Henry Duffin

Shared Education: Leading a Primary Partnership


St. Anne’s Primary School, Corkey partnered with Knockahollet Primary School

St. Anne’s Primary and Knockahollet Primary are both small rural schools four miles from each other. They have a long standing, successful history of working together over the years and joined the Shared Education Signature Project in 2016.


Shared Education has enabled the schools to develop programmes which have enhanced the learning experiences of pupils, enabled staff to build personal and professional relationships and connected the schools to both sides of the local, close knit community.


All children and staff within both schools are involved in shared activity. Knockahollet and St. Anne’s feel that curricular areas which lend themselves to hands on and group interaction such as PE, WAU, Art, Music and PDMU allow for greater engagement and ultimately increased opportunity for children to get to know one another and facilitates good relationship building.


Henry is currently one of two Shared Education Coordinators, working alongside Gerry Black in Knockahollet P.S. Both Henry and Gerry are teaching principals and are responsible for the planning, delivery, finances and monitoring and evaluation of Shared Education within their schools. Henry sees great value in Shared Education, not only for the children participating in shared lessons but for the professional development of staff, sharing of resources and expertise and for the professional relationships formed by being involved in such a partnership.

Key learning When considering ways to develop your Shared Education Partnership

  1. Plan & evaluate Shared Education with the use of Pupil Pathway document to ensure continuous progression

  2. Link areas on School Development Plan and Shared Education Action Plan to ensure progression and collaborative working between schools

  3. Advance planning is paramount, shared school calendars can prevent overlap ensuring shared activity happens regularly

  4. Consider areas of the curriculum than can foster and promote good relationships through collaborative learning

  5. Explore opportunities to share resources and materials between schools

Questions to consider when developing a Shared Education Partnership

  1. Have you established professional relationships with all staff from your partner school(s)?

  2. Are you familiar with the Pupil Pathway document which can be used to plan Shared Education activities ensuring yearly progression and reconciliation aims are being met?

  3. Has your partnership aligned Staff Development Days to help support Teacher Professional Development?

  4. What are the barriers and challenges to engaging pupils within Shared Education when schools are not walking distance to one another? Are all children engaging or particular year groups?

Further resources

  1. Learning Leaders: A Strategy for teacher professional learning

  2. A Pupil Pathway: A Resource for Teachers to Support Shared Education

  3. Sharing Works: A Policy for Shared Education

  4. Every School a Good School: A Policy for School Improvement