We’ve had unforgettable first two days of the Fair Education Impact Festival. From hearing First Story Alumni Priya Gill share her poetry, poignant reflections of Bite Back Youth Board Member Lanre Adeleye, and a whole host of sessions that have enabled knowledge, connections and collaborations to flow, all led by you, for you.
With 584 sign ups to date, we’re excited to host even more sessions where you can share your inputs, increase your connectivity and be inspired to work together even more collectively to create sustainable long-term change!
Some key highlights from the past two days:
"Lockdown hasn't just affected inequality, it has highlighted the fact that it was there anyway" - Lanre Adeleye (Bite Back Youth Board Member)
A really interesting theme emerging from the impact festival so far, and that we particularly picked up on in the session "The gendered impact of Covid on teenage girls” with Edith Johnson, Co-founder at Be Her Lead, is the idea that inequalities which do not lead directly to attainment gaps are largely being ignored, and that there is a pressing need to see inequality as wider than just attainment outcomes.
This is a sentiment that has been echoed throughout sessions and as Edith herself shared “for too long it’s been a panic of attainment over everything else, but the last year has shown us that we desperately need to focus on other needs too.”
Although we know that many members are working to address inequalities beyond attainment gaps, looking at wellbeing, skills and more, it was a stark reminder that although inequalities in education aren’t always obvious, they are still important.
We also had a fantastic session on the FEA shared agenda and learning from other members, where Tim Mobbs, Teach First very eloquently shared: "we're not here to compete, we're here to collaborate and ultimately to make the education system fairer" which brilliantly sums up the sentiment and feeling of the festival so far, and we’ve still got lots more to come!
Please find our full timetable with all sessions here and a roundup of all of the exciting sessions that have happened so far alongside video recordings here! We will be adding to this throughout the festival so please do bookmark the page to make it easy to come back to.