Every Child. Every School. Same opportunities.

Ambition School Leadership.

The Task
Inequality in education, especially in disadvantaged areas, is a national, generational crisis. Two leadership charities focussed on training teachers in disadvantaged schools were merging (a big problem needed a bigger organisation) and asked us to create and launch a brand that would knit staff together, mobilise their alumni and bring in new leaders.

Key insight
Education is a minefield. Teachers are revered, underpaid, stressed and essential. Teacher leaders — MAT CEO’s, Heads, Deputy heads and Heads of Subject — are ambitious (although reluctant to say it) and under intense pressure to perform. After extensive interviews up and down the country we concluded that everyone we spoke to shared the same goal — transforming the lives of children who need it most.

The audience
Ambition needed to shift from selling teacher leader courses to inspiring a generation of teachers. To do this they needed to understand leaders better. Through extensive interviews we found out that school leaders face unique hurdles, want to speak to people like them but are isolated by time and circumstance. They told us the type of challenges they face and what channels they’d feel comfortable using when talking about sensitive issues. We helped Ambition design a service to remove any barrier that might stop leaders from helping one another.

A connector
We designed and tested a national peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform — Ambition:Feed. It helps leaders share strategies and every month leaders pinpoint a single challenge to solve along with Ambition’s network of experts. This is done through social channels and bitesize podcasts — Twelve challenges. One ambition.

An expert
We also prototyped a digital diagnostic tool that helps head teachers evaluate their team’s strengths and weaknesses in order to give them a better idea of where they need help strategically. This led to a conversation starter for Ambition to showcase their services.