About us

Who we are, and what we do.

We’re an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. We do this by supporting schools, colleges, and early years settings to improve teaching and learning through better use of evidence.

Our vision and mission

Our vision is a world is a world where a child’s family income does not limit their educational outcomes, choices, or life chances.

By the time a child born into a low-income family starts school, they are already less likely to meet expected levels of language, communication, and physical development. These attainment gaps widen through the phases of education, often having a profound impact on their opportunities and lives.

Our mission is to support the education sector to transform outcomes for economically disadvantaged children and young people by harnessing the power of evidence on what works in practice.

How we work

We make sure early years settings, schools and colleges have – and can use well – accurate, accessible, and actionable evidence to improve practice and boost outcomes, particularly for economically disadvantaged children and young people from 2 to 19 years.

We do this by:

Summarising evidence. We synthesise the global evidence base to understand what works and present it in practical and accessible ways.
Building evidence. We fund the development, rigorous evaluation, and scale-up of programmes and approaches that aim to improve outcomes, particularly for children and young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Putting evidence to use. We help the education sector to use evidence in ways that really make a difference.

Our story

We were set-up in 2011 by the Sutton Trust, in partnership with Impetus, and kickstarted with a £125m founding grant from the Department for Education.

We’ve gone on to help revolutionise the use of research in education in England, as well as supporting partners across the globe.

In 2022, we were awarded a second endowment from government to continue our work until at least 2032. We’ve further expanded our work in the early years and 16 – 19 phases, meaning we now work to transform outcomes for two- to 19-year-olds across England.