Oaklands School is a member of the Challenge Partners Network of Excellence (NoE).

Challenge Partners is a practitioner-led education charity that enables collaborative school improvement networks to enhance the life chances of all children, especially the most disadvantaged. 

Challenge Partners was formed to continue the learning which emerged from the development of Teaching Schools that evolved out of the London Challenge. Since its formation in 2011, the outcomes for pupils in Challenge Partners schools have consistently improved faster than the national average.

Challenge Partners provides networks and programmes that facilitate sustainable collaboration and challenge between schools in order to underpin improvements in outcomes which would not be possible for a school, or group of schools, to achieve as effectively on its own. Programmes include both continual school improvement and high impact change programmes, the largest of which are the Network of Excellence and Challenge the Gap. 

Challenge Partners comprises 450 schools in 39 local partnerships across the country, reaching over 200,000 pupils, with 21% from low income households (compared to the national average of 13.6%). They welcome all phases and stages: and are currently 57% primary, 21% secondary,19% special/AP and 3% other (all-through, middle, 16+); all governance types, 51% are academies representing 80 multi-academy trusts; and the majority are good and outstanding.

School leaders in Challenge Partners continue to play a major role in the development of the English education system. One that they aspire to be world-class, collaborative and practitioner-led.

Challenge Partners is supported by the Social Business Trust, a charity that supports effective social enterprises scale-up their impact, through their partner organisations: Bain & Company, British Gas, Clifford Chance, Credit Suisse, EY, Permira and Thomson Reuters.