Being a social enterprise in education

by jack kelsey

When we work with new partners or recruit new tutors we often get asked why we’re a social enterprise and how this makes us different. Jack provides a brief overview of what it means to us.

How do we operate? 

We exclusively provide tuition services for LAC, vulnerable and disadvantaged learners, and students with SEND; working only for schools and local authorities. We are a “Certified Social Enterprise” with Social Enterprise UK, so we're a company that puts social progress ahead of profit and we reinvest to maximise our impact. 

Why do work this way? 

A possible option could have been the charity model, but this has its pros and cons.  Its main strength is its almost unmatched ability to deal with short term/responsive problems, from war-induced asylum migration to forest fires. Charities can rapidly mobilise their pooled expertise and collect further resources to quickly act and lift people out of sudden situations.

However, charities are powered by grants and donations, potentially fragile means of maintaining growth, dependent on the generosity of others rather than the merits of their services. These can also come with strict limitations on how they’re used, limiting flexibility to innovate and find new solutions. 

Moreover, if the political climate towards a charity’s mission cools and the current political administration has other priorities, budgets get cut and grants become less available. Using the social enterprise mechanism provides a sustainable engine for long-term growth. Commercial activities centred in social change power us through each year, and allow us to improve the education of many more children through organic and incremental growth.

Another question could be, why not privately tutor and give back through philanthropy? Equal Education was created as a counter to the traditional tutoring model, we want to end the pattern of disadvantaged children missing out on opportunities because more wealthy families could afford to boost their child’s attainment. We only tutor disadvantaged children because they are the groups that need it most, and diverting from that goal dilutes our mission.

There is a worrying trend in the tuition industry towards highly corporate behaviour, with some private tutoring companies even listing “maximising stakeholder value” as a key goal in their “Who we are” materials. Whenever companies fall into this kind of behaviour, their claimed philanthropic goals will always fall to the wayside ahead of shareholder dividends.

We believe that working effectively with Local Authorities, in a quasi public-private partnership, can have tangible rewards to support our Local Authority partners to deliver on their goals and raise the aspirations and attainment of the young people under their jurisdiction.

How are we planning to increase our social impact?

For the past 3 years, we’ve doubled the amount of students we help each year. Our main goal is simple but ambitious - tutor as many students as we can and try to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students and close the attainment gap between them and the rest of the population. There is strong evidence that using qualified teachers to provide 1:1 tuition works effectively in speeding up progress, particularly for this group.

During the COVID lockdown we launched a whole new service to provide iPads to our students because we noticed that disadvantaged students weren’t able to adapt to online learning simply because they didn’t have access to a device. We’re working with a number of Local Authority partners to lease devices (to remove costly upfront purchase for local authorities) with specialist safeguarding software to close the Digital Divide. 

To make sure that our students are getting the best services possible, we’re partnering with one of the best universities in the world in order to create a market leading assessment system and impact report. We can’t give many details at the moment so stay tuned to our blog and social media for future developments.

We have an array of projects in the pipeline for the coming year, and recently hired two new staff solely for scaling our business and its impact. It’s an exciting time to be a social enterprise in education and more announcements are on the way!