Our Purpose
The problem: The country's most vulnerable children have overwhelmingly poor educational and life-outcomes, with disastrous consequences for themselves and society. Many of these children are excluded from school.
Our purpose: The Difference exists to improve the life-outcomes of the most vulnerable children by raising the status and expertise of those who educate them.
Our solution: The Difference creates specialist senior school leaders, with the expertise to lead whole-school and multi-agency approaches to meeting the learning, wellbeing and safeguarding needs of all children, and most crucially those with high levels of need and vulnerability.
Through its programmes, research and partnerships, The Difference learns what works to improve outcomes for vulnerable children, and shares this best practice across its network and the sector.
Why we exist
In 2017, Difference founder Kiran Gill published a groundbreaking report with think-tank IPPR that shed light on school exclusions as a social justice issue.
The report showed that England’s most vulnerable children are disproportionately affected by exclusions. All too often, these children miss out on a quality education.
The Difference was founded to change this story - through work in three key areas.
What we believe
We don’t believe in zero exclusions
The Difference believes that exclusion is sometimes necessary to create boundaries and promote safety of a whole-school cohort. But by putting interventions in place, earlier, we believe that many exclusions can be prevented. And by investing in the quality and safety of for excluded pupils, reintegration can be made more likely.
Meeting pupil need vs enabling an excuses culture
The Difference believes that high expectations and compassion for pupils and not mutually exclusive. We exist to develop the same reflection and evidence-informed practice in supporting pupils’ emotional and social wellbeing, and safety, as the best schools currently bring to teaching and learning. Our training programmes are a journey for each practitioner to develop their practice and judgement, to create policies which can simultaneously be flexible to learners’ varying needs but maintain high expectations of all pupils - especially those most vulnerable.
The role teachers and schools should play to support vulnerable children
The Difference believes that schools can be powerful conveners of services and champions of pupils. Currently there is no training for teachers in how other services work or how to access them. We believe that by providing this training, we will help create leaders with a ‘wide lens’ on the need of the whole child and a system view of what is needed to support them. We are inspired by current mainstream leaders who push the boundaries of a school’s traditional role in their local community and are creative in finding solutions where local services aren’t working as they should.