Nesta, the innovation foundation, today announces the successful grantees of its Future Ready Fund, set up to support innovative projects that develop social and emotional skills in 11 to 18 year-olds. The ten grantees focus on the development of skills that are crucial in the workplace, and also in becoming a well rounded person, but that are often neglected by the national curriculum.

From an app with NHS-endorsed audio tracks on resilience, to an oracy programme enabling young people to find their voice and an arts and drama project that builds self-awareness and emotional intelligence, the ten grantees seek to support students in their personal development and include projects from Blackpool, Devon, South Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire and Middlesbrough.

Successful projects demonstrated great potential to expand their work, learn more about how it develops the target skills in young people, and achieve long-term, sustainable impact. As a portfolio, the fund will explore a range of approaches, including project-based learning, tech-based tools and peer to peer mentoring, each using evidence of what works to inform their design.

The fund, launched in October, received over 300 applicants from across the UK, including charities, schools, social enterprises, for-profits and colleges. Due to the high demand for funding and the high quality of entries, Nesta made the decision to double the funding available from £250,000 to £500,000.

Over the 18 month funding period, beginning March 2019, organisations will be supported to test their projects in new geographical areas or education contexts, as well as develop their approach to evaluation and consider how to replicate and scale their intervention further.

Projects will also receive non-financial support from the fund’s evaluation partner at the University of Sussex, led by Professor Robin Banerjee. The team at Sussex has considerable expertise relating to young people’s development, particularly in the context of social and emotional skills. They will support grantees to develop their evaluation approaches to better understand how their interventions improve the targeted skills.

Jed Cinnamon, Programme Manager, Education, Nesta says, “This innovative and ambitious cohort represents Nesta’s commitment to developing a broader education system that is serious about supporting wider skills alongside academic success. Young people should be leaving school with more than just grades. It’s the complex human skills that will be so important as trends like automation change the economy. We want to work with these organisations to test what works and roll out successful schemes to ensure the students of today are equipped for the future.”

(The winners will be announced at Nesta’s Education Summit 2019 - Shaping the Future, Shifting the System, on 28 February from 10:00 to 18:00 at St Paul’s, 200 Aldersgate, London EC1A 4HD. Winners will be available for interview on the day. Please let me know if you would be interested in speaking to them or receiving a press pass for the event)

Future Ready Fund grantees include:-

Franklin Scholars, East Midlands - £45,000

Franklin Scholars run a successful peer mentoring programme, matching Year 10s and at-risk Year 7s to develop key skills and boost progress at school. This includes weekly group activities, academic tuition and coaching. The training and mentoring resources for the Year 10s have been designed around an ABCD Framework including social and emotional skills. Nesta’s grant will allow them to expand to more schools - particularly those in communities with lower educational outcomes - and to conduct a formal evaluation process.

MacMillan Academy, Middlesbrough - £50,000

MacMillan Academy, in Middlesbrough, is a secondary school and sixth form college that is the lead school for the HeadStart programme for sixth form students. This is a whole college partnership approach to supporting students’ resilience, and will be delivered across five colleges in Middlesbrough. The programme involves a range of interventions, including training peer resilience ‘champions’, alongside universal interventions to create sustainable school culture change. Nesta’s grant will be funding the programme to expand to more post-16 colleges, having been tested at primary and secondary, and to further evaluate the impact of the programme.

CU Trust, National- £50,000

Children’s University have created a digital platform for students across the UK to track the activities they’re engaging in outside of the classroom, and to recognise the skills they have gained from them. This is an evolution of their original paper ‘skills passport’ for 5-14 year olds. Students log activities in the platform and are encouraged to then reflect on the skills they’re building. Teachers and activity provider partners can also better understand engagement in activities and skill development, and adjust provision as a result. The grant from Nesta will allow them to evaluate and develop this digital offer in secondary schools.

Khulisa London, Manchester and Sheffield - £42,000

Khulisa run ‘Face It’, a 6-8 week drama and arts programme made up of intensive workshops and 1:1 support. It is a personal development programme for young people who are at risk of offending or exclusion, building self-awareness and emotional intelligence. The course is delivered experientially using interactive and creative techniques and activities, with each programme tailored to the specific needs of the participants. The grant will allow Khulisa to expand the work - delivered successfully in prisons - to new schools and Pupil Referral Units across the UK.

Football Beyond Borders Blackpool - £47,913

Football Beyond Borders utilises a young person’s passion for football to help them learn key social and emotional skills. They work with Key Stage 3 students, leading project-based classroom sessions alongside character-developing football activities with elements of problem-solving to instill values of resilience, teamwork and leadership. A half-termly transformative trip rewards behavioural change, with the overall aim being to reduce school exclusions and improve behaviour. The grant will be supporting their expansion to Blackpool, helping them to create a replicable model for further expansion.

Sidmouth College South West - £50,000

Sidmouth College is a Comprehensive Community College in Sidmouth, Devon, for students aged 11-19. The school has led the piloting of a six-week life skills course called ‘My Big Life’. It uses CBT techniques to help young people develop a toolkit of resilience and coping strategies, targeting students with low attendance and engagement with school life. The Future Ready Fund will be helping them expand the programme to at least 14 more schools across the South West, and to further evaluate the impact of the project in different contexts.

Voice 21 National - £45,986

Voice 21 runs an oracy programme to help enable young people to find the voice they need to succeed in the 21st Century. They will use the grant to expand the programme - previously delivered in mainstream schools - to Pupil Referral Units in London, North-West England and Yorkshire and the Humber, helping students to improve their social, emotional and cognitive competence through developing oracy skills. The fully piloted professional development and whole-school improvement programme addresses both curriculum and pedagogy.

Mind Moose National - £45,000

Mind Moose is a fun, interactive online platform that helps children develop good mental wellbeing, and supports early intervention. They are running a new project specifically targeted at the transition between primary and secondary school, which the Future Ready Fund will be supporting through this grant. Lessons, activities and self-evaluation tools support children to understand how their brain works and learn new strategies to develop self-awareness, resilience and self-esteem.

Empathy Lab South Wales - £49,800

Empathy Lab run an ‘empathy education programme’ called Empathy Explorers. This is a year-round empathy education programme, involving the whole school community, that builds the capacity of schools to develop young people’s empathy and literacy skills, and their social activism. The grant will help them scale to 8 new schools in Wales. Empathy Lab work with each school to create a bespoke plan to deliver the project, and schools join a year-long learning group with shared target outcomes in both literacy and empathy skills.

Foundation for Positive Mental Health Scotland and England - £50,000

The Foundation for Positive Mental Health, based in Scotland, run a programme called Positive Mental Training, which the grant will help them transfer to a school context. Based on work in the health sector, the intervention involves an app with NHS-endorsed audio tracks on resilience and self-perception, tailored teacher training, peer-to-peer initiatives and workshops co-designed with students. They will be working with a small group of pilot schools in Scotland and England through the grant.

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For more information contact

Juliet Grant, Senior Press Officer, Nesta t: 020 7438 2668 | m: 07866 949047 | e: [email protected]

Notes to editors:

About Nesta
Nesta is a global innovation foundation. We back new ideas to tackle the big challenges of our time, making use of our knowledge, networks, funding and skills. We work in partnership with others, including governments, businesses and charities. We are a UK charity that works all over the world, supported by a financial endowment. To find out more visit www.nesta.org.ukNesta is a registered charity in England and Wales 1144091 and Scotland SC042833.