The 2022 Fair Education Alliance Annual Summit

24 November 2022 |Battersea Arts Centre, London

The largest single gathering of leaders working to make education fairer.

Our 2022 Summit was a pivotal moment in our continued fight to drive long-term change for a fairer and more equitable education system.

Our 2022 Summit brought nearly 400 leaders in tackling educational inequality under one roof for an energising and inspiring day. If you weren’t able to make it — or want to revisit a session that had an impact on you — have a look at the photo and video highlights below and make the most of the FEA network by signing up for our Membership Tools!

Highlights from the 2022 Annual Summit

Opening plenary

We started the day with members and early-stage innovators together in the same room, meeting each other, and hearing from our CEO, Gina Cicerone, our Chair, Dr Vanessa Ogden FEA Youth Steering Group member, Oghale, and Caroline Rowley of Bloomberg LP.

Responding to Rising Poverty

As we emerge from the pandemic, we find ourselves in a cost-of-living crisis likely to result in rates of child poverty unseen since the 1990s. These events have further increased regional disparities and have increased attainment gaps for many disadvantaged pupils – most notably, those who have been in poverty the longest.  We joined a conversation with Sir Tim Brighouse, Jehan Chaudhri (Family Support Officer at Clapham Manor Primary School), and Janeen Hayat (FEA Director of Collective Action), chaired by Zulum Elumogo (Special Advisor at Freuds and FEA Trustee).

Place: Levelling up the areas of greatest need

In our Poverty session, we saw that poverty is essentially a local issue, and that long-term, focused collaboration is needed to make substantial change. In our Place session, we heard from Dame Julia Cleverdon, Graeme Duncan (Founder and CEO of Right to Succeed) and Mayor Steve Rotheram of the Liverpool City Region on how local government and the third sector can successfully partner for the benefit of the community they serve.

Power: Enabling youth to lead the movement

The young people we seek to serve through our work have valuable first-hand experience to contribute. We will have a greater impact if we enable them to lead. In this session, we heard from FEA Youth Steering Group members Ellie and Oghale, as well as Naomi Lea BEM and Amelia Collins-Patel MBE, the founders of youth-led Project Hope. Also check out the views of our Youth Steering Group below, on why young people should participate in decisions impacting their education.

Influencing: Delivering change in the current climate

In our final panel, we looked at how to advance the changes young people need, despite political and macroeconomic challenges. We heard from Ravi Gurumurthy, CEO of Nesta, Samuel Kasumu, former advisor to the Prime Minister, Anne Longfield, Chair of the Commission on Young Lives, and Tasha, a young campaigner for Biteback 2030, with Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg News as Chair.

Closing Plenary

To close out our day, we brought members and innovators back together to reflect. Then, a surprise: a performance from the fantastic Ark Bolingbroke Senior Band!

The Booster Strand

For the first time, we brought early-stage innovators into our Summit, and supported them and our members with 12 sessions to help them scale and increase their impact. A range of experts also offered 1-1 sessions. We can’t wait to see the applications to our Fair Education Awards.

Know someone with an idea to make education fairer? Or ready to take your impactful organisation to scale? Apply for our Fair Education Awards here.

What attendees said:

This event is made possible

thanks to the generous support of Bloomberg.