Two children laughing together, on top of a bridge in an outdoor play area.

Children's mental health

Transforming Schools into Equitable Spaces: A pilot for bold education reform

We’re partnering with Class 13 to pilot a transformational approach to education that centres anti-racism and young people’s mental health.

Key information:

Partner: Class 13
Amount: £500,000
Duration: 4 years (2024 – 2028)
Programme: Children’s mental health

What we are doing together

We are partnering with charity Class 13 on a four-year pilot Transforming Schools into Equitable Spaces. Their aim is to prioritise equity in all aspects of the participating schools to help them address

The mental health and well-being of young people
The exclusion rate and its disproportionate impact on minoritised children, and
The teacher retention crisis.

The impact felt by the young people, staff, and local community will be used to influence local and national school policy reform, as well as a wider, longer-term roll out of Class 13’s model.

Class 13 are an award-winning Brixton based charity founded in 2020 by Curtis Worrell, a youth practitioner with over 15 years of experience working in schools, housing, youth clubs and secure settings. Class 13 describe themselves as an anti-oppressive charity seeking to transform schools into dynamic environments that affirm every young person’s inherent capacity for success.

We have been working with and funding Class 13 since 2023 to support their robust, well-evidenced practice framework. This framework supports educators and those who work with young people to develop policies and practices that actively challenge systemic inequity, encouraging them to reflect on their role in this system.

Class 13’s approach, and the foundations of this pilot, is built around four core principles: affirming a person’s full humanity, nurturing their innate critical thinking, cultivating community, and fostering democracy.

We are excited to stand with Impact on Urban Health and dare to reimagine what education can be. This partnership embodies a bold, unflinching commitment to the transformative power of equity and seeks to harness the power of collective action. At Class 13, we understand that true liberation begins with the courage to build anew, without blueprints and we thank IOUH for displaying that same courage.

Curtis Worrell Founder of Class 13

Aims of the partnership

The overarching aim of the project is to learn about the characteristics of an equitable, nurturing school community and to build evidence for the difference this makes to children’s mental health. This will result in an actively anti-racist, anti-deficit approach to education both in individual schools and education policy more broadly. With bold structural change we expect to see improvement in young people’s mental health, a reduction in exclusion rates, and higher staff retention and satisfaction. The theory behind the last of these aims is that strong relationships between teachers and parents, and co-developed behaviour strategies, can reduce the stress on teachers and lead to higher retention rates that benefit the whole school community.

We will also explore potential routes to scale for Class 13’s ‘Advancing Equity Framework’. The aim is to make it a viable alternative to currently dominant approaches that rely on punishment and/or seeking to ‘fix the child’, rather than what is causing them distress or harm.

This new pilot will see Class 13 working in-depth and on-site with one primary school and one secondary school in Lambeth (Henry Fawcett and Lilian Baylis respectively) over four years, to create nurturing but brave spaces where every voice is heard, and every person is valued. It’s worth highlighting the innovative spirit of these pilot schools, whose communities are ready for bold change. The initiative will be divided into three phases:

Phase 1: It takes a village

This phase prioritises building relationships with families through deep listening and learning, recognising their vital role as part of the school community and in supporting children’s mental health

Phase 2: The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility

This phase focuses on supporting teachers in the classroom, aiding with behaviour management when required, building relationships and offering critical reflections based on Cultural Therapy methodology.

Throughout the project, the whole school community engages in tailored Foundational Learning sessions covering topics such as deficit ideology and race. Continued reflective learning sessions will aid teachers in refining their practice, and workshops with school governors and senior leaders ensure whole-school transformation. School staff will be supported in prioritising affirming practices that let young people know they are inherently valuable. The community-focused approach will help build trusting relationships with parents and create shared behaviour strategies.

Phase 3: Freedom is pursued constantly and responsibly

This phase intensifies community accountability and inclusive decision-making through collaborative forums involving teachers, families, and school governors, aiming to democratise school governance.

Class 13’s commitment to addressing the systemic failures affecting Black and marginalised children’s mental health aligns with our mission to fix environments rather than children. Our collaboration with Class 13 demonstrates how crucial it is to work with the entire school community, from senior leadership to local families, to achieve systemic change. Class 13’s focus on creating democratic, nurturing and equitable spaces, and transforming the structure and relationships that negatively impact the most oppressed community members is groundbreaking, and we are thrilled to be able to support their work.

Julika Niehaus Children’s Mental Health Portfolio Manager, Impact on Urban Health

Strategic fit

The Children’s mental health programme strategy has identified schools as a space that can have a huge impact on children’s mental health. In keeping with Class 13’s anti-deficit ideology, we are also focused on making the places that children spend most time as safe, protective and enriching as possible, rather than focusing on making young people more resilient when these places don’t meet their needs.

We have heard from lots of partners and families about the ways institutional racism manifests in schools, including:

Disproportionate exclusions of children from minoritised backgrounds (PDF: Just for Kids Law – Race, poverty and school exclusions in London)
A lack of a feeling of belonging for many young people and staff from marginalised communities (PDF: Centre for Mental Health – Growing Stronger Together) and
Distressing and re-traumatising school-day realities, including the curriculum, behaviour management policies and a lack of community engagement (PDF: CYPMHC – Behaviour and mental health in schools).

These are the kinds of every-day experiences for young people, staff, and community members that Class 13’s anti-racism framework aims to address.

The pilot will take place in two schools where over half the pupils are eligible for free school meals, meaning a significant number of children whose families have been forced into poverty, and the distress that brings.

As is the pattern in other schools across the country, these young people are also twice as likely to be suspended as their peers, with Black Caribbean pupils three times as likely as their white peers. This pilot explicitly calls out the fact that the current system is failing Black and other marginalised children, including those with additional learning needs. Class 13 don’t only bring professional expertise but also lived experience of having to navigate these systems themselves.