No child’s success should be limited by their socio-economic background
A young person’s future should not be dependent on their social or economic background.
Unfortunately, research and evidence from a wide range of reports from across Fair Education Alliance membership organisations and beyond shows inequality in education was already worsening pre-pandemic. This has only been exacerbated in the last year by the impacts of Covid-19.
The severity of the situation presents a moment of opportunity for us to act. We should not fall into narratives such as 'a lost generation' but instead seize our chance to address long standing issues in the system.
At the Fair Education Alliance we have five system goals and a vision for how we can achieve this.
The five system goals:
To narrow the gap in literacy and numeracy at Primary School
To narrow the gap in GCSE attainment at Secondary School
To ensure young people develop key strengths, including resilience and wellbeing, to support high aspirations
To narrow the gap in the proportion of young people taking part in further education or employment based training after finishing their GCSEs
To narrow the gap in university graduation, including from the most selective universities
We believe that to achieve these goals, we need an inclusive education system which:
Despite hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals committed and actively working towards these system goals, progress is far too slow.
To speed up progress the FEA aims to create…
Connectivity and co-ordination across the eco-system:
We need information and connections to flow so that organisations and individuals can avoid duplication, learn from each other and act more cohesively to drive change.
Diversity of leadership of this collective agenda:
Those with insights, evidence, lived-experience, need to be given a platform to be part of leading change and bringing their experiences to the fore.
Support solutions to be scaled based on need and systemically:
We want to nurture new innovations, and help others think about how they can have a greater impact for more children.
Bring people together around a unified collective message, vision and action:
We want to bring people together to decide what we want to do, what we need and how we will achieve it, and we want to use this to drive policy and practice.
Through enabling our community of 250+ members to collaborate, we develop a unified collective message and take action through:
Collective action:
Helping to capacity build and support member led collective action
Joining up with and collaborating with other campaigns, coalitions and commissions
Policy and Influencing:
Via statements, letters and responses
Supporting Government consultations
Press and media
Scaling Impact:
We help effective solutions reach every child and young person who can benefit from them. We do this by nurturing innovation and scaling existing programmes to solve entrenched problems.
Our current programmes:
The Innovation Award
The Intrapreneurship Award
The Scaling Award
It’s time to create a fairer education system for all.
“The economic and moral imperatives for action are incontrovertible. The challenge remains to make progress and build consensus, sharing what works in order to do so. For all these reasons the work of the FEA remains more relevant than ever.
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