Our impact so far
Lab-like, our schools programme has been developed
in partnership with teachers.
Pioneer Schools
Starting in 2015, we worked with 11 very different UK schools, from a state primary in a deprived area of Sheffield to a London secondary and a small Hertfordshire prep school. Other schools were in Great Yarmouth, Carlisle, Cambridge, Newark, Rochdale and the New Forest.
The findings in our 2016-2018 evaluation report were extremely encouraging, finding that an increased empathy focus had an impact in key academic areas and showing that an empathy education programme has huge potential.
- 75% of teachers reported that children were calmer and less stressed
- 100% reported that children could more easily name and share emotions
- 87% said they had observed an increase in the frequency of children reading
- 100% of teachers reported that children had developed a far better understanding of what empathy is, how it works and why it matters.
- Behavioural improvements – one school, after a year of the programme, reported a drop in behaviour incidents from 147 to 87
Our work in Wales
The exciting new Curriculum for Wales 2022 has a major emphasis on wellbeing, and features empathy 35 times. Since 2019, our in-depth schools programme has been focused in Wales, where we partner with various clusters of primary and secondary schools, alongside the Books Council of Wales and local authorities.
Pentrehafod cluster, Swansea, 2019-20
Funding from Nesta’s Future Ready Fund supported 2019-2020 work with the Pentrehafod cluster in Swansea’s former copper district.
Working with seven primary schools and one secondary school we were able for the first time to develop the programme at KS3 & KS4.
Despite getting cut short by Covid-19, we are delighted to have achieved real impact in just a few teaching weeks.
Pembroke Dock Community School – building curriculum with our cluster
Pembroke Dock Community School ‘family’ talk about the creation of their new curriculum
Henry Tudor cluster,
Pembroke Dock
In 2020, having been selected by Nesta for their follow-on Future Ready Fund, we expanded our programme to a further cluster of six primaries and another two secondary schools in the deprived Pembroke Dock area, working with them until December 2021.
The response from the schools was overwhelmingly positive and helped us to grow the programme into new areas. You can read the report on our work with them.
The programme was featured in a series of Welsh Government videos. Watch the videos above to hear the school community discussing the impact our work has had.
Ongoing work
In 2022 and 2023 we are working with 23 schools across South Wales in Rhonda Cynon Taf, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Bridgend. We will be reporting on this work in early 2024.
The report will detail how the schools have used reading for pleasure principles to deliver an empathy-focused programme and the impact that developing key empathy skills has had throughout their school communities.
We will also update on the progress of our Alumni schools in Pembrokeshire and Swansea, demonstrating how they continue to use our whole school approach delivering empathy education.