S.P.A. Newsletter – June 2026

A keynote of this newsletter is that it gives us a chance to thank friends who have supported our work over recent weeks. It was excellent to be able to talk about framing a national strategy for partnerships with our Champions and others, courtesy of Jo Ogilvy and the team at Saxton Bampfylde. We’re deeply indebted to Liz Robinson and her collaborators at Big Education for providing us with a core of talks – on Enrichment, Rethinking Schools and AI in Education – that enhanced our Forum at Eastbourne College. We are pleased to be more deeply engaged with the Foundation for Education Development and FED’s National Education Assembly, of which I’m a co-chair.

When I led a recent webinar on ‘Taking the S.P.A. to the next level’ (recording here), it wasn’t hubris but evidence of the maturation of the partnerships movement. We are coming closer to being able to talk about the priorities for national and local partnership strategies and to gauge the impact of our work. We’re still a distance from being able to establish a School Partnerships Index, but the framework has been created and sponsors are being sought. Perhaps you will be among them?

Writing now, let me thank you for your engagement with S.P.A. and for the great work of 2025-26. Next year will be even busier, and we look forward to helping you facilitate strategic, impactful, sustainable and scalable projects through the course of 2026-27.

On behalf of the S.P.A. team and myself, I wish you all the best for the holidays – when they come. If you are running any Summer partnership activities you would like us to visit or to report on, please let us know.

Joe Spence, CEO.