Many of the factors that build cultural capital are denied to students from poor backgrounds. Most lack general knowledge, had no access to books and magazines and often found it difficult to make conversations with their more advantaged peers. Covid-19 school closures have left many children from poorer backgrounds with enormous gaps in their learning, poor wellbeing, and loneliness.
Our programme empowered parents by providing them with the skills and practical tools to help improve their children’s lives. We run Professional Development sessions to enhance teachers’ expertise to address social disadvantage and social mobility. We provided children with an innovative, interactive magazine focussing on talent search and development and have encouraged a love for learning, personal research skills and self-fulfilment.
A total of 1430 children were supported by readings and guidance materials based on the Triangle of Success model which included 30 case studies of disadvantaged children. Eureka Explorers is already used as a classroom resource by over 1000 children. Following our workshops on problem-solving in mathematics for parents and children, many parents enrolled for maths courses for themselves.
Access to high quality educational activities and resources for children, alongside confidence boosting workshops with parents, based on the concept of the Triangle of Success, are helping to raise their aspirations, intellectual confidence and ultimately the life chances of primary school and build a kinder and more integrated society which benefits everyone.

Working with disadvantaged families has been a steep learning curve for the team. Parents expressed feelings of hopelessness in providing opportunities to their children which are taken for granted by more affluent families. There were financial worries about access to higher education and many felt that since they had little formal education themselves they would be unable to help their children with homework. But after our sessions 78% of parents talked resources they had looked at and having conversations with their children about possible careers they may wish to follow. Activities which focused on good habits, such as the importance of sleep, physical activities, hydration and conditioned well-being, resulted in children taking a central role in developing good habits. More laughter at home was reported along with discussions of worry-lists and surveys of “mean” and “kind” behaviours.
Active engagement and establishing partnership with schools, consulting head teachers, parents and children and taking their voices into account in planning the programme has been vital for its success, without which schools fail to respond to offers of support.
In order to make the programme widely available and to ensure its robustness, we have disseminated our research and outcomes through a range of knowledge transfer activities. For example, a training video was sent out to 20,000 schools to support their WP activities.
We believe that it is vital to lay early foundations to prepare children to be intellectually confident which ultimately influences their trajectories including their orientation to Higher Education.

Building on its success and impact, we will continue to expand our programme and make it available to more schools, universities, and other organisations. The UK government’s ‘levelling up in education’ agenda pledges that every person should have the same opportunity to make the most of their abilities and succeed in life. Catch up programmes to address the gaps in children’s numeracy and literacy, post-Covid, are being offered to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Although necessary, we also need programmes that go beyond raising attainment in basic subjects and include other skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, curiosity, and creativity. Our programme has shown children developing self-belief and focusing on their talents to produce creative outcomes that could lead to social change. As we have had significant cross-political party support for our interventions in the past, our ambition is to get support from the government and other organisations to adopt our programme and enable children and families to participate in our project.
Improving the lives of many more children will generate greater happiness and life satisfaction for all. With the global exposure at the Triple E awards, our hope is a universal adoption of our programme model to make sure that children’s identities are not defined by their social status.