We are delighted to announce that Challenge Partners has been awarded grant funding from the Education Endowment Fund to design and deliver a new Narrowing the Gap programme. This is a real testimony to the depth of experience that Challenge Partners schools have in both school-to-school work and in delivering tangible outcomes. At the heart of our proposal is our experience of effective school-to-school work and belief that long term solutions need to be driven from within.

The programme will run over two academic years from 2012/13. Year one will pilot the initiative with 45 schools, followed by an extension to a further 90 schools in the following year. The programme will improve the academic performance of FSM pupils through school-to-school work that develops an effective whole school approach. It will identify practitioners within schools at different stages, with the potential to become specialist leaders in this area, and provide them with the tools, knowledge and support to do so.

We are very excited about this opportunity. Through leading-edge thinking, school-to-school learning and multi-strand team working, we are confident that we can design a programme that will deliver outstanding results for our children.