How Will You Create the Conditions for Your Young People to Thrive This Year?

Neil @ Future Action
6 days ago
5 min read

Welcome back. We hope you have had a fantastic summer holiday. As another academic year begins, there is one question worth asking:

How will you create the conditions for your young people to thrive this year?

Every school will answer that differently.

For some, the priority will be attendance. For others, behaviour, engagement, enrichment, belonging, relationships with families or giving staff greater confidence to support young people with increasingly complex needs.

For regional partners and funders, the challenge can be bigger again.

How do you support multiple schools to improve outcomes for young people, without assuming every school needs the same thing?

There isn't one wellbeing programme that can solve all of those challenges.

That's why we start with your young people and what you're trying to change, not our programme.

What Would You Like to Be Different by Next Summer?

That's one of the first questions we ask.

Where would you most like to see things improve?
Which young people are you most concerned about?
What are your educators telling you they need?
What is already working that we can build upon?

Through RISE Up, we work alongside schools and regional partners to answer those questions and co-create an in-depth wellbeing programme around the needs of their young people.

And we know this approach can make a difference.

Across our work last academic year, schools recorded an average 38% improvement in pupil wellbeing, alongside an average 35% improvement in their School Wellbeing Scorecard.

But those schools didn't all do the same thing.

That's the point.

Intent. Implementation. Impact.

Our RISE Up partnerships for 2026/27 follow three stages.

1. Intent: What Are You Trying to Change?

We listen first. Together, we explore your priorities, existing strengths and current provision before co-creating a bespoke strategic vision for wellbeing.

We then turn that vision into a practical 90-day implementation plan, helping lead staff focus on the changes that could make the biggest difference without becoming overwhelmed.

The School Wellbeing Scorecard and RISE 24 Wellbeing Intelligence Snapshot can also help establish a starting point and identify areas for development.

The result isn't our vision for your school. It's yours.

2. Implementation: How Do We Bring It to Life?

A strategy sitting in a document won't change a young person's life.

Educators will.

That's why we train and support the people who already know your young people best.

Depending on your priorities, this can include in-person CPD and consultation, alongside unlimited staff access to our RISE Up Early Intervention, Trauma Informed PE, Trauma Informed Frontline Educators and Staff RISE Up training.

Schools also receive practical editable resources and RISE Up student wellbeing journals to help turn the learning into everyday practice.

And we stay alongside you as things develop.

What's working?
What's getting in the way?
What are young people responding to?
What needs adapting?

Because sustainable change takes more than a training day.

3. Impact: What Actually Changed?

This matters enormously to us.

At the end of the year, we don't want you simply to be able to say:

"We delivered RISE Up."

We want you to be able to say:

"This is what we did. This is what we learned. And this is what changed for our young people."

We help schools measure progress and co-create an impact case study that evidences the journey and celebrates the educators and young people behind it.

That can support school improvement, inspection conversations, performance management, future planning and conversations with governors, families and funders.

It also allows brilliant practice to travel from one school to another. You can see over 50 of them from our fantastic partner schools HERE.

So What Do You Actually Get?

Our year-long RISE Up partnership is designed to take you all the way from identifying the need to evidencing the difference you've made.

Listen & Plan

Understand your starting point and co-create your strategic vision and implementation plan.

Train & Implement

In-person CPD and consultation, unlimited online staff training, editable resources and ongoing support throughout the year.

Measure & Evidence

Benchmark provision and wellbeing, review progress and co-create your final impact case study.

The 2026/27 partnership includes three in-person consultation and CPD visits across the academic year, alongside the wider package of online training, resources, measurement and support.

The aim isn't to give you more things to do.

It's to help you identify the right things to do and embed them well.

What Could That Look Like in Your School?

There are now 17 different ways schools are implementing RISE Up.

One school might focus on strengthening relationships and relational practice.

Another might introduce regulation breaks or develop a RISE Up Sport Sanctuary.

Elsewhere, the priority might be active play, enrichment, pupil leadership, staff wellbeing, family engagement, transition or adapting PE for young people who currently struggle to engage.

You don't do everything.

Together, we identify the 2-4 approaches most likely to address your priorities in the first year.

What If You're Responsible for More Than One School?

This is one of the areas we're particularly excited about for 2026/27.

Some of our strongest work is now happening through Regional RISE Up partnerships.

We work with Virtual Schools, Active Partnerships, MATs, councils and other system partners, with our wider partnership work also spanning Violence Reduction Partnerships and Integrated Care Boards.

The principle remains exactly the same.

A regional partner can bring schools together around a shared mission and framework, while each individual school develops a strategic vision based on its own young people.

Schools learn from one another. Educators share what's working. Local best practice grows.

And the funding partner can begin building a much clearer picture of the difference its investment is making across the region.

One shared mission. Different schools. Different needs. Bespoke solutions.

Click HERE for more information on our Regional RISE Up partnerships.

Our New 2026/27 Future Action Partnership Brochure

We've brought our updated offer together in the new Future Action 2026/27 Partnership Brochure.

It includes our regional RISE Up model, the full Intent, Implementation and Impact journey, examples of the different ways schools are applying RISE Up, our training programmes, consultancy and evidence of impact.

Whether you're responsible for one school or young people across an entire region, hopefully it sparks some ideas about what could be possible.

👉 Download our 2026/27 Future Action Partnership Brochure below

An Invitation For You...

If you're considering how to strengthen wellbeing provision this academic year, you don't need to know which programme, training course or intervention you need.

Start with the problem.

What would you like to be different for your young people by next summer?

Tell us that, and we can start the conversation from there.

👉 Join the RISE Up waiting list HERE and tell us what you're trying to change

Not ready for that conversation yet?

Our complementary School Wellbeing Scorecard takes around three minutes and can help you identify the strengths and opportunities within your current provision.