Back in September, Ambition School Leadership and the Institute for Teaching joined forces to form a new organisation dedicated to helping educators serving children from disadvantaged backgrounds to keep getting better.

Now, six months on, I am delighted to have introduced our new organisation – Ambition Institute – to the world.

I am so proud to be leading this brand-new organisation and I’m excited to start addressing the biggest challenge (and opportunity) in the sector: educator development.

The school community has played an important part in the development of Ambition Institute and their insight into what they want when developing teachers and leaders has been invaluable. We’ve listened to their needs, reflected on our own experience from years of educator development, and drawn on the best evidence to make sure that our organisation can have the impact we need it to have.

That’s why we’ve created a graduate school for teachers, school leaders and system leaders.

We are combining the academic rigour of a traditional university with the essential classroom connection of a teaching school, all underpinned by the social purpose of a charity. And this social purpose – our mission and vision – is the bedrock on which Ambition Institute has been built.

We want an education system in which every child can thrive, no matter what their background. 

To help us achieve this, our expert team have spent the last few months redesigning our programme offer to cater for individuals, teams and groups – you can get a sense of our thinking in this Expert Edit from our Executive Director of School Leadership, Tom Rees. We’re also providing curricula and wider programmes for our partners to deliver, too.

Through these programmes, we believe that we will help educators working in disadvantaged areas to keep getting better by developing their knowledge and skills, as well as supporting them to be happier in their roles and to thrive in this great profession.

As courageousness is always much easier in company, we hope Ambition Institute can be the glue that binds our community of educators tightly together at a time when challenges for disadvantaged schools are tougher than ever.

Our partnerships with organisations like NAHT are a crucial part of this. As we share much more about our plans over the coming weeks and months, we hope to hear from you - we want to challenge thinking about teacher and school leader development and be challenged in return.

Everyone benefits when we share and debate ideas.

Melanie Renowden

Interim CEO, Ambition Institute.

Applications are open for our Future Leaders programme for aspiring headteachers – find out more on our website.