There is a significant and growing gap in how well schools and local authorities understand the young people they serve. Without a clear, consistent picture of what students actually need support is reactive, fragmented, and often arrives too late.
Bett Awards 2025 Winner - Transformational Impact. Recognised by the education sector's leading awards body for the difference our work makes for young people.
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Pupils in England are persistently absent. But absence is rarely the problem - it is the signal. Something about how a young person feels about school, themselves or their future is not working.
(DfE 2024/2025)
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Young people feel confident about their next steps after school. For the most disadvantaged students, that figure is significantly lower.
(East Learning Aspirations data / DfE)
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Of young people aged 16–24 are NEET. Close to one million young people with no clear pathway. Most were disengaging long before they left school.
(ONS, 2025)
Negative Attendance
Trends Reversed
Using the Aspirations program to capture trends of persistently absent students Oldham reversed negative attendance trends including a dramatic reduction in the Year 7 transition dip that most schools assume is inevitable.
Communication Skills
Improved
Winterbourne Academy achieved a 35% improvement in communication skills and 37% rise in self-confidence following targeted initiatives shaped directly by Aspirations data.
Self-Confidence
Improved
The Regis School achieved a 63% improvement of Year 7 students self-confidence following targeted wellbeing and personal development initiatives from their Aspirations data.
East Learning is a Community Interest Company (CIC). That means we are a social enterprise, legally bound to reinvest all our income to drive better outcomes for young people. Everything we do from our work with individual schools to our regional partnerships with local authorities and multi-academy trusts goes back into the mission.
We work with schools, trusts and local authorities across the UK. Our work spans student insight and data collection, school improvement frameworks, and regional system change giving the people who work with young people the tools, the structure and the shared language to actually coordinate around what students need.
We're also a founding delivery partner of The Open School Initiative, co-founded by Professor Mick Waters, former Director of Curriculum at the QCA. Our Aspirations platform is the data infrastructure that powers this initiative.
For all young people to know that they are heading towards a brighter future (and for the rest of us to know we are making it happen!)
There is 30% less participation in extra-curricular activities for children from low-income families (Sutton Trust).
How can we support a students’ wellbeing if we don’t know whether they regularly get enough sleep or how they feel about how they look?
What difference does it make to a students’ communication skills if they have the opportunity to take part in debate club or an active student leadership team?
We believe the challenge in education has never been a lack of good intent. It is the lack of infrastructure to act on that intent consistently, at scale, for every student. Our approach combines structured student insight with a proven improvement methodology and a growing regional network so that understanding a young person's needs leads directly to coordinated action, not just a report that sits on a shelf.
East Learning founder, Matthew Lees describing our approach below.
