What’s next for the Youth Steering Group?

On Saturday the Fair Education Alliance’s Youth Steering Group gathered in Leeds for a training day. I travelled from Manchester to join them and lead a session about our strategy refresh. 

The Youth Steering Group consists of 20 young people aged between 14-24, bringing together diverse perspectives and lived experiences of the English education system. They have impressive ideas for making it fairer. 

We began by learning about strategy and examined a framework called NPC’s strategy triangle. This helped us consider various components of an effective strategy, including our vision, goals, strengths and weaknesses as an organisation, and the external environment. 

The Importance of Feedback 

Next, we explored feedback from over 40 attendees at the Youth Summit regarding what they would like the FEA to consider in the strategy refresh. The key themes from this feedback included:

• Engaging more young people in their communities such as in schools, colleges, universities, and youth groups, to gather their perspectives on education and share information about the FEA and education policy.

• Offering direct opportunities for young people such as meeting policymakers, participating in events, and engaging in campaigning.

• Increasing youth representation within FEA’s staff and governance by creating more work experience opportunities, internships, and roles for under-25s on the Board of Trustees. 

I also shared some areas the FEA might explore during the strategy refresh, including raising public awareness of educational inequity and why it matters, strengthening relationships with policymakers, and increasing local and regional collaboration.  

The Big Ideas 

The group then selected several topics for deeper discussion, including:

Developing direct opportunities for young people, such as: 

• Forming stronger local partnerships with FEA member organisations, using our Ecosystem Map. 

• Conducting assemblies in their schools or FEA member schools

• Building relationships with local politicians 

• Running skills workshops to build on the success of the Youth Summit sessions, potentially in partnership with relevant FEA members.

• Strategically promoting the youth bulletin across social media platforms.

• Establishing a dedicated Instagram account for the steering group

Working with FEA members to: 

• Encourage organisations to appoint FEA ambassadors to represent FEA in the workplace, helping colleagues understand and engage with FEA through ongoing conversations and awareness

• Motivate organisations to periodically share short quotes, video clips, or updates from their youth engagement efforts, which we can feature in our Bulletin and in our communications to inspire others.

Raising awareness of the FEA with other young people by:

• Improving our youth bulletin content

• Increasing the youth bulletin subscriber numbers,

• Creating more audiovisual content such as a 60-second summary of this month’s youth bulletin

Strengthening FEA membership by:

• Reviewing what it means to be an FEA member organisation, ensuring that all members are committed to our vision and able to contribute to collective action. 

Building Youth Action and Connections

Angel, FEA Youth Steering Group Member

“During our in-person Youth Steering Group meeting on Saturday, we had the perfect opportunity to reflect on the Youth Summit and discuss our future direction.

Rachel’s strategy session helped us establish our vision for the organisation. We talked about using our resources wisely and identifying what is working well and where improvements can be made.

By the end of the meeting, I felt inspired, motivated, and excited about the future for young people.”

“Looking ahead, our steering group is focused on the next steps. We want to create more opportunities for youth action, make the youth bulletin even more informative, and organise more events that connect us with the FEA organisations in our communities. Strengthening our membership and building collective action remain key priorities too.

We are also considering appointing ambassadors for each organisation to help spread the word and maintain the momentum. Using social media will be a big part of this, as it’s a powerful way to raise awareness, share what we’re doing, and get more people involved.

Additionally, we plan to connect with other youth steering groups and advisory boards in future sessions. This will help us to build stronger networks, exchange ideas, and work together on common goals.

Addressing inequity in education and making real change requires all of us to do our part. Even in everyday conversations, we can raise these important issues and help others understand why they matter.

Every little bit of support counts, and together we can make a big difference.”

Angel, FEA Youth Steering Group Member

What Comes Next 

The Youth Steering Group dedicated the remainder of their training day to planning upcoming events and campaigns that incorporate their strategic ideas, including an online mental health event.

The next consultations for our strategy refresh will take place with FEA members in Newcastle, Manchester, and London, as well as online in March, April, and May. If you are an FEA member, you can sign up now for a workshop.