Facilitating peer review as a sustainable model for school-led improvement and connected leaders

Peer review is a sustainable and school-led model for support leading to improvement. 
 
KALE has long supported peer review, by being an active partner in countywide work with LLSE, nasen and Education Development Trust in the Kent Inclusion Programme. 
 
Many schools engage with peer review partnerships locally and nationally. The review activities bring several benefits to participants, including: 

  • Learning from the practice of others 
  • Sharing knowledge and practice 
  • Building professional networks  
  • Supporting evaluation by bringing an objective, non-judgemental review by peers 
  • Developing own skills in evaluation and improvement planning

KALE is committed to supporting as many schools as possible to engage in valuable peer review and recognises the challenges of making time, managing cost implications and finding schools with whom to partner. 

Inclusion Peer Review Pilot
Towards the end of 2025/26 KSENT launched an Inclusion Peer Review pilot, working with David Bartram to create and support peer review groups made up of special and mainstream schools. This is a significant step to fostering shared learning on inclusion across the sector. The reviews will take place in the Autumn term, and we will work with KSENT to share the evaluation and hopefully to plan for a wider roll-out of the opportunity. 
 
We hope that through our Priority Project on Peer-to-Peer Learning in 2026/27, we can reach a point where:  

  • Peer review is recognised widely as a valuable and practical strategy to support school improvement 
  • Education leaders have the tools they need to carry out effective peer review 
  • Education leaders can connect with others who are interested in peer reviews on specific topics 
  • Learning from the evaluation of the KSENT and KALE pilot Inclusion Peer Review is available to all leaders (and embedded in the guidance on process) 
  • Value of cross phase and cross school type peer reviews is highlighted 

Specifically, we plan to:  

  • Create simple guidance for schools on the peer review process 
  • Provide light-touch training led by peers so that reviewers get the most from the process 

Read more about our Peer-to-Peer Learning Project here.