Our Team’s 2024 Highlights

As 2024 draws to a close, we took one last chance to reflect on the past year and asked our team to share their highlights. My personal highlight was starting my new role at the Fair Education Alliance! I love the opportunities we have to get to know our members through meetings, events and workshops – it’s so good to hear about the fantastic work everyone is doing to tackle educational inequity.

We can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store but, for now, enjoy reading through our reflections:

“Attending the CEO retreat in May and getting to learn from brilliant leaders and seeing them support and challenge each other. It’s amazing what a change of scene, walks and shared meals can do in terms of conversations.”

Rachel Tait, Director of Operations

The evolution of the AI Working Group has been a real highlight! Beginning with the roundtable in March, the group has grown to be full of members who are enthusiastic about supporting each other to capitalise on the seismic technological shift that the age of AI brings for the benefit of children and young people.

Jane Fernandes, Collective Action and Advocacy Manager

Seeing the pieces of our work come together: our Membership Tools have helped convene our members to influence policy alongside young people – we've really broken down the silos in our own work. Also, getting to be on Pod Save the UK!

Janeen Hayat, Director of Collective Action

I loved all of our team days but I especially enjoyed the EPI one. It was great to have a full team, with Saradia joining, and it was a really focused day on policy which linked so well to our work. The IntoUni day was also good in August.

Naomi Turner, Operations Manager

The Awards final! It was so great to see the judges, previous Award winners and new cohort all in the same room celebrating everyone's amazing work and journey so far!

Jessica Dunks, Events and Communications Manager - Fair Education Awards

Publishing the updated Ecosystem Map! It's so brilliant to see 120 FEA Members working across over 23,000 educational settings in England. This map helps us paint an accurate picture of the work that's happening across the country, highlight areas of greatest need, and provide regional and local snapshots to policy makers in an effort to work more effectively.

Daniel Rooney, Digital Project Manager

Angel's 'Brick by Brick' poem at the Fair Education Summit. She spoke incredibly powerful words, then was blown away by the wave of appreciation that hit the stage. The perfect way to end the Summit!

Becca Weighell, Head of Youth Engagement

Being on the panel of judges for the Innovation Award. It was so inpsiring and hope-giving to see the number of people with great initiatives, innovations and motivation to make a positive difference to children and young people's educational experiences.

Saradia McCahon, Impact and Evaluation Manager

The Scaling CEO retreat – spending time together building relationships, supporting each other and challenging each other to think systemically. I also loved the social moments of playing uno, chopping wood and eating together - all in the lovely setting of Jamie's Farm

Siwan Davies, Director of Scaling Impact

The inbetween conversations with Youth Steering Group members during the Youth Summit – I think they really felt like the success was theirs, particularly Farzana being absolutely floored and beaming when Gina praised her participation on the panel at party conferences

Catherine Sangster, Events Manager

The Youth Summit – more specifically, seeing some Youth Steering Group members who were really nervous beforehand absolutely come into their own on stage, and seeing the pride they had in themselves afterwards at other young people looking up to them as leaders of change.

Dan Vogel, Evaluation and Youth Engagement Coordinator

Selecting such a great and diverse cohort of Award Winners has been really exciting - especially as they cover such a wide range of topics this year. It's also been wonderful to see how much the whole Award team and FEA team as a whole has designed offerings and banded together to support these Award Winners!

Soizic Hagege, Head of Innovation Award