On 1 February 2002 (exactly 10 years ago today), I started a six-month sabbatical from my role as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company to develop a detailed business plan for Teach First and recruit a permanent CEO. I was successful in the first goal and a complete failure in the second.

At that time, I visited some schools in London which were so dysfunctional that the idea of the pupils and staff working together towards common attainment goals were beyond comprehension. When I spoke to people about the idea of Teach First; the importance of leadership in classrooms, schools and society; and the idea that no child’s educational success should be limited by their socio-economic background, there were many looks of incomprehension stemming from widely held beliefs that:

▪ Most top graduates would never choose to teach in schools in challenging circumstances
▪ It would never be possible to successfully train teachers in this radical way
▪ Teachers would never be able to see themselves as classroom leaders and make a  meaningful impact in their first or second year of teaching to bring about change
▪ Alumni movements in the UK do not stay connected and are never able to come together to affect social change.

There have been many valleys of death along the way, many more meadows of despair, but luckily an even greater number of hills of happiness, thanks to you, the wider Teach First community and thousands of other supporters who have proved these beliefs wrong.

▪ Teaching in a school in challenging circumstances through Teach First is now the 3rd most prestigious career choice for graduates and we are the second-largest graduate recruiter in the UK this year with an intake of 1,000 hugely ambitious and inspirational new participants
▪ Our teacher training provision, in partnership with 14 universities and many other partners was recently awarded outstanding ratings in all 44 categories inspected by Ofsted and was referred to by the former head of Ofsted as one of the most effective teacher training routes in the UK
▪ We have participants in over 360 partner primary and secondary schools in six regions across England. Evaluation by the University of Manchester showed that schools with Teach First teachers had statistically significant GCSE result improvements in their first year on the programme and numerous studies and surveys of impact measures have shown the high levels of pupil achievement that our participants are able to lead very early in their careers.
▪ 62% of Teach First ambassadors actively engaged with ambassador initiatives to address educational disadvantage in 2010-11 and the majority of ambassadors are continuing to teach in challenging schools, with 46 in senior leadership and 231 in middle leadership roles – a number that is rapidly growing.

Even more importantly, you have helped to influence the beginning of real national change which is getting us closer to achieving our ultimate vision that no child’s educational success is limited by their socio-economic background. Below are some statistics to show the progress that is being made:

• Last week’s release of GCSE data shows that the gap between Teach First partner schools and all maintained schools, while still too large, is closing. In 2010 the GCSE ‘gap’ of 5 A*-C including English & Maths pass rate was 12.6 percentage points (43.5% vs 56.1%) , while in 2011 it had narrowed to 10.8 percentage points (48.4% vs 59.2%).
• Even more exciting is that eight Teach First partner schools now have more than 75% of their pupils achieving at least 5 A*-C including English & Maths, a level that only the wealthiest or most elite private schools would have dreamed of when we started a decade ago, but which we now know should be possible at just about every school in the country.

Just to compare where things were when we started in 2002, I dusted off the original research project we worked on 10 years ago, which showed:

• No state schools outside of the wealthiest 20% of schools managed to have more than 70% of their children get 5 A*-C (in any subject, not  including English & Maths)
• For schools in the lowest-income communities, the most successful results we could find in 2002 were at Highbury Fields School, Islington, which got 43% of their children 5 A*-C (again, in any subject, not  including English & Maths)
• The correlation between GCSE pass-rate and income level of London schools, the region where we have been working the longest, was an r-squared of .57 in 2001 vs. .26 today (Ask your STEM friend to explain how exciting this is.)
Today there are children who have the academic ability and aspiration to apply to universities in a way that their older siblings would have found impossible because their schools and the adults responsible for them did not believe that they could lead them to the level of success that is now seen as normal.

There are a lot of people, both inside and outside of the Teach First community who are responsible for these improvements and many giants whose shoulders we are standing on, but we should also be proud of the role that we have played. I believe that they would not have happened without each of your hard work and focus day in and day out.

In the future, the Teach First community will become even more important. As you all know, there is still far to go before our vision is a reality.
• The greatest determinant of a child’s success is still the wealth of their parents.
• The GCSE pass-rate of five A*-C grades including English & Maths is ultimately a poor proxy for the totality of a child’s educational attainment. The gaps in access to opportunities, aspirations and wider well-being have not been reduced at the same level as the gaps in academic achievement.
This has led me to think about what we currently think of as impossible to achieve, but can one day become the new normal. We need to better understand what each of us needs to do over the next 10 years to get closer to achieving our vision and show measurable impact of  closing the gaps in achievement, aspiration, and access between pupils from low-income and high-income communities

We can continue the way we’ve been going. If so, I have no doubt that we will grow in size, improve our training and work very successfully in partnership with other teachers and leaders to   make real change in our schools. I also believe that in five to ten years’ time, there will be additional low-income schools around the UK who, with the support of the Teach First community and other committed individuals, will be making great strides in closing the gaps in achievement, aspiration and access.  If we wanted to, this could all be celebrated as a great achievement.

However, we will also know that another decade would have gone by and most children from low-income communities will still not be provided with the education they need.  There will still be large national gaps in the 3 As. We will have missed out on the opportunity available to us.

Our current path will leave many thousands of children behind. If we are serious about them and think this is unacceptable, then we need to work differently in the next decade than we have in the past.

We can rely on others to lead this change.  We can believe this change is impossible. We can complain that much of this is outside our control. However, we should not allow ourselves to make these excuses, just like we should not allow these excuses from our children.

During our 10th anniversary year, to move even further forward on this wonderful journey, we all need to think about what role each of us can play to truly achieve this change.

We will be in touch with you over the coming months to work together on this, culminating in Challenge 2012, a full-day event on Saturday 22 September at Southbank Centre, London.  Challenge 2012 will bring together over 3000 people like you who are all committed to addressing educational disadvantage to launch into the next 10 years of impact.

Look out for more information on this in the coming weeks.

I think the next decade is going to be even more exciting than the last!

Brett