S.P.A. Newsletter – January 2026

I hope the New Year has started well for you.

Judging by the many affirmative contributions to the Partnerships WhatsApp group and to other meetings I’ve already enjoyed, the Spring Term has started busily for partnership leads across your schools, as it has for the S.P.A.

I launched into the new term with a South Coast tour of 10 state and independent schools in Sussex that was revelatory, in terms of discovering partnership work I didn’t know was going on. You can read more about the wonderful schools I visited below.

That my South Coast tour concluded at Bede’s felt appropriate as I returned to source and prepared five young people who had benefited from either the Royal National SpringBoard Foundation’s SpringForward programme or from the mentoring of Lumina tutors for a meeting with the DfE Permanent Secretary’s Steering Group. I met the Permanent Secretary a couple of days after the young people had presented and there was no doubt what impact they made on her and that they have made her reflect on commissioning further research from S.P.A. (through ASCL, who facilitated the recent meeting) looking at how partnerships can support transition from KS2 to KS3 and from school to university, apprenticeships or work.

I’ve also been pleased to continue to work with the Foundation for Education Development as it launches its National Educational Assembly (of which I’m a co-chair) and its 2026 Learners Council which has three S.P.A. student ambassadors (Greta of LAE Stratford, Amaia of Streatham & Clapham HS and Kabir of KCS Wimbledon) among its members.

As you will read below, Margaret and I are looking forward to the sessions we are leading or participating in at the HMC / IDPE conference at BMA house on Wednesday. I look forward to being on the panel with leaders from E-ACT (an S.P.A. champion trust) and Bishop Chadwick Catholic Schools Trust (who I visit on Thursday) hearing more about HMC’s Moonshot project and offering delegates an update on the state of partnerships nationally in the current financial and political climate. I hope there’ll be scope for me to talk about something that I want to discuss with all our members over the course of this year and that is the opportunity provided by the Curriculum and Assessment Review to show how independent schools can support what the Review sees as every child’s entitlement to an enhanced curriculum. To me this means that independent schools should be looking to share their long-standing expertise in co-curricular activities to support schools where there may be less time, expertise or resource to engage in the promotion of oracy, cultural activities, clubs and societies and all those activities that independent schools have long seen as central to a holistic education

In our next newsletter I’ll hope to be updating members on our continuing work with the English Speaking Union in Oxford, where I hope the River Learning Trust will lead a new Oxford Learning Partnership, alongside our independent school members, and on the rebranding of S.P.A., with the launching of a new website and a new strategy at the heart of which will be the establishment of a School Partnerships Index to build on the foundation of the ISC’s Schools Together website.

Joe Spence. CEO, School Partnerships Alliance