School and Supplier Collaboration
Amazing People Schools – LEO Academy Trust and Virtual Soccer Schools
Amazing People Schools (APS) and LEO Academy Trust have built a genuinely transformative collaboration rooted in shared values and a joint commitment to character education . Over time, this partnership has grown from an initial platform licence into a deep, trust-wide integration — co-creating resources that bring LEO’s PRIDE values and Explorer traits to life across all schools and year groups, including a bespoke Early Years offer developed in direct response to staff needs at Cheam Fields Primary.
The collaboration has driven measurable impact: teachers save time through ready-to-use resources; diverse role models are embedded meaningfully across the curriculum; and pupils — including those with English as a second language at Brookfield Primary — feel represented and inspired. Working alongside charitable partner Virtual Soccer Schools, LEO pupils have participated in nationally recognised live events connecting elite footballers with schools worldwide, with coverage on Sky Sports and BBC Radio.
What makes this partnership stand out is its mutuality. LEO’s schools have shaped Amazing People Schools, and APS has in turn strengthened LEO’s culture and curriculum. This is collaboration in the truest sense — two organisations learning together, growing together, and ultimately serving children better.
AT Superstore and Kirklees Council
AT Superstore and Kirklees Council have partnered to transform inclusive education across 14 primary schools through an innovative shared assistive technology loan bank. Delivered as part of the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme, this collaboration embeds specialist tools directly into everyday classroom practice, bridging the gap between whole-school inclusion strategies and practical support for neurodivergent pupils.
The loan bank provides access to £5500 worth of equipment, including text-to-speech devices, sensory regulation spaces, dyslexia-specific hardware, and interactive learning systems. Schools can trial equipment quickly, receive professional guidance, and embed successful tools into long-term practice, while achieving large savings compared to individual procurement.
Early outcomes demonstrate significant improvements in pupil engagement, independence, and confidence. Teachers report reduced workload, enhanced classroom management, and increased confidence in selecting and implementing assistive technology. One Commissioning Officer noted that the partnership allows children to engage with learning in new ways while giving staff valuable time back.
This scalable, sustainable model shows how practical innovation, strategic collaboration, and a focus on real classroom needs can deliver meaningful, replicable impact on learning and inclusion, enabling every child to access education confidently and effectively.
iplicit Education and Active Learning Trust
Active Learning Trust (ALT) has cut back-office costs, directed more money to the classroom and reduced its bill for supply staff dramatically under a close working partnership with iplicit.
Instead of the traditional, transactional relationship between a trust and an accounting software vendor, ALT and iplicit have collaborated to transform school finances, help improve the iplicit product and share good practice with the wider sector.
Improved reporting and analysis enabled the trust to ensure staffing structures are “lean but not brittle”, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds across 21 schools.
The trust can analyse spending on repairs and maintenance, breaking it down by vandalism, planned work, emergencies and remedials – an approach that has helped optimise maintenance planning and even informed behaviour management.
Team members, who were “running blind” before, can see what’s left in their budgets and target resources effectively.
The trust’s CFO, Phil Beecher, sits on the iplicit Advisory Council for Education to help shape the software’s development and share experience with peers. And ALT has shared system assets with other trusts, giving them a short cut to the same benefits.
Judicium Education and Griffin Schools Trust
Judicium Education HR’s partnership with Griffin Schools Trust (GST) demonstrates how a supplier-school collaboration can improve both operational effectiveness and the conditions for better learning. Over the last year, the partnership has helped GST move from fragmented HR arrangements and reactive casework to a more consistent, trust-wide people strategy. Together, we have standardised essential HR frameworks, introduced practical training and resources for leaders, supported a sensitive restructure, and enabled smoother onboarding when a new school joined the trust.
The impact has been felt by leaders, staff and schools across the trust. Heads now feel more confident managing people issues, access expert support earlier, and spend less time firefighting. Operational consistency has reduced complexity, improved compliance and strengthened leadership capacity. In turn, this has helped GST become a more mature organisation with stronger infrastructure to support staff development and pupil strategy.
As CEO Anne Powell explains: “Having better systems, processes and support in areas like HR has helped us become a more mature organisation, with a strong infrastructure – and that has helped our pupil strategy.”
Peters and Stanton Cross Primary School
In September 2025, Peters – leading specialist supplier of children’s books and furniture to schools and multi-academy trusts – gifted a brand-new school library to Stanton Cross Primary School in Northamptonshire, kickstarting a transformation of the school’s reading culture through a vibrant space that encourages a lifelong love of books.
Opened in memory of Ray Dyer, Peters’ former Managing Director, ‘Ray’s Library’ celebrates his life through inspiring a new generation of readers. Through donations by family, friends, Peters colleagues past and present as well as generous contributions from across the publishing and education sectors, funds were raised to install a whole new school library, and fill it with books.
Staff were seeking a new library that would inspire a love of reading and provide all pupils with equal access to a rich variety of books. Their new nature-themed library was designed by Peters’ in-house Interior Design and Furniture team, and Stanton Cross now have a library of more than 3000 books, including a wide range of fiction and non-fiction – making up a vibrant, inclusive and inspiring collection, with something for every pupil. Ray’s Library was officially opened on 18 September 2025 in a special ceremony led by Cressida Cowell.
SAM Learning and Leigh Academies Trust
Leigh Academies Trust, a leading multi-academy trust in Kent, Medway, and South East London, needed a seamless way to integrate Question Level Analysis (QLA) data into their systems. Managing this internally would have been too resource-intensive, so they partnered with SAM Learning to innovate a bespoke solution.
Recognising the importance of this initiative, SAM Learning recognised the importance of this initiative and agreed to innovate and collaborate, commencing the project to ensure a bespoke, tailored and effective resolution for the entire Trust’s module assessment data integration and analysis challenges. A collaborative approach ensured the solution aligned with trust-wide objectives.
The result was an innovative system that seamlessly integrates live QLA assessment data for analysis across all schools. The initiative successfully processed QLA data for up to 18,500 students providing:
- Simple, easy and stress free streamlined workflow
- Data-driven teaching
- Instant ability identify learning gaps
- Automatically set work in these gaps
- One click download of detailed exam analysis for students and parent
This partnership has not only solved a strategic challenge for Leigh Academies Trust but also set the stage for future innovations in data-driven education.
The Engagement Platform and Outwood Grange Academies Trust
Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) and The Engagement Platform (TEP) partnered to conduct and publish ground breaking research linking pupils’ sense of academic control (agency) to reading progress across 10,687 Year 7–9 pupils in 28 schools. The research, led by Professor John Jerrim of ImpactEd Group and UCL, found that pupils with high perceived academic control made approximately two months more progress in reading over a four-month period, even after controlling for prior attainment and demographics. The study also documented a consistent spring-term decline in agency – with Year 7 pupils experiencing the sharpest drop – giving schools a predictable intervention window. Published in January 2026, the findings have changed practice at OGAT: leaders now use TEP Agency scores as an early warning system, have revised Year 7 transition support, and monitor the spring decline proactively.
This collaboration is innovative in its scale, methodological rigour, and commitment to turning school data into peer-reviewed national evidence. It demonstrates how a school-supplier partnership can move beyond product use into genuine knowledge creation, advancing both pupil outcomes and sector understanding.
VESPA Academy and E-ACT
This entry showcases the collaborative partnerships between VESPA Academy and its school and university partners, developed during the 2025–26 academic year. The centrepiece is the trust-wide collaboration with E-ACT, operating across seven sixth forms in England. Rather than a standard supplier relationship, the partnership operates as a multi-layered, cyclical model: after each VESPA survey cycle, the team delivers individual student coaching reports, detailed academy-level analysis, and trust-wide strategic overviews, accompanied by direct leadership feedback sessions, staff CPD, and student workshops.
This collaborative approach extends across VESPA Academy’s wider partner network, including Manchester Metropolitan University, Coffs Harbour Senior College in Australia, Long Road Sixth Form College, and Peter Symonds College — each receiving tailored implementation support, bespoke reporting, and ongoing expert guidance adapted to their specific context.
The international dimension is exemplified by Coffs Harbour, where the VESPA team adapted the framework for the Australian HSC context and delivered training at midnight UK time to accommodate Australian staff. Across all partnerships, the model demonstrates a responsive, adaptive approach to supplier-school collaboration where both parties shape the ongoing development of the service.