The Norfolk Learning Collaborative

We want our Norfolk children and young people to be excited and engaged in learning so that they Flourish within a strong inclusive education system. To that end, the Norfolk Learning Collaborative is comprised of colleagues from across the education sector, committed to working together to improve the education system in Norfolk so that all children and young people can flourish. Their role is to develop, influence and shape collaborative work to achieve our shared Learning Ambition for Norfolk children.

The collaborative aims to do this via a number of sector-led task groups, which focus on the core issues affecting schools, colleges and settings. These issues were identified through a range of engagement activities, and formed the basis of the task groups for our Learning Ambition.  These groups are the vehicle by which the goals of the Collaborative are realised, working with professionals in the education system to deliver change.

Membership

The Learning Collaborative is made up of education leaders from across the county, and includes Trust CEOs, maintained school leaders, college principals and local authority personnel, along with representatives from the Department for Education, the Norfolk Governance Network, and the Norfolk dioceses. If you are interested in joining, or finding out more about the work the Collaborative does, please do get in touch .

Meeting Updates

September 2024

At their third meeting on the 19th September, the Collaborative met to consider the Norfolk Picture and the implications of future education policy. Members heard an update from Becky Taylor, Head of Delivery at the DfE (East of England), concerning recent and upcoming developments in education policy and took questions from members. Members also heard from Sara Tough, who invited colleagues to consider the Norfolk picture and local priorities, along with ongoing work to influence policy at a national level. 

NLC members discussed how the Collaborative would shape itself moving forward to ensure impact and it was agreed that a working party would be convened. The working party will consider operating models best suited to the goals of the collaborative. Once this group has been established, this group will undertake research on behalf of the wider collaborative, reporting findings and recommendations.

As last year KS2 outcomes were identified as a central priority, the collaborative is considering the activities that it can facilitate to support improvement. 

June 2024 meeting

During this session, the Collaborative were provided outcome and contextual data from the 2023 Key Stage 2 cohort. This included comparison between schools' structural arrangements, relative size, geographical location, SEND needs and deprivation, all compared against national outcomes and Norfolk's statistical neighbours. Discussion was focused on the disparity between Norfolk, national and statistically similar counties, and the reasons behind this. This led to a collation of key themes that were felt to be key barriers to improving outcomes in Norfolk; these were collated and fed back to the group after the session for discussion. It was agreed that at the next meeting the Collaborative would refine these themes, agree a set of priorities to focus on and determine actions that can be taken to tackle them. This would include how the Collaborative will organise and agree the resource and capacity to undertake specific pieces of work.

February 2024 meeting

At the first meeting, colleagues came together to discuss the core issues facing the education system. Through discussion, there was an agreement that a high priority area for improvement should be outcomes at Key Stage 2, and they requested that data be made available to understand the root causes underlying a gap in outcomes between Norfolk schools and national data.

They also heard updates from across the Learning Ambition Task groups, and in more detail from the Communication and Engagement task group, where they discussed the need for practice sharing and collaborative work across the education system.

It was agreed that the next meeting should focus in more detail on the issues surrounding outcomes at Key Stage 2, and that ahead of that, the Norfolk Research School and colleagues from Children's Services would collaborate on some potential diagnostics to better understand the causes. Additionally, colleagues in Children's Services would provide collated data on outcomes and other contextual factors relevant to Key Stage 2 outcomes. This would provide an evidence base to support any actions going forward.