How well are we doing? At LKMco, we believe society should ensure that all children and young people receive the support they need to make a fulfilling transition to adulthood. We work towards this by articulating our vision, inspiring people to pursue it and enabling people and organisations to achieve it. As a social enterprise it is crucial that we ensure our work is having an impact. That’s why each year we produce social accounts as well as financial ones. This report shows how we have affected the people and organisations we have interacted with. It analyses how we are doing according to the 10 outcomes which we believe will move us towards achieving our vision..
Increased understanding of what society needs to do More critical and developed opinions Acquired examples of Increased belief in possibility of Increased belief in importance of Changed goals Reflected on and honed ability More confident of ability Organisation developed plans
Overview
Organisation better placed
This survey includes responses from people we have interacted with in a variety of waysranging from intensive mentoring programs to informal conversations on twitter.
% Some Impact
0
20
40
60
80
100
Significant impact or transformed
• For each outcome we impacted on over three
• We impacted ‘significantly’ or ‘transformatively’
quarters of the people for whom the measure was relevant.
on a quarter of people for whom a measure was relevant on each outcome.
rs:
umbe N in r a e Y The
ls anced Skil v d A d e v chie 1 … teacthaetur sa as a result of LKMco’s Teacher s mentoring ns rganisatio o h t u ping o y f 10s ….poro-bono support in develo received eople r young p projects fo ed our week visit a le p o e of p
100s …
website
t ere taugh w s il p u p f o KMco 1,000srs… eceived L r d a h o h w by teache coaching d n a g in r o ment of people … s d n a s u by o resources g 10s of tteh in in ra t acher accessed LKMco
• Overall, we impacted on over 60% of people for each of our desired outcomes. • Overall we had a “significant” or “transformative” impact on more than 20% of people in each area.
Articulating a vision Our work is built around our vision of what society could and should be like for young people. There’s no way that vision will become a reality if we can’t articulate it. Our greatest success in this area has been in helping people to develop more informed and critical opinions about services for young people. This is a key part of securing the kind of attitudinal change that we think is so crucial.
• Over 85% of respondents said we had helped them develop more critical and informed opinions
LKMco’s 10 desired outcomes Articulating 1. People increase their understanding of what society would need to do in order to help young people make a fulfilling transition to adulthood 2. People develop more informed and critical opinions about servic es for young people
• We had a significant or transformative impact on 50% of people in this area Acquired examples of what high quality services for young people look/would People develop more informed and critical opinions about services for People increase their understanding of what society would need to do to help
% Somewhat
0
20
Significantly
40
60
80
100
Transformed
How have we done this? As one respondent told us, we provide
3. People acquire examples of wh at high quality services for young people look/would look like Inspiring 4. People increase their belief in society‘s ability to help all young people make a fulfilling transition to adulthood 5. People increase their belief in the importance of society supporting young people’s transition to adultho od 6. People change their goals in working with or supporting young people/young people’s services Enabling 7. People reflect on their work, dev elop skills and hone their ability to sup port young people’s transition to adultho od 8. People feel more confident abo ut their ability to support young peo ple 9.Organisations develop plans and ways of working which allow them to sup port young people. 10. Organisations are in a stronge r position to support young people ’s transition to adulthood
“a strong bridge between people working on the ground and current ideas in policy and research.
”
Overall, a quarter of respondents thought the information we shared on policy was ‘priceless’, another quarter said it was ‘very useful’ and more than three quarters of respondents found it ‘useful’
“The thought leadership element of LKMco’s work is really central to keeping active and busy practitioners involved and informed in developments in education policy and practise.
”
The LKMco Social Impact Report, 2010-11
One way we do this is through topical blogs. These bring together our experience and some of the best academic research out there. We try to provide a different angle by being critical but constructive. This seems to be appreciated with respondents noting our “evidence based opinions” and one saying:
“Laura’s blogs always, without fail, make me think. They never simply reflect back to me my own views. Always they provoke a close examination of my own practice and often a change of approach.
• Over 90% of people for whom research and articles were relevant said these were useful. That’s good news given that 2011-12 promises to be a big year on the publishing front. We’ve got major reports and peer reviewed articles lined up on school governance, perceptions of teaching unions, working class boys’ aspirations, new models of teacher training and health literacy.
Inspiring a desire to pursue our vision It’s not enough just to tell people what we think; impact requires a change in people’s beliefs and behaviours.
• 86% of respondents said that their belief in the importance of society supporting young people’s transition to adulthood had increased as a result of our work.
”
Perhaps unsurprisingly it was hardest to change peoples’ goals (and of course some people already shared our goals.)
Debating/ discussing youth & education issues Research & Articles
Increased belief in society’s ability to help
Blogging
Increased belief in importance of society supporting
Tweeting
Changed goals
%
Sharing information about different organisations Sharing information about good practice
Somewhat
Sharing information about policy
% (excludes N/A) Useful
0
20
Very Useful
40
60
80
100
Priceless
Another important part of our online activity is our “insightful” tweeting.
• A third of people for whom tweeting was relevant found our tweets ‘priceless’, 88% found them useful. LKMco’s writing isn’t only online. We have published a range of articles, research papers and a book.
0
20
Significantly
40
60
80
100
Transformed
• We had an impact in changing over half of people’s goals and transformed them for one respondent. One of the reasons our work influences people is because of the way we work: Respondents’ comments suggest we are living by our intentions. We have a document describing our ‘ways of working.’ It says that we will always work with clients in a “friendly and informal manner. Professionalism is not about pretension” it describes us as “cheeky, maverick and personable” and continues:
like? e w e r a t Wha
und
t clear, so
“We steer clear of time consuming and gimmicky ways of doing things. There is almost always a simple way of doing things. Our job is to find it. We do not have a set catalogue of solutions. Different approaches and strategies are appropriate in different situations and settings. It is our job to have the emotional and intellectual competence to identify what will work where.
”
Enabling people and organisations to achieve our vision We were very good at getting people to reflect on their work. Given that becoming reflective is such an important part of becoming selfimproving that’s great news. • We had a significant or transformative impact in helping a third of people reflect on and hone their ability to support young people.
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“Ad
for nthusiasm e ; e r a h s s to young “Readines itment to m m o c d n learning a s.” d teacher people an licy” cation po u d e m r fo o trans ” “Passion t excellence o t t n e m “Commit te” l, passiona ia r u e n e r p entre “Practical,
ability to support young people as a result of our support. • 85% of clients who commissioned coaching, mentoring or training found it “very useful or priceless”. Reflected on honed ability More confident of ability
% Somewhat
0
20
40
60
Significantly
80
100
Transformed
Increased understanding of what society needs to do More critical and developed opinions Acquired examples Increased belief in ability of Increased belief in importance Changed goals Reflected on and honed ability More confident of ability Organisation developed plans
Our impact was greater where our support was more intense or formal. • Looking specifically at paying clients, three quarters of them felt more confident of their
Organisation in a better place
% paying clients (excludes N/A) Some impact
0
20
40
Significant impact
60
80
100
Transformed
The LKMco Social Impact Report, 2010-11
Organisational Improvement We do a lot of work supporting organisations who want to develop new projects for young people or who want to improve existing provision. The organisations we support range from start-up social enterprises to large third sector organisations and multinational corporates. We help them by combining our overarching knowledge of the sector, our “high level contacts” and our ability to think logically and strategically.
Since we don’t work with everyone on an organisational level it makes sense to exclude those who describe this as not applicable to them. Organisation developed plans Organisation in a better place
% (excludes N/A) Somewhat
0
20
Significantly
40
60
80
Transformed
ols
Improving teachers and scho
ndon Secondary Schools
Mentoring and Coaching in Lo
ls. We build up friendly but leaders achieve specific goa Mentoring helps teachers and s to achieve specific goals. We work with teachers and leader challenging relationships and and then monitor progress. , provide training and advice identify areas for development chers we coached or mentored r of federated schools, all the tea We’re really proud that in a pai ir teaching/management had t-training survey said that the and who completed our pos improved. m felt that pupil learning had improved as a result. All of the rventions, all threatened or resistant to inte l fee to rs che tea e som ect oyed their Whilst one might exp mentoring survey said they enj and ng chi coa our to ded pon the teachers who res them. sessions and felt supported by We helped a e program over two months. nsiv inte y larl ticu par a on d In one case we worke p leadership and management standing lessons and to develo tt achieved teacher deliver consistently out the teacher, Matthew Emmo m gra pro e nsiv inte rt, sho skills. Following this t head of department role. As and was ready to take on a join Advance Skills Teacher status he put it:
“Loic’s coaching through myarASinTg application was great in prep his me for the big day, especially s advice on my KS3 and 5 lesson ing which led to my two outstand gradings at assessment and my success in achieving AST status .
”
100
• We had a significant or transformative impact on almost half of the organisations we interacted with (excluding N/A).
• Our support was ‘priceless’ for 25% of the organisations who engaged us for improvement or strategic planning.
For some organisations, our support was as simple as sharing information or discussing ideas over coffee. It’s therefore great to see that such light touch support can still have an impact.
We try to enable people and organisations to achieve our vision in a range of ways. Sometimes it’s through formal mentoring, sometimes by sharing resources on our website and sometimes more informally. Luckily all of our approaches seem to be worthwhile:
By looking at our paying clients we can get an idea of how much impact we have when our involvement is more intensive. • Where we were engaged to work on improvement and strategic planning 100% of organisations found our support useful
Organisational development: teway paration programs at City Ga
Ofsted and Hear By Right pre
th work and practical training organisation who provide you City Gateway are an amazing (NEET). In 2010-11 they faced ion, Employment or Training to to young people Not in Educat Self-Assessment Report and We helped them write their ent em rov imp for as their first Ofsted inspection. are hs and lysed data, identified strengt prepare for inspection. We ana other so that staff developed h eac e erv obs to trained tutors and perhaps most importantly t 100% of staff considered the e teaching. We’re proud tha their own capacity to improv . training good or outstanding in eway achieved ‘Outstanding’ n more impressive. City Gat . The result couldn’t have bee ible n imposs come would literally have bee every category - a better out but we’re really pleased that 92% City Gateway’s fantastic staff Of course, the credit goes to t was a significant factor in survey thought that our suppor of staff who responded to our nt about their own ability that 92% became more confide is no way I achieving this judgement and r said that without us “there the Ano . ted Ofs for ion sat e to prepare the organi or that City Gateway could hav quality of teaching that I do, personally would deliver the grade!” G achieved our OUTSTANDIN We’re not here for Ofsted though, we’re here for young n people so we’re really kee be uld that the process sho worthwhile for them. This seems ff to have happened. One sta ed iver del member said we had improvements “measurable in teaching and learning.” t Another that our suppor ped hel “massively had improve the organisation and structure of City Gateway.” Meanwhile, 100% said that the service City Gateway provides has improved as a result of the process.
The LKMco Social Impact Report, 2010-11
Academic & Policy Research: ‘The Six Predictable Failures
of Free Schools…
and how to avoid them’ 2010-11, so LKMco was keen to Free Schools were big news in provide a response. ra McInerney authored “The 6 Policy development partner Lau ools…and how to avoid them”. Predictable Failures of Free Sch ch erience with academic resear It combines our practical exp ges llen It identifies the key cha on charter schools in the US. rs and proposes practical nde likely to be faced by fou es wrote a foreword which lays solutions. Director, Loic Menzi ical” response to the policy. out LKMco’s “constructively crit of the Times Educational . It featured on the front page act imp an had ly tain cer klet The boo n Education leader column. Supplement and in a Guardia “The Free Schools booklet the book very useful saying: nd fou vey sur our to ts den Respon to like the practical and my thinking.” People seemed ped sha and ped elo dev tely comple We’re keen to respond to uested more booklets like it. req and k boo the of ure nat timely ic. So let us know if you our eyes out for worthwhile top got e hav and 1-12 201 in t ues this req have any ideas!
Working in HE
Support with marketing/ PR/ tenders and bids
Working in FE
Providing resources on the LKMco website
An academic Working in a primary school
Producing resources
Other
Introducing people to each other
Working in the youth sector
Being a critical friend
Working in a secondary school
Chatting over coffee
% (excludes N/A)
A senior leader A middle manager
0
20
40
60
80
100 A teacher
Useful
Very Useful
Priceless
The Survey
Working in a charity/ social-enterprise Working in the education sector 0
We used email, twitter and a blog to contact people we had interacted with over the year. The survey was a “dipstick exercise” and 31 people responded with 26 completing the whole survey. They came from a range of backgrounds. The largest proportion worked in education.
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Number of respondents (NB some chose more than one category)
The survey consisted of a 3 minute online questionnaire in three parts. The first asked how we had impacted on our 10 desired outcomes. We then asked for feedback on what was useful and for some open responses about our work.
The third section gathered information about respondents. They had interacted with us in a range of ways:
Producing resources, being a critical friend and providing mentoring and coaching are some of the most impactful ways of doing this so we will try to do more of that.
Informally/ socially Read something we wrote/ tweeted etc Pro-bono or informal support/ advice Paying client 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 Number of respondents (NB some chose more than one category)
16
Lessons learned As a new organisation this is a learning exercise for us. Whilst one respondent suggested we
“get elected and become Secretary of State for Education
”
we have also been able to learn some more manageable lessons from this report: • We need to work on painting a clearer picture of what it would look like for society to provide young people with the support they need. • We need to do more to increase people’s confidence in their ability to support young people.
• We want to do more work targeting organisational impact because providing organisations with “priceless” support on improvement planning and strategy has the potential to impact on a huge number of young people. Next year we aim to impact on at least 75% of the people we interact with on each of our 10 desired outcomes and to have a significant or transformative impact on at least 30% of people. Next year we will also ask for estimates of how many young people will be affected by the changes we achieve. Given the nature of the relationship between attitudinal change and social change this won’t give us an accurate total number but it will at least give us a minimum. We’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to everyone who took part in the survey and to extend our gratitude to the Teach First Social Entrepreneurs’ Network without whom LKMco wouldn’t be where it is now.
Contact web: www.lkmco.org.uk tel: +44 7793 370459 email: info@lkmco.org twitter: @LKMco
• We will carry on sharing information about policy because people clearly value this highly.
2010 - 2011 Clients • The National Youth Agency • City Gateway Health • The Royal Society for Public • St. George’s R.C School uncil) ums Libraries and Archives Co • The Mighty Creatives (Muse • Teach First • Teachers TV
ool
• St Thomas More Catholic Sch • The Three Faiths School
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