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Â鶹Éçmadougrew out of a project to encourage philanthropic giving from the hedge fund sector. The new charity raised millions in the first years and gave broadly to a range of projects focused on child protection and health including:

• A partnership with Hope and Homes for Children to remove children from large scale institutions – changing the lives of more than 20,000 children in Romania and Bulgaria.
• A HIV/AIDS programme in South Africa that, through local partner Kheth’Impilo, continues to have a significant impact on the lives of vulnerable children today.
• A partnership with the Elizabeth Glazer Paediatric AIDS Foundation in Mozambique which set up and tested an innovative SMS reminder service to HIV-positive parents, carers and children. The programme reached over 30,000 patients.

While a broad range of international work continued, Â鶹Éçmadouwas increasingly interested in education and the possibilities of the new academy programme which offered a way for philanthropists to support turnaround schools in some of the most deprived communities in England. Ark’s first turnaround school – Burlington Danes Academy in West London opened under its new name in September.

Building a wider expertise in education, Â鶹Éçmadoualso started supporting a schools leadership training programme called Future Leaders and started funding an extended school programme pilot that would eventually grow into our music and other extracurricular programmes.

King Solomon Academy, a new primary in Edgware opened and Â鶹Éçmadoutook on another converter academy – Â鶹ÉçmadouWalworth Academy in Southwark.

The early success of Future Leaders led to the foundation of School Leaders for India pilot programme which was launched in Mumbai and Pune. Work on health programmes continued and a new strategic health initiative partnership was launched between Â鶹Éçmadouand the Clinton Foundation in Mozambique.

In a bumper year, Â鶹Éçmadouopened two new schools in London (Â鶹ÉçmadouAcademy and Â鶹ÉçmadouEvelyn Grace) as well as taking on another converting school which became known as Â鶹ÉçmadouGlobe. Teaching Leaders, a training programme for mid-level school leadership based on the Future Leaders model, was founded and Â鶹Éçmadouin India launched to create a fast-track school leadership training scheme.

The first ever Â鶹Éçmadoumusic gala ‘One Voice’ was held at the Barbican Centre, showcasing the impact of the music programme in schools. Â鶹Éçmadouschools expanded outside of London for the first time, taking on two converter schools: Charter Academy in Portsmouth and St Alban’s in Birmingham. King Solomon Academy in Edgware also opened its secondary, making the school all-through.

Later that year, the HIV/AIDS programme in South Africa became the first health initiative handed over to a local partner, Kheth’Impilo.

In another busy year, four schools extended or opened new buildings to students and the secondary phase of Â鶹ÉçmadouAcademy in London opened, creating another all-through school.

Â鶹Éçmadousupported a pilot programme to reduce maternal and newborn deaths in Zimbabwe and supported learning and voucher programmes in India to increase access.

Â鶹Éçmadouwon the International Aid and Development award at the annual UK Charity Awards this year for work in Bulgaria helping children out of institutional care.

In September three new primary schools in London – Conway, Oval and Atwood were all opened.

The Education Endowment Foundation also funded a major grant to roll out the Mathematics Mastery programme, a new initiative to improve numeracy developed by Ark, to 30 schools both inside and outside the network.

This year saw the launch of the first comprehensive diarrhoea programme in Sub-Saharan Africa in Zambia with the local Centre for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRZ) after 18 months of planning. Â鶹Éçmadoualso launched a new public-private partnership initiative in Uganda which opened its first two secondary schools.

Â鶹Éçmadoualso became a founding partner of STiR which aimed to promote grassroots innovation by dynamic teachers and schools to transform educational outcomes for the world’s poorest children starting with a pilot in Delhi. Teaching Leaders span out from Ark, now able to sustain itself as an independent charity.

It was also another big growth year with Â鶹Éçmadoutaking on five converting schools. Two were in London: Â鶹ÉçmadouBentworth Academy in Hammersmith and Â鶹ÉçmadouPutney in Wandsworth. We also grew our Birmingham hub taking on three turnaround schools which became known as Â鶹ÉçmadouKings Academy, Â鶹ÉçmadouTindal and Â鶹ÉçmadouRose Primary Academy. We also opened two brand new schools – Â鶹ÉçmadouBolingbroke in Wandsworth and Â鶹ÉçmadouIsaac Newton Academy in Ilford.

To meet our growing demand for new teachers, we also launched the Â鶹ÉçmadouTeacher Training programme in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University, while in Mozambique we formally handed over our programme supporting HIV positive patients to the local Ministry of Health.

In the biggest ever year for new school expansion, the Â鶹Éçmadounetwork grew again, taking on seven turnaround schools and two new schools. These included our first school in Hastings and another in Portsmouth seeding a new hub on the south coast: Â鶹ÉçmadouAll Saints in Camberwell, Â鶹ÉçmadouFranklin in Kensal Green, Â鶹ÉçmadouJohn Keats in Enfield, Â鶹ÉçmadouAyrton in Portsmouth, Â鶹ÉçmadouBrunel in North Kensington, Â鶹ÉçmadouSwift in White City, Priory in Acton and Â鶹ÉçmadouAlexandra in Hastings. Helpfully to support this dramatic growth, Â鶹ÉçmadouTeacher Training was accredited to award Qualified Teacher Status to trainee teachers.

Outside of the UK, the rotavirus vaccination programme, piloted by Â鶹Éçmadouand its partners in Zambia, rolled out nationally by the Zambian government.

Having seen the impact of child social care through the work of our schools, Â鶹Éçmadoudecided to incubate new social work charity Frontline. The first cohort of 104 Frontline trainee social workers begin their training this year at the same time as the first cohort of 51 Â鶹Éçmadouteacher trainees.

Â鶹Éçmadougrew again, taking on another three primary turnaround schools on the south coast. Â鶹ÉçmadouBlacklands and Â鶹ÉçmadouLittle Ridge both in Hastings and Â鶹ÉçmadouDickens in Portsmouth. In London, Â鶹ÉçmadouElvin, a secondary turnaround school in Wembley, joined the network, as Â鶹ÉçmadouJohn Keats expanded into a secondary phase.

Outside of the UK, Â鶹Éçmadoupartner PEAS opened three new schools in Uganda and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh adopted Ark’s school inspection programme.

After an impressive first year of operations, social work charity Frontline span out to become an independent charity. Â鶹Éçmadoualso created a joint venture with the NEON Foundation to support the development of Assembly, a new tool for school data.

Â鶹Éçmadoutook on two new turnaround schools in Birmingham: Â鶹ÉçmadouBoulton and Â鶹ÉçmadouChamberlain. Â鶹ÉçmadouBurlington Danes expanded to take on an existing primary school and Â鶹ÉçmadouByron opened in Acton.

In India, Â鶹Éçmadouopened its first primary school, Â鶹ÉçmadouLajpat Nagar in Delhi, in partnership with the South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

During this year, there were some big developments in Â鶹ÉçmadouVentures. STiR Education transitioned to full independence and now operates in India, Uganda, Indonesia and Ethiopia. It has reached more than 200,000 teachers and six million children across India and Uganda. Ambition School Leadership formed through a merger between Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders Trust, and we began incubating Now Teach which was set-up to help career-changers retrain as teachers.

Â鶹ÉçmadouPaddington Green, another turnaround primary, opened.

Â鶹ÉçmadouIndia, now operating as Peepul opened two new schools in Amar Colony and Jeevan Nagar while in Hastings a third Â鶹Éçmadouturnaround primary, Â鶹ÉçmadouCastledown, opened.

Having realised that Â鶹Éçmadouwould need a new home, the ambitious EdCity project was conceived and kicked off.

As the plans for the EdCity project developed, Ark’s network continued to grow. Â鶹ÉçmadouVictoria joined the growing Birmingham hub while in London, Â鶹ÉçmadouActon, Â鶹ÉçmadouGreenwich Free School, and Â鶹ÉçmadouJohn Archer in Clapham all joined the network.

With the location of EdCity now confirmed, the Â鶹Éçmadounetwork team moved to While City. There were several mergers of schools to build our all-through capacity and Â鶹Éçmadoualso opened Â鶹ÉçmadouPioneer in Barnet.

Again, our ventures continued to free organisations to independence while taking on new projects. Assembly, the school data venture, transferred to an established provider of services to schools so that it could scale further. The Ambition Institute also launched following merger of Ambition School Leadership and Institute for Teaching. Peepul, formerly Â鶹ÉçmadouIndia, became independent of Â鶹Éçmadouand Â鶹ÉçmadouCurriculum Plus was created following the merger of Mathematics Mastery and English Mastery.

Like everyone else, this year was dominated by Covid. In a stroke of good fortune, Ark’s curriculum programmes migrated onto a new digital platform, My Mastery and Â鶹Éçmadouwas able to contribute significant content to Oak Academy and other partners to make sure learning resources were readily available to students in the network and beyond. A major fundraising push also supported the provision of digital devices.

Despite these challenges, Â鶹ÉçmadouBlake opened that September in Croydon, and the first Â鶹ÉçmadouStart nursery was launched at Â鶹ÉçmadouJohn Archer in Battersea. Now Teach also spun out as an independent charity.

The pandemic, and eventually the recovery from Covid, continued to dominate our work. We launched a major fundraising drive, with donations matched by the government’s coronavirus fund. This focused on interventions designed to close learning gaps, improve mental health, and continue to support the provision of digital devices for all students in year four and above to ensure access to remote learning opportunities.

Another new school, Â鶹ÉçmadouSoane, opened in London and the second Â鶹ÉçmadouStart nursery opened at Â鶹ÉçmadouOval, Croydon.

Coming after the challenges of the pandemic, the 20th anniversary of the charity was marked with a series of events and celebrations. Despite a pause due to the changing economic conditions, the EdCity project was well underway with building of the school, youth centre, office block and first houses commencing.

Sixteen years after the charity had opened its first school in England, by 2022, Â鶹Éçmadouwas running 39 schools serving over 30,000 children across Birmingham, Hastings, London and Portsmouth.

The EdCity development continued apace with the ‘topping out’ of the office block and the opening of the new Â鶹ÉçmadouWhite City school building providing big milestones in the year.

The Education Partnerships Group, which had been set-up to provide not-for-profit consultancy to governments looking to strengthen their education systems was spun out into a series of legacy programmes that were taken on by local partners.

In fact, the scale and breadth of Â鶹ÉçmadouVentures had reached such a scale that a new charity was set-up.

Purposeful Ventures was created as a specialist ventures organisation focusing on education and issues affecting children and young people.