Changing the Odds: Great schools are necessary but not sufficient
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The partners whose work you'll see here are part of the first cohort of our Cradle-to-Career Accelerator.
The C2C Accelerator is our growth fund for partners showing the most promise in building coherent, place-based support around children. Each place selected joins a bespoke three-year programme, with investment and dedicated support from our cradle-to-career specialists, to accelerate the model it is already building in its own community. The work draws on what we learned in Feltham, and on what this growing community of partners is learning from one another.
We commissioned Postcode Films to make these short films in the communities where that work actually happens. We didn't want slick promotional pieces, and we didn't want stories of heroes. We wanted to bring the work home: to show what cradle to career looks like up close, in real places, as ordinary and curious people do the patient, often unglamorous work of changing the odds for children and families.
They are also a way of honouring these partners, and of learning in public, so that others weighing up this work can see what it really involves.
Great schools are necessary but not sufficient, and these films are about the rest of the answer: the people of a place choosing to close the gaps children fall through, together.
Ask most heads when they first realised the job was bigger than the classroom, and they'll have a story.
Schools see far more of a child's life than they were built to act on. A Reception teacher can often tell which children have spent their early years around other children and which haven't. A careers lead knows that a young person's grades will count for little if nobody has shown them how to apply for a job. And a head can meet a family at the gate for the first time when their child is four, and wonder what those four years held.
None of these are failures of teaching. They're what happens when every institution around a child sees only its own part of a childhood. The gaps between them are where children fall.
Necessary but not sufficient
Schools can't close those gaps on their own, and they shouldn't try. But they are unusually well placed to do something about them. They are trusted. They are universal: almost every child walks through a school gate. And they know families for years, not weeks.
That makes schools natural anchors in a place. Not the provider of every service, but the institution that can bring health visitors, councils, employers, nurseries and community groups around the same children. The point, as the film makes clear, is not to ask schools to do more. It is to ask them to do something different.
This is what we mean by cradle-to-career: a journey from birth to work in which a child's education is coherent, the services around them are connected, and the relationships that hold them are consistent.
What it looks like in practice
Alongside the main film, we've published three shorter films from places in the first cohort of our Cradle-to-Career Accelerator. Each started somewhere different.
In Chard, Holyrood Academy began with a letter inviting organisations across the town to breakfast. The school set out to be the glue, not another service.
In Middlesbrough, a secondary school asked local employers what they could offer. Together, they built a post-16 course for the young people most likely to leave school without a next step.
In Bligh, Medway, the relationship with a family starts long before Reception, with baby groups that bring families onto the school site from birth.
What it asks of leaders
There is no blueprint. One head describes the work as ‘crossing the river by feeling for the stones’: you find the next step together, rather than plotting the whole route in advance. For leaders used to plans with waypoints, that can be unsettling at first.
It asks for patience. Many of the families who most need this work have been let down before, and they are quick to spot another service that doesn't deliver. So the advice from those doing it is to go slowly and make it good.
Watch the films
If they prompt questions about your own place, you might be interested in our new “In Your Place” tool. A free tool for school and local authority leaders. It sets out what is happening to children nationally, how a cradle-to-career approach works, and offers eight prompts to help you to explore where you might start. Complete the form below to access the
If any of this sparks curiosity or questions for you, Leonie Ratty—who leads our Cradle-to-Career Catalyst programme—would be glad to talk it through.
