ReachOut and the Fair Education Alliance

ReachOut is very excited to announce that we have been invited to join the Fair Education Alliance, a coalition of businesses, educational organisations and charities that is working to tackle educational inequality in the UK. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to represent the needs of our young people at the highest level, working together with a range of like-minded organisations to build a fairer education for all.

Established by Teach First, the Fair Education Alliance (FEA) counts the likes of Barnardo’s, EnablingEnterprise, Business in the Community, UBS and Place2Be among its members. These organisations have joined together to drive action at a local and national level in order to achieve five Impact Goals that will even the gap in education and life chances between young people from rich and poor backgrounds:

·         1: narrow the gap in literacy and numeracy at primary school

·         2: narrow the gap in GCSE attainment at secondary school

·         3: ensure young people develop key strengths, including resilience and well-being, to support high aspirations

·         4: narrow the gap in the proportion of young people taking part in further education or employment-based training after finishing their GCSEs

·         5: narrow the gap in university graduation, including from the 25% most selective universities

ReachOut has always been a proponent of fairer education. Since our founding in 1994, we have been motivated by what we see as an unacceptable status quo – the fact that young people from low income communities are much less likely to succeed than their wealthier peers, something which impacts negatively on their ability to lead the good, happy lives to which they aspire. As such, our mission aligns very nicely with that of the Alliance. Like each of the FEA’s partner organisations, we believe that working towards each of these Impact Goals is vital if we are to achieve fairer education for all in the UK.

However, what’s especially exciting about our partnership with the FEA is that we will be chairing the Alliance’s Working Group for Impact Goal 3: ensuring young people develop key strengths, including resilience and well-being, to support high aspirations. In 2014, 100% of our partner schools reported that we had a positive impact on pupils’ development of good character. Our newly-refined character development curriculum and resources, originally commissioned by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, means that we’re ideally placed to advise the alliance on how best to work towards this Impact Goal. This is a unique opportunity for a local, grass-roots organisation like ours to lead the national conversation on character development.

Having recently appointed a new Chief Executive, expanded our staff base and refined our 2015-18 Business Plan, we at ReachOut are moving into a period of sustained growth and this partnership with the Fair Education Alliance marks a milestone in our development as a charity. We’re very much looking forward to working with such an influential network of organisations and doing even more to narrow the huge gaps between young people from rich and poor backgrounds – watch this space! 

Luke Ounsworth

London

Character Matters

This blog was first published on the FEA website on the 22nd of December 2015

Peter Blackwell, CEO of the UK’s largest mentoring charity, ReachOut, explains why character development is crucial to achieving educational equality.

ReachOut has recently been invited to join the Fair Education Alliance (FEA), a national coalition of organisations working to bring about change in education and help end the persistent achievement gap between young people from our poorest communities and their wealthier peers.

We’re excited to be involved in Impact Group 3, working to ensure young people develop key strengths, including resilience and wellbeing, to support high aspirations. I’m particularly happy to hear the FEA talking about key strengths (or what ReachOut would call character virtues) with a view to supporting high aspirations, rather than focusing on developing aspiration in itself. Whilst developing aspiration is no doubt valuable, ReachOut’s experience over the last 20 years has shown us that most young people already aspire to achieve, to be successful and happy in their personal lives and careers. The problem most often lies in a lack of character that prevents them from achieving these goals, and consequently impacts their emotional well-being.

That’s why it is so important that we’re talking about character development in education, and I’m keen to lend ReachOut’s expertise to the conversation about what character is, why we should be paying attention to it, and what character virtues we should be fostering in our young people at school.

Firstly, I think we need to actively expand the character discussion beyond resilience, grit and determination, and the popular message that pursuing ‘tough’ activities such as rugby and army cadets is our sole solution. There’s so much more to humanity’s successes than the ability to endure and persevere. In order for our young people to flourish, we must widen the work we do to include performance, civic and moral virtues (as collectively described by the Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtue). 

ReachOut has identified four key virtues that are present in a person of good character - someone who leads a good life and makes a positive contribution to society – and that enable us to consider performance, civic and moral virtues all together.

Staying Power – resilience, grit, the ability to stick at something, to honour commitments, to see tasks through to the end.

Self-Control – the ability to keep emotions in check and to choose to act (or not to act) in a certain way despite how we may feel.

Fairness – to treat others with respect and empathy, honouring rights and responsibilities, and being honest.

Good Judgement – the ability to consider consequences and make decisions that benefit both ourselves AND those affected by our choice.  

These are the same four character virtues that Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and St Thomas Aquinas wrote about as far back as 380BC. Good Judgement (sometimes called Wisdom, or Phronesis by the Greeks) is almost like a ‘master’ character virtue, exercised constantly in practice of Staying Power, Self-Control and Fairness. 

We keep things simple so that our young people can find talking about character as accessible as possible. That’s why we’ve chosen the language we have, and why we’ve cut down what we talk about to just four, all encompassing, virtues. We think these four character virtues can be used to express or break down the many other qualities mentioned in the character conversation into their constituent parts – for example Tolerance, a powerful combination of Fairness and Self-Control.  

So why does character matter so much?  A person of good character will make the right choices that help them to succeed in whatever it is they are pursuing, be it GCSEs, career, family life, whatever. Those choices range from the small but significant, such as choosing to study instead of playing that extra hour of PS4, to huge ones like deciding not to pursue an affair that one knows may destroy your family. I’m a firm believer that people are defined by their actions, not their words, and character is the foundation of the line of choices that generates the transcript of our lives.

It is a lack of character that so often leads to people making bad choices at key moments of their lives, as opposed to a lack of ability or poor teaching, with crushing long term results. This is why it is so critically important that we are foster good character in everyone, and we are likely to see the biggest benefits among those most disadvantaged in our society.

At ReachOut our mentees, mentors and staff talk about all four of our character virtues frequently, building up an understanding of how developing good character can impact our daily lives for the better. These conversations shape the hearts and minds of our young people to become, in the most practical sense, the future of our society - those who will lead through example in their homes, schools, communities and hopefully much farther beyond. 

Working with the Fair Education Alliance members to reduce education inequality is something we’re committed to and proud to be a part of. Our work in academic mentoring and character development has helped hundreds of disadvantaged young people earn better GCSE grades and stay in employment, education or training. We’re doing everything we can to help our mentees make a better start in life, and we hope that by working with the members of the Fair Education Alliance, we can help make this happen for all disadvantaged young people nationwide.

On your marks. Ready. Set. Go!

This summer saw the return of ReachOut’s summer projects. On the summer project we work with our partner schools to ease the transition between primary and secondary school for year 6’s going into year 7. On each project we run sports days, which are a fantastic opportunity for our mentees to practise using ReachOut’s core character values as well as a brilliant chance for our corporate partners to come and get involved!

In Manchester, we ran sports days at both MCMA and Our Lady’s summer projects working with a total of 96 young people aged 10 to 11. Our friends at PWC  and RBS dusted off their sports gear and popped down to Our Lady’s and MCMA to help lead a team of young people to victory.

Sports day began with getting everyone into teams. The children were particularly excited to have our corporate partners with them. Like one of our mentees said, “they’re grownups so they must be good at sport!”. 

Each team then split off and took part in a variety of events including obstacle courses, Basketball netting, and relay races. For many of the events there were extra points available for cheering your team on and both RBS and PWC volunteers definitely helped encourage team spirit in their groups (a few of them were cheering louder than the children!).

Once all of the scores had been totted up there was a presentation where all of the children received a medal and the winning teams at each school received trophies. There were also huge rounds of applause for our RBS and PWC volunteers. They really made the day extra special for the mentees and the young people were very grateful for their support.

A massive thank you to Jon Mepham and all of his colleagues at RBS and Gareth Crabtree

and all of his colleagues at PWC for helping out, we couldn’t have done it with you!

Mentee wins Jubilee Award for "stress" of volunteering!

My name is Rhiana Dennis-Small and I am currently a sixth form student attending Bishop Challoner. I first got into ReachOut in winter of 2013, attending the weekly mentoring sessions whilst in Y10. Some employees from Barclays came to the mentoring session to talk about work experience, and at the time I was very interested in banking.  After that session, I continued attending the weekly sessions in ReachOut and started to build my confidence. At the end of the year I then volunteered as a Junior Mentor in my school’s summer transition project, mentoring a group of 16 Year 6 pupils.

Junior Mentors on a confidence building outward bound trip. Rhiana is 3rd from left.

In Year 11, I was brave enough to run for project manager for our ReachOut group project that was a talent show and then volunteer project manager for the summer transition project at my school. I learned a lot about organisation and was able to assist others with looking after the children. I also took part in a number of other fundraising events such as bag packing to raise money for the summer project.

Junior Mentors bag packing to raise funds for the Summer Project.

As a result of all this stress, I was awarded a Jubilee Award from the Jubilee Centre for the work I have contributed towards ReachOut through my volunteering. The award ceremony was held at the House of Lords. It was genuinely a great experience and a nice day out. I had never been there before and as well as accepting the award, I was lucky enough to have a tour in the House of Lords, from which I learnt some interesting historical facts about Britain. It was an event that I will never forget and that has raised the ambitions that I already have.

Rhiana (5th from left) received the Jubilee Award for Service at the House of Lords, with James Arthur, Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (2nd from right).

Overall, ReachOut has increased the expectations that I have for myself, improved my confidence, improved different skills I have such as communication and finally, made me come to the realisation that I love helping people and that I love working with young children.

Welcome to the ReachOut family!

We're excited to welcome several new team members into the ReachOut fold in both London and Manchester. As we prepare for the new academic year and the 66 mentoring projects starting soon they will have their work cut out!

So let's meet them!

Caroline Cheetham (pictured right)
A former primary school teacher in Sheffield, Caroline brings her experience with young people and knowledge of the KS2 curriculum to the charity as the new ReachOut Club Project Manager in London.

Jo Tripney (pictured left)
Jo is our new Volunteering Officer in Manchester. She formerly worked in the student volunteering team at Manchester University Students' Union so is prepared to manage the questions and expectations of our student volunteers.

Chris Mills (pictured right)
Chris joins the fundraising team in London, focusing on Trusts and Foundations applications. He's an Oxford grad but also plays bass in a band, raising the coolness of the team by a factor of 10!

Alice Pooley
Our new ReachOut Academy Project Officer in Manchester, Alice is well placed to manage our secondary school projects thanks to her Teach First training and project work in Hong Kong. 

Adriana Buffa (pictured left)
Our summer intern, Adriana, is from northern Italy and is busy sightseeing and exploring London whilst also taking a lead on stakeholder consultations. 

Elizabeth Thornton
Elizabeth is the newest member of our team, joining after a stint in Colombia volunteering in an orphanage. She is helping to create character development resources as well as with recruitment in London. 

Alison Braybrooks
Alison actually starts on Monday but she knows ReachOut well having been part of our Board of Advisors and volunteering in the office. She specialises in Impact Measurement and has a wealth of experience; formerly Head of Corporate Fundraising for Macmillan and has also worked in the CSR team for UBS and EDF energy. She will be heading up the fundraising team in London.

Massive welcome to them all, and also to all our new volunteer mentors who are gearing up to start projects in the coming months.