Shrewsbury School champions cross-sector partnerships

Shrewsbury School is proud to be a champion of the School Partnerships Alliance (SPA), a new national cross-sector partnership charity, with founding trustee Headmaster Leo Winkley, speaking at a recent launch event at the House of Lords. 

The event launched the School Partnerships for Impact, a guide produced by the SPA and The Partnering Initiative, which promotes the benefits of meaningful partnerships between different schools across the state and independent sectors and starts to build a common framework for how schools can become involved in one or make an existing one even more powerful. It pieces together established best practice to develop a clear model to demystify how partnerships work for schools interested in these types of collaborations. 

Headmaster Leo Winkley helped found the SPA in order to extend opportunities to promote life chances for young people and share mutually beneficial experience and expertise across sectors for the benefit of children and progress.  

Leo Winkley, comments:“It has been an enormous professional pleasure to work with passionately committed state and independent sector colleagues to create a new cross-sector partnership charity: the School Partnerships Alliance (SPA). The SPA will use the guide to support schools, and the education sector, in identifying and encouraging effective models of partnership working that benefit all types of schools and pupils.   

“This is important work that will help grow educational opportunities and joint working across education in the UK.” 

Shrewsbury School is committed to working nationally and locally with partner schools across both sectors: 

• Over 5,000 pupils are offered various learning opportunities and support across 80 local primary and secondary schools. 

• Shrewsbury delivers 300+ hours to schools nationally through STEM Potential with Imperial College London. 
• 1,500+ hours of academic support are delivered to local schools through mentoring, lectures and conferences 
• Pupils from 70 primary and secondary schools benefit from free music tuition as part of our Symphonic Sundays and Sinfonia programmes 
• Over 2,000 students from 30 schools are provided with access to our Futures (Careers) events. 
• Shrewsbury supports widening participation in sport with hundreds of pupils benefiting from various initiatives including our dedicated athletes programme for emerging young professionals, to our annual national cricket festival, and our regional girls football tournaments. 

Baroness Barran MBE, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for the School System and Student Finance), said: “As Minister for the School System and Student Finance, I am delighted to support the work of the School Partnerships Alliance. In my visits to schools, I've seen the benefit that mutually supportive schools can create to improve the lives and opportunities of children across the whole education system.  

“The School Partnerships Alliance seeks to encourage further schools to participate in partnerships with real purpose. We know that partnerships are at their best when they involve all types of schools working together to achieve ambitious outcomes for all children and I am sure that the ‘School Partnerships for Impact’ guide will become a very useful tool for schools seeking practical support and looking to understand the key to building truly successful partnerships.  

“I am keen to see more schools across the independent and state school sectors engaging in partnership working and look forward to seeing the positive outcomes I know the sector can achieve with the support of the School Partnerships Alliance.”