, such as increased attainment at school or actual progression to higher education.
Integrating frameworks such as TASO’s Evidence Ratings into your evaluation process.
Collecting this information can be time-consuming and laborious, so it’s important to put in place strategies to reduce the data burden. Design your long-term projects around previous successes identified in your evaluations to make sure you are using data effectively.
2. Using feedback effectively
While data is important in evaluating the success of any outreach project, it’s also vital to understand the qualitative outcomes of your work.
Gather feedback regularly from all relevant stakeholders in your partnership. This includes teachers, school leadership teams and professionals from your institution.
Approaches might include:
Setting up a steering committee
Providing opportunities for teachers to feedback to academics
Assigning a member of staff to liaise regularly with stakeholders and request feedback
A great example is the University of Lancaster’s School-University Partnership Initiative. The university received feedback from teachers and researchers, who wanted more opportunities to discuss how research can be used to influence teaching and learnings in schools.
In response, the university set up the Teacher University Researcher Network (TURN), which helped went on to shape the initiative’s approach and encourage commitment to long-term collaborative relationships.
Examples such as these demonstrate how collecting feedback is just the first step. To successfully use this information, your project must indicate that you are actively listening to participants’ concerns and recommendations. Amending your approach based on teacher recommendations will increase trust in your partnership.
It’s also worth remembering that the sector is undergoing significant change, so new pain points will arise while others subside. The best way to make sure you are in tune with these changes is through an efficient and regular feedback loop.
Building Long-Lasting Partnerships
1. Prioritising knowledge exchange
When devising the strategy for your school-university partnership, you should always think about the long-term benefits.
Providing opportunities for knowledge exchange is a great way to do this. You may focus on setting up communication channels between academics and teachers, for example.
Teachers in target schools will likely have experience working with disadvantaged students, which they will be able to share with your academic staff. Academics, on the other hand, can share the innovations in their field which may be of interest to teachers trying to devise exciting learning programmes.
You might consider developing a ‘buddying’ system, which partners teachers and researchers by subject area, or hosting networking events like the University of Manchester’s STEM Teacher Conference.
Facilitating knowledge exchange will have long-term effects. Not only will it contribute to increasing attainment in your local area, but it will also develop the knowledge register for supporting disadvantaged students within your institution, having a holistic impact on widening participation.
2. Incentivise participation
Recognising excellence is a great way to create sustained motivation for your school partnerships and encourage participation from academic staff.
You might consider the following approaches:
Inviting academics to help design and devise outreach projects in tandem with their research interests
Offering a reward for excellence in the delivery of school-university partnerships projects
Revising your promotion procedures, like the Open University did in 2015, to reflect new pathways for staff who have dedicated themselves to outreach projects
By creating incentives for staff from your institution to participate in outreach activities, you will establish a sustained network of dedicated practitioners.
Translating Action Planning into Delivery
The action points outlined in this blog provide a framework for developing meaningful school partnerships.
We identified key points of access, from setting objectives and engaging stakeholders, to refining your projects, evaluating success and building sustainable relationships. The suggestions can be adapted according to the specific needs of your institution and the target schools you are hoping to serve.
Overall, your focus should be on developing a partnership that is mutually beneficial, serving both your institution and target school.
