Learning from a decade of collective impact
10 years ago, 25 organisations came together to found the Fair Education Alliance. Just a few months later, we published our first Report Card to document the state of educational inequality and our recommendations to close the gaps. The alliance grew, engaging diverse organisations through dialogue and action. Five years later, the alliance merged with the Teach First Innovation Unit, launched its new strategy and became an independent charity. As we have grown to almost 300 members across this decade, we have remained committed to our values of learning and honesty. In this blog, we share are our reflections on how our beliefs have evolved and what we have learned about our role. You can read more in our Annual Report 2023-24.
We believe systems change is required to truly enable every young person to thrive, regardless of socioeconomic background. Educational inequality is a wicked problem – there are many interdependent factors that can make it feel impossible to solve. We have been inspired by other organisations around the world who use systems change, community-centred change and collective impact approaches. One of the most important aspects of a systems change approach is starting with self and recognising that systems change is ultimately about human change: we are part of the system that we are trying to change. If we don’t work on our own assumptions, beliefs and values, then we may be further entrenching current issues, and we can’t realistically expect to create change in the rest of the system.
We believe in social justice above social mobility. The promise of social mobility hasn’t achieved equity of outcomes, because it relies on individuals to succeed despite the wider context, and usually still only benefits a lucky few. We increasingly adopt a social justice lens in our work to think about what is needed for every child and young person to thrive, taking it from a focus on wealth to one also of health and happiness.
We believe that transformational change is possible, and we know it will be difficult. Shifting the status quo will take generations and although that is daunting, we believe it can be done. We try to balance hope and optimism with the bleak reality that the gaps between children from low-income households and their peers have increased in the last decade. We believe it is key to persevere with the long-term work and lay foundations for a fairer future system, while continuing to address the immediate challenges for today’s young people.
Collaboration was baked into the FEA approach from day one, and building the necessary strong, trusted relationships takes time and skill. That time and skill is often not resourced properly because it can be assumed that organisations will do that work for free or that great partnerships can be established overnight. This is especially important when working with young people whose voices are not usually heard, or when facilitating intergenerational dialogue. A common challenge in our work is keeping relationships strong when, inevitably, people change roles or organisations. That’s why taking a long-term view is important so that people are supported to embed their involvement with the FEA across their organisation and stay connected with our vision throughout their career.
The sheer diversity of our membership brings richness and complexity. Our member organisations represent business, charity and education sectors because we know change is possible through this cross-sector approach. Some members have just a couple of paid staff while others have thousands, and they are all over the country delivering a huge variety of activities from early years to higher education. There is strength in this diversity, but it requires constant adaptation to changes within our member organisations as well as changes in the wider external environment. We are constantly learning how to better tailor our work without it requiring more and more capacity.
We balance being responsive to our members’ individual interests and needs while remaining focused on what we believe the wider alliance, sector and system needs. Funding models and governance structures generally encourage organisations to focus on programmatic delivery, with little to no incentive to look beyond that. So, while we encourage and highlight our members’ brilliant work, we also try to create spaces where we can challenge and push each other to do better.
We need dialogue and nuance. Even with a shared vision and shared values there are significant differences in our members’ beliefs about how we make change happen. We try not to shy away from that. By facilitating dialogue about the messy, grey areas, we can enrich collective understanding and see that it is not ‘either/or’, but usually ‘both/and’.
Infrastructure organisations need infrastructure. We did not start our work with a strong foundation of information about our members and their work. Information about people, organisations, programmes and the relationships between all of that is essential for enabling collaboration. As we have invested in our data infrastructure, we have seen how it helps everyone learn about the whole system, work together more effectively and spots where there are gaps or biases in the data available. It’s not enough to simply open up or democratise data, we need investment in people’s will and skill to use that data to its full potential.
Our work is increasingly about shifting mindsets in order to shape policy and practice. Given the scale of the challenges, it’s understandable that policymakers, funders and commissioners are looking for ‘the answer’ to problems in our education system. While we advocate for promising approaches backed by evidence, we all need to lead with humility and acknowledge that we don’t know everything. So, it’s not only our role to change policy and practice, but also our role to shift the mindsets that underpin the way the system currently works.