Know before you Act! See the Community to Achieve Real Change

An educational trust had set out a bold ambition: to create an environment where every child can flourish. They realized something simple but powerful: children spend only eight hours a day in school.

To truly help them flourish, the trust had to look beyond classrooms! They had to look into the community where children live, eat, play, and grow. Real change happens when schools and community partners understand how they are connected, align their efforts, focus resources where they matter most, and create the condition for real change.

For years, the trust focused on direct support such as tutoring, mentoring, and after school programs. These efforts worked. The trust’s schools went from struggling to consistently achieving good and outstanding outcomes, according to the national inspection Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.

But success sparked new questions. If the trust had strengthened outcomes within schools, what about the rest of a child’s world?

communities around them?

The trust realized that progress inside the school depended on what happened outside it, such as housing, nutrition, sports, family engagements and local services. All of these together shape a child’s chance to thrive.

The trust chose to see the community first, before launching new initiatives linked to the multi-year strategy around leadership, community, and growth.

It partnered with Innovisor to map the connections between schools, local organizations, and individuals. The goal of this mapping was clear: to understand how well the community around children around children worked together. And where it didn’t

The mapping revealed hidden patterns and key insights:

• How were schools connected across the communities and in the wider ecosystem?
• What role did the trust’s central team play in strengthening those connections?
• Which areas inspired people to take ownership and act?

What once looked like a collection of separate efforts now appeared as an interconnected web of relationships with immense potential. A potential that only grows when partners align intentionally.

The trust became laser-focused armed with this understanding of their networks. No more spreading resources across disconnected interventions. It engaged the right partners, on the right issues, in the right way in order to get tail wind from the start of their next multi-year strategic plan.

This clarity reshaped the trust’s work.

• Strategic partnerships now target areas where connectivity can make the greatest difference.
• Resources are directed where networks are strengthening the connectivity tissue of the ecosystem.
• Engagement with families and communities is more purposeful, ensuring every child is supported not just by a school, but by coordinated network around them.

The trust avoided the trap of activity without alignment. This action research to understand the ecosystem upfront helped with that. They had a clear plan on how to build a shared understanding among partners, creating a foundation for collective movement and long-term impact.

This is the story of how one educational trust shifted from working in the ecosystem to working on the ecosystem.