Introduction
SHINE was founded in 1999 by philanthropists who wanted to help break down the barriers to educational attainment for children from backgrounds of socio-economic disadvantage. Since 1999, SHINE has invested more than £40 million in projects helping over a million children from thousands of schools. In the last year alone, SHINE supported almost 50,000 children from nearly 500 schools.
Over the years our grant-making has evolved. This strategy is the latest stage in that evolution and sets out a framework for how we plan to approach grant-making for the future. It lays out our priorities for our funding to 2029 and the purpose and values that underpin our approach.
Everything we do is driven by our unrelenting commitment to improving opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We believe every child deserves the opportunity to learn, no matter where they are born or what their circumstances.
This strategy is designed to maximise the impact of the grants we make, whilst ensuring we can remain flexible and responsive to new opportunities and changes as they arise.
Our grantees are at the core of our work, and they make our impact possible. We hope this strategy provides clarity and transparency about what we are seeking to support and why.
What we look for in our grantees
Across all our funding there are some overarching characteristics which we look for when deciding which applications to support. We look for these characteristics in everything we fund.
Core characteristics
- Share SHINE’s values
- Have a long-term vision for their work and for children and students
- Have a strong understanding of a shared problem
- Know what is already happening in the sector
- Want to work to develop impactful innovative solutions
Adapt & learn
- Curiosity and adaptability
- An ambition to keep learning and improving
- Building networks and connections to share insights
Delivery
- Strong project leadership
- Committed to implementation
- Good relationships
Monitoring & Evaluation
- Serious about evaluation approaches and data.
- A drive to demonstrate impact.
Funding Programmes
1. Let Teachers SHINE
We will nurture and develop the most innovative practice in education across the North of England, building a robust pathway to scale, sustainability and impact through wraparound support as well as year-on-year funding.
Why?
We know that teachers are at the forefront of the barriers facing children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, but we also know that they hold the solutions. Innovative teacher-led practice has the potential to change outcomes for children and SHINE has the developed deep and broad learning around what works and how to support teacher-innovators: from designing robust implementation plans and evaluating interventions to building networks and planning for sustainability, scale and dissemination.
We will create a renewed and strengthened pathway to impact for innovative teacher-led practice, based around development of networks of learning and communities of practice, and support for scale, sustainability and dissemination. We will partner longterm with teacher-innovators across the North, to join our mission to break down barriers to attainment for children and young people in the North of England. We will work to scale our innovations into areas of focus where they are the best response for the challenges identified.
What will we fund?
We will continue to support teachers with innovative ideas to transform outcomes for children in the North of England through Let Teachers SHINE. We will develop a deeper and more responsive package of wraparound support to guide our teachers and their projects to widespread impact in the North of England, including in our areas of focus for SHINE partnerships. We will work long-term with our teacher-innovators to bring their programmes to scale, sustainability and dissemination.
Outcomes
- Passionate teacher innovators are funded and supported to develop and scale their ideas across the North.
- Teachers are supported to evaluate and share their innovations, bringing together a network of sustainable best practice across the North.
- Teachers are connected into networks and supported to develop collaborations so barriers can be addressed in partnership and projects can achieve sustainability and scale.
- Projects are scaled across contexts all over the North, and measurably reduce barriers for children from backgrounds of socio-economic deprivation.
2. Local Partnerships
We will renew and build our focus on developing local partnerships with philanthropists, schools and partners within areas of need, to tackle challenges in collaboration and over the long-term.
Why?
We know that many of the challenges that exist in the North of England are complex, long-term and systemic. We also know that the North has so many passionate teachers, schools, philanthropists and communities who are committed to unlocking the potential of our children.
By focusing our support and grant-funding on some targeted geographies, we can create impactful local collaborations, help connect philanthropy to long-term solutions, and build on our learning about what sustainable practice looks like, to change outcomes for children in the most deprived areas of the North.
What will we fund?
We will create and support local-area partnerships between schools and philanthropists to develop, share and implement the best educational interventions and create sustained change through collaboration and sharing of practice.
We will work within areas of need both to develop impactful innovations and communities of practice from the ground up, and to connect existing innovative work to share learning and effective approaches in new contexts.
Areas for focus will be identified based on the connection to local philanthropy, and the solutions will be led by local need and shaped by the perspectives and insights of teachers and schools.
Outcomes
- Teachers and schools in areas of need are funded to implement ideas in response to barriers they have identified.
- SHINE provides opportunities for grantees to develop their evaluation of impact, to amplify best practice and scale impactful solutions.
- Teachers and schools in areas of need are supported through philanthropy to implement local solutions to educational barriers.
- Funding provided to teachers and schools helps to unlock collaboration so that barriers can be addressed in partnership.
- Children in SHINE-supported areas will demonstrate a long-term improvement in attainment, which is sustained over time.