The hunched shoulders and heads of three school leaders are fixed intently round a table – they are animatedly discussing 45 small dots plotted on a matrix. They then compare this with a similar matrix completed by the same group some three months earlier and challenge each other on why the dots have moved around the graph.
The dots represent 45 pupils who have all been part of a target group of 15 pupil premium students in three different schools over the period of a school year. The three staff are part of a Challenge the Gap Trio – a trio of schools, one of whom, the ‘Lead’ school, has been successful in closing the attainment gap between pupil premium and non-pupil premium students. The other two are ‘Accelerator’ schools committed to closing the attainment gap that exists in their institutions but also have a strong track record of partnership working.
What is Challenge the Gap?
The aim of Challenge the Gap is to provide schools with practical tools and strategies to break the link between poverty and poor outcomes and to drive long-term performance improvement. Working collaboratively, Challenge the Gap is about thinking big, starting small and scaling fast to have a far reaching impact and make a lasting difference.
The programme began in June 2012 when 15 pilot schools across the UK – all part of the Challenge Partners school improvement network – started to lead trios of schools working in partnership to share what they had learnt about successfully ‘closing the gap’.