For a number of years government policy initiatives have been supporting networking between schools: TVEI, Beacon schools, Specialist schools, and also networks of schools: Education Action Zones, Leading Edge Partnerships, LIG Collaboratives and Networked Learning Communities.
Despite all this activity there remains ambiguity and uncertainty about the effect of networks, the knowledge base surrounding them and their merit as an improvement strategy at scale. What, for example, makes a good network? How do we avoid networks becoming more social than rigorous? What is the cost benefit of network activity? What additional benefits are there for practitioners, organisations and the communities they serve? If these questions are not challenging enough in themselves, the dominant concern surrounds the most vexing issue of all. What is the evidence that networks make a difference to pupil achievement?
