Mulberry Schools Foundation – Mulberry Schools Trust

Partnership of Equals

Since 2007, our conferences and their associated education programmes formed the bedrock of work to give young women voice and visibility, as well as access to a wide variety of female role models from different walks of life.

Programmes were designed to develop leadership skills and to support the confidence of girls and young women, as well as to profile the importance of their voices. For over a decade, they have been female only spaces with the quite specific purpose of being a very visible platform for girls and women in a world where the male has been the accepted generic – with all that it implies.

In 2018, we decided to move on from a female only space to talk about equality. The Mulberry Schools Trust came into existence in 2016 and boys have now joined us in the leadership of this important conversation – what would a true partnership of equals look like?

To read more about our work and access a range of conference resources please visit the Partnership of Equals website here.

Building on a number of important projects carried out by schools within the Trust over the past few years, the Mulberry Schools Trust has a national through the CEO’s contribution to Teach First’s National Schools Forum and its work on education and regional disadvantage as well as through the CEO’s involvement chairing the board of the Somerset Challenge. It also has an international reach through the CEO’s and Mulberry School for Girls’ work to forward girls’ education, following Michelle Obama’s and Tina Tchen’s visits to Mulberry and our return visit to the White House, all in 2015 and 2016. The CEO is also extending the Trust’s reach to Singapore and Malaysia in 2018.

The Foundation will focus its work on a number of areas:

The global nature of identity for pupils, examining education’s role in intersectionality and the way in which the contemporary phenomenon of ‘multiple identity’ needs support and nurture in schools.
The need for education to focus on human flourishing within a national and international context, creating schools that build the kind of civilisation that values human worth in all its diversity rather than denigrates it.
An international contribution to educational improvement, policy and knowledge about: education and gender; the relationship between education and ‘place’; and effective education in areas of social and financial disadvantage.

The Foundation is in its early stages and so initially, it will be the locus of extension to the following work:

The national leadership programme for disadvantaged girls, Girl Leading, which was established by Mulberry School for Girls to continue the legacy of Mrs Obama forwarding girls’ education after the launch of her Let Girls Learn campaign at the school in June 2015.
An education and policy ‘think tank’ with an international reach focused on the following areas initially: intersectionality and education in schools; gender and education; school improvement; disadvantage and how to combat its impact in education; education and ‘place’.
Scholarships, bursaries, book grants and school prizes.
A ‘hardship fund’.