Ten years, one question: what does a child need to thrive?
We opened in Feltham in 2012. Everything since has been an attempt to answer that question—first across our neighbourhood, then across the country. This is how the story has unfolded.
We opened our first school.
Reach Academy Feltham opened as a small, all-through school—sixty children in each year group, from Reception to Year 13. We believed in the power of all-through education to build stronger relationships and give a child's journey real coherence.
The small scale was the point: big enough for an expert staff team, small enough to know every child and family well.
Reach Academy Feltham →
So we opened another.
Our community wanted more children to benefit from our approach. But we knew the human scale was one of the things that made the school work—so rather than expand, we fought to open a second school nearby.
Reach Academy Hanworth Park →
We started building beyond the school gates.
We realised that for every child in Feltham to enjoy a life of choice and opportunity, a great school is necessary but not sufficient. So we set up the Reach Children's Hub—an integrated pipeline of cradle-to-career support to complement our schools.
Today the Hub offers perinatal support, early years training, parenting programmes, community organising, careers support and much more.
The Reach Children's Hub →
Our community came together to lead the change.
Feltham wanted a way to improve the experience of growing up in Hounslow, together. So we began building collective impact—grounded in, and led by, our community.
We develop the capacity and confidence of community leaders, so the people who know a place best can shape how things are done in it.
The Convening Partnership →
We began building a national network.
Our ambition was never only Feltham. All the while, we were building a national network of locally connected leaders, ready to confront the biggest challenges facing their own communities.
We've made mistakes and learned an enormous amount. But the cradle-to-career approach has proven itself, and we've developed approaches we've been able to share across the country.
We incubated ideas the whole sector could use.
Some of what we started outgrew us, which was always the hope. Oak National Academy, built in a fortnight to keep the country learning through lockdown. Languages for All, opening up language learning beyond the few. The Centre for the Children's Workforce, building a profession around the people who support children.
We start things, prove them, and let them travel.
We work wherever the thinking is boldest.
We set up and facilitate regional school-leadership programmes, led by the places they serve. We take on consultancy with some of the most forward-thinking education organisations in the country, and we participate in international networks.
Our people serve on governing and trust boards as non-executive directors, and our work reaches into national policy. Wherever people are serious about changing children's odds, we try to be useful.
The work reaches communities across England.
Today we develop leaders, cultivate the wider children's workforce, strengthen places, and make the national case for organising support around children—from one neighbourhood to many.
See where we work →What we do has changed a hundred times. Why we do it, not once.
Our work shifts with our partners and with the sector. The purpose underneath it—that every child can enjoy a life of choice and opportunity—has held steady for over ten years, and it still begins where we do, in Feltham.
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