Challenge Partners’ Quality Assurance Review

Challenge Partners’ quality assurance is built around the QA Review, a professionally-led peer review focused on teaching and learning. The review identifies areas of strength and development, bringing key challenges to schools for the coming year and providing Continuing Professional Development (CPDL) for all participants. It is a joint exercise between the review team and the school. All activities include a member of the school working alongside the reviewers. 

Our recent Challenge Partners Review took place in June 2025. 

Challenge Partners Review June 2025 

Challenge Partners Review Report January 2023 Challenge Partners Review Report February 2022 

Challenge Partners Review Report June 2021

Don’t Worry About a Thing

It’s a hot Tuesday afternoon. Imagine this. It’s school council time. A bright, spacious, vibrant room opens its doors to a kaleidoscope of ways to be heard, to speak. Here, we listen with our eyes.

It’s a special school in north-west London. The classroom is full. Thirty young people, some ambulant, others profoundly dependent, all luminous in their own way. The room hums with joyful noise: a cacophony, yes, but a constructive one – a choir of movement, sound, and delight.

Teaching assistants,120% attentive, move with practised grace, responding not just to need but to personality. They know every child. Every tick, twitch, sign, and smile. We’re signing the words to Three Little Birds. Bob Marley fills the air.

To our surprise, a boy who barely moves shouts a single word: ‘Marley’. The room bursts into applause. Nearby, another child bounces from chair to chair – their connections to people, to books, to life itself run deep. They weren’t always understood. But the adults in that child’s family kept going. Their investment in their child matched the school’s commitment to them. Valued attention that ran both ways. The school helped turn frustration into calm, assertive advocacy.

This school sees that child. They understand them. And they make sure others do too.

The session ends, but the mood lingers. Before leaving, we all sign the three words these pupils know by heart – happy, love, fun.

Because here, at last, they are.

Dr Antony Edkins,

Challenge Partner Lead Inspector