Youth Engagement
We believe that we will only be able to make education fairer if young people currently experiencing the education system are involved in shaping it’s future.
Therefore, we support young people with lived experience of barriers to education to become co-leaders of the movement towards a fairer education system. Our youth engagement work includes supporting young people to develop leadership skills, amplifying young people's ideas and lived experience and building the capacity of our members, policy makers and the wider education sector to meaningfully involve young people in decision-making.
On this page you can find out more about the different elements of our youth engagement work and how you can get involved.
In this section
Fair Education
Youth Summit 2024
This year our Youth Steering Group and the Mission 44 Youth Advisory Board hosted our biggest ever Fair Education Youth Summit, designed and led by young people, for young people.
The Youth Summit brought together 166 young people from across the education sector, with the aim to ensure that young changemakers are better connected with each other, have the skills to lead the change they want to see and have the opportunity to directly influence decision makers. What was the result?! Connection, inspiration and commitment!
“Being able to engage with more than 200 young people who are enthusiastic about addressing educational inequality is truly motivating. I left feeling inspired, grateful, and prepared to use what I learnt to create an inclusive educational system!”
“I feel honoured to have planned and led such an amazing event - every day since has felt so unreal. Just hearing young change makers leave sessions feeling empowered and motivated to be the change of their generation was so inspiring.”
Sessions designed by young people, for young people
The young people designed a packed agenda full of skills sessions and opportunities to engage directly with decision makers. We had 40 expert speakers and session facilitators, including 22 young people and 5 decision makers (MPs, DfE, Ofsted & DCMS). Find the full agenda here.
Speakers
The impact of the day
Who was in the room?
We are really proud that 93% of attendees rated the event 4 or 5 stars, however, even more importantly the young people thought the event had an impact on them and their ability to lead change in the education sector:
87% of attendees learnt something to help them bring about change,
87% of attendees felt they had the opportunity to influence policy makers during the event,
86% of attendees met someone they want to collaborate with,
84% of attendees reported developing skills for youth leadership.
And the impact isn’t just to those in the room with 66% of attendees saying they were going to share what they learnt with their peers and/or the organisation they represent. A further 43% said they will use what they learnt to start or improve a social action project, 26% reported they are going to take on a new volunteering role or join a campaign, 26% said they are going to apply to be a trustee or school governor and 50% said they now have the skills to improve their CV to celebrate their changemaker experience.
We more than doubled the number of young people who attended in 2024 in comparison to 2023, growing from 65 young people representing 34 organisations to 166 young people representing 72 organisations.
We knew we wanted this Youth Summit to reach as many young people from across our membership as possible, but specifically young people who have faced barriers to a fair education system and those who have never volunteered or taken part in an event like this before. By working with FEA members and key sector stakeholders, we were able to make this event as inclusive as possible to ensure young people too often overlooked by the sector and youth engagement programmes were able to participate, including:
Young people on Free School Meals and/or eligible for Pupil Premium,
Young carers,
Looked after young people and care leavers,
Young people learning in alternative provision settings or with experience of exclusion,
Young people with special educational needs or disabilities,
Refugee and asylum seeking young people,
Young people with English as an additional language,
and young people who have experienced homelessness.
“The education system in the UK will never be fairer...is what you might say, if you did not attend the Fair Education Youth summit last week. It was truly inspirational to be in a room full of people who share the same ambition as me, which is to ensure that no child’s success should be defined by their socio-economic background.”
“The fact that the Youth Summit is 100% designed and led by young people makes it unique. I hope young people went away feeling empowered and that social activism had been demystified.”
“How can young people change the law? This is one of the many questions that we explored at the Fair Education Youth Summit ! This was an incredible opportunity to discuss how we can tackle inequality in education and implement a more inclusive education system. ”
“It was specifically great to have a session where young people could directly contribute to ongoing policy projects like the curriculum and assessment review - I’d love to see how the ideas contributed there are put into real life practice by policy makers”
Photos
We were delighted to work with Benoît G-A Creative as photographer to capture content throughout the day. Check out the full photo gallery here.
If you would like to use the content to share about your experience at the Youth Summit, please don’t forget to use #FairEdYouthSummit and tag @_TheFEA. Unless you are the person featured in the image, please do not use these photos for any other purpose than to illustrate the Fair Education Youth Summit.
The Fair Education Youth Summit 2024 was made possible due to the generous support of Mission 44 and UBS.
Youth engagement support for FEA Members
Thanks to funding from Mission 44, the Fair Education Alliance are able to offer free youth engagement support to our members, schools and colleges, decision makers and the wider sector.
Bespoke 1:1 Youth Engagement Support: FEA members can book in with our Head of Youth Engagement, Becca Weighell, to receive specific support to develop your organisation's youth engagement practice.
Youth Engagement Working Group: Anyone can join our quarterly workshops to learn from promising youth engagement practice across the sector.
Email youth@faireducation.org.uk to find out more.
Youth Engagement Case Studies
We’re delighted to present eight case studies which demonstrate the impact of our partnership with Mission 44 and Pears Foundation from March 2023 to March 2024. This is just a sample of Fair Education Alliance members who received youth engagement support as part of this grant. These member case studies are the outcome of interviews conducted with external evaluation consultants in March 2024 and, where possible, involved both a staff member and a young person from the organisation.
