Creating the conditions for success: the key ingredients for making a meaningful impact

1. People

Feedback from our partners makes it clear, over and over again, that success depends on our ability to recruit and retain great people: staff with the right experience who are knowledgeable, skilful and highly motivated. We need qualified, specialist experts in each of the key areas we work in. We also benefit enormously from having a skilled inter-disciplinary team. The work of our technical specialists in education and careers is greatly enhanced by the contribution from other colleagues who bring powerful insights from disciplines such as project management, human resources, technology and finance.

2. Partnership

But having first-rate colleagues is just the start. Our teams bring expertise, but they don’t impose ready-made solutions. Instead, they work with our clients and other key stakeholders to co-construct interventions. Our success depends upon the effectiveness of our partnership working. In Kenya, for example, we have been working with the Ministry of Education, local governments, the Aga Khan foundation, and other consortium partners to improve foundational learning and early childhood education through the UK government-funded INSPIRED programme. The result is a project that draws upon international best practice but is also shaped by deep knowledge of the unique Kenyan context.

We seek to build partnerships that endure. Take the example of UNICEF. We have worked with the agency in many countries in recent years. In Rwanda, we are currently designing an accelerated learning programme for young people who dropped out of high school. In Jordan, our successful work with UNICEF tackling learning loss during the Covid pandemic led to a recent request for us to design a catch-up programme for students in Gaza.

Meanwhile, our consultancy work with the Gates Foundation and UK FCDO through the SCALE initiative depends on the strength of a three-way partnership between us, the funders, and the participating ministries of education.

We achieved an Outstanding grade from Ofsted for the quality of our support for early career teachers in England; this was only possible because of an excellent relationship with delivery partners: high-performing schools that contextualise and deliver training at the local level.

 

"Our teams bring expertise, but they don’t impose ready-made solutions. Instead, they work with our clients and other key stakeholders to co-construct interventions. Our success depends upon the effectiveness of our partnership working."

3. Methodology

We also ensure that our people use highly effective methods. Much of our work is concerned with learning: either professional learning for educators, or the learning that takes place when individuals receive advice and guidance about careers. In both cases, we seek to use approaches that are most conducive to significant learning.

When supporting teachers and school leaders, we apply methods proven for powerful professional development: ensuring that training is evidence-informed, collaborative, sustained and job-embedded. Similarly, in our careers and skills work, the approach is based on a best practice view of guidance that is not directive but empowering – giving clients the information and confidence they need to make their own smart decisions about their next steps.

4. Evidence

Crucially, our work has impact because it is underpinned by evidence, which we mediate and apply to inform improvements in practice. We seek to build a bridge between research findings and real-world application, making evidence accessible and actionable for education and careers professionals.

This focus on the mediation of evidence featured strongly, for example, in the design of the Early Years Professional Development Programme (EYPDP). The content of the EYPDP focused on three areas proven to be vital to the development of children aged two-to-four communication and language, early mathematics and personal, social, and emotional development. In each of these areas of learning, there is a substantial and secure body of evidence-based knowledge about the ingredients of effective practice. Our challenge was to help busy early childhood educators to engage with this knowledge. Frontline staff don’t have the time to engage with research, so we sought to mediate the evidence in an engaging way.

However, simply instructing experienced professionals what to do based on the relevant research is not enough: we also need to draw on the valuable experience and wisdom of professionals themselves. This is why, in the EYPDP, we placed a substantial emphasis on the creation of online communities of practice where early childhood educators could share insights with each other.

 

"We seek to build a bridge between research findings and real-world application, making evidence accessible and actionable for education and careers professionals."

5. Technology

Almost everything we do is enabled by technology. In the 21st century, both excellence in the professional development of educators and the provision of effective careers guidance requires first-rate online support, and effective deployment of technology can be instrumental in creating positive change at the system level.

Our recent work in Zimbabwe illustrates the need for cutting-edge digital solutions. We have transformed the quality of school inspection through the introduction of e-inspection tools and dashboards at both national and provincial levels – and, as a result, real-time data is now used for continuous improvement and decision-making. Our new work in partnership with the Roger Federer Foundation also has technology as its heart: we are helping to scale up the use of a new early learning assessment tool (Smart Tablet Early Learning Assessment, or STELA) in all 8,000 primary schools in Zimbabwe.

6. Metrics

Of course, excellence in design and delivery requires a strong emphasis on monitoring and evaluation. We need robust data to show that we are making a demonstrable difference. For this reason, we place great store on metrics: the collection and analysis of the key quantitative and qualitative data that sheds light on the impact of the work we do.

Our work in the careers space has been greatly strengthened by this emphasis on the power of data. It has been immensely important to get user feedback in the context of our delivery of the National Careers Service – and heartening to know that 96% of customers in the past year were satisfied with the service they received.

The same applies in our careers work with young people, where we have strong evidence that the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme achieved its aim of effectively informing over 100,000 young people about apprenticeship opportunities. 98% of surveyed students stated that the ASK programme had boosted their interests in apprenticeships ‘significantly’ or ‘notably’. It was this impact data that persuaded the Greater London Authority to provide alternative funding when central government funding for ASK came to an end, opening up further opportunities for young people in the city on the new AIM programme.

Looking across our portfolio of recent work, it becomes clear that there isn’t a single ingredient or ‘silver bullet’ that ensure success and impact. There is a rather a combination of factors that work together to create the conditions needed to create meaningful change. It is just as vital to have passionate people around the table, united by the same vision, as it is to have robust evidence and knowledge built up over decades of research and practice. In today’s challenging climate, it is more important than ever to get this balance of ingredients right, refined through continuous evaluation. It is only when these components align that can we deliver the change that learners, educators, and schools around the world truly deserve.