The Benefits of Partnership

School self-management and autonomy has brought with it huge advantages. Principally, decisions can most effectively be taken at school level and resources prioritised to meet the school’s needs.

 There are, however, two major disadvantages, both of which have an easy solution.

1. Local management has led to the development of a ‘cottage industry’ approach where the tendency is for each school, working in isolation, to reinvent the wheel at huge cost in terms of staff time and stress. This is not a sustainable model as can be seen from the evidence of pressure on school leaders, staff and budgets.

2. A culture has developed - particularly amongst headteachers - that they can only demonstrate their success by ‘going it alone’. This is not a great development, because it puts huge pressure on the headteacher (as seen in the current number of unfilled headteacher positions), and because it tends to reduce budget flexibility as additional staff are appointed to meet the additional local resource needs.

A partnership with Edison offers flexible solutions to these problems and offers these unique benefits:

• Additional capacity and expertise to meet the increasingly diverse demands made on a school

• Access to investment into research and development, which produces tools and resources that no school, on its own, could afford to produce

• Shared accountability thereby reducing stress and pressure on the Head and staff

• Coherent support and a clear whole-school plan, reducing the time and energy needed at a school level to join together all the various initiatives and priorities

• A range of expertise that could not be provided by an additional senior member of staff

• Professional stimulation and motivation that is derived from membership of an innovative network of schools

• Greater budget flexibility from more effective use of fixed and variable costs

What will partnership deliver? >>