Our activities
We’re building individual, organisational and systemic capacity to deliver innovative, place-based models of ‘cradle to career’ support—grounded in great schools.
Over the last 15 years,
We have shown that schools can foster seamless pipelines of ‘cradle-to-career’ support.
We’ve also learnt that the most effective cradle-to-career models remain in a constant state of flux.
The most effective models vigorously adapt their activities to anticipate and respond to the issues most affecting the people they serve.
Fixed but in flux
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Fixed but in flux 〰️
We're extremely proud of our commitment, capacity and track record in doing precisely this over the last 10+ years:
calling people and organisations together to incubate and scale innovative, high-impact solutions to system-wide issues.
While we’ve always worked in this way—and always will—what we’re working on together is always in a state of flux.
We are doing this work locally
Working in partnership with the community, existing institutions and local professionals, we have shown that it is possible to improve children’s outcomes across a range of domains while enhancing the capacity of children’s families and their communities to sustain better outcomes in the long-run.
Over the last ten years, we have developed an innovative, high-impact Cradle-to-Career model in Feltham—a historically under-resourced area of southwest London.
Today, our model currently comprises:
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Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PAIRS)
An integrated model of perinatal support for parents/carers and their babies during the first 1,001 days.
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Early Years Workforce Development (EYWD)
A recruitment and retention pipeline offering L1-L5 courses for local EY practitioners—aspiring and serving.
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Feltham Convening Partnership (FCP)
A collective impact initiative to improve outcomes for babies, children and young people by achieving long-term, systemic change.
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Languages For All
Languages open minds, and open doors. Our aim is to encourage more young people to study modern languages at A-level and university.
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Social Prescribing for CYP
We are working in partnership with the NHS primary care network for Feltham & Bedfont and Groundwork to develop a model for Social Prescribing for Children and Young People.
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Youth leadership and development
Young people are at the heart of co-producing and leading our work, and we have developed various pathways for engagement, such as community organising, Young Researchers and Ambassadors.
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Post-16 support
We aim to provide the right support, at the right time, so that young people can enjoy lives of choice and opportunity. We build strategic partnerships with a wide range of employers, universities and careers services to ensure our young people are able to make informed choices about their next steps into further education or employment.
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SENIP degree
Following the success of our Early Years Foundation Degree pathway with Kingston University, we are now also teaching the SEN in Practice Foundation Degree.
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Data & Impact
We use a mixed methods, participatory approach to rigorously evaluate our work. We seek to capture our impact so that we can understand what makes a difference, refine our offer and share best practice.
And we are doing this work nationally
Building on our work in Feltham, we are now working with around 40 school trusts around the country—from Teeside in the North East to Newquay in the South West—to establish the commitment, knowledge and conditions required for Cradle-to-Career models to thrive elsewhere.
Building organisational capacity
We are building organisational capacity through our ‘Cradle-to-Career Partnership’.
We work with schools and trusts to:
Maximise the potential of ‘being all-through’—increasing the coherence of the education, support and experiences they offer to children and their families.
Catalyse and develop place-based models of support in their own communities.
We convene school and trust leaders and support them in pulling all of these ‘threads’ together as ‘Cradle-to-Career’ leaders.
We are currently working with just under 30 trusts and—although it is early days for many partners—new models and signs of deeper integration into communities are starting to emerge.
Building individual capacity
We are building individual capacity through our school and trust leadership programmes.
By 2030, we intend to have identified and nurtured 100 school leaders in each of our regions—supported by a cadre of 300 trust leaders based across the country—with the ambition, vision, knowledge and relationships required to design, develop and deliver high-quality cradle-to-career models.
At their core, these programmes are intensive leadership development programmes—for aspiring school and trust leaders committed to eradicating endemic educational inequality.
They’ve been specifically developed for high-potential future leaders who want to lead organisations of their own—within the next five years—that are committed to enhancing the life chances of children and young people underserved by our current system.
We have three regional programmes for aspiring headteachers in England running presently (with a fourth due launching in September 2024) and a national programme for aspiring trust CEOs—the only programme currently on offer nationally that is entirely focused on developing the next generation of CEOs, primed to lead ‘breakthrough’ trusts.
