About us

The Laurel Trust is a charity with a track record of supporting schools serving disadvantaged communities to make sustainable differences to children’s learning and life chances. We provide grant-funding and work together with schools and other agencies to put evidence informed research into practice.

Our approach is characterised by ethical leadership, moral integrity and a commitment to raise hopes and horizons for vulnerable children and their families.

In recent years we have supported imaginative and successful research projects nationwide in very diverse settings including areas of deprivation and disadvantage in cities, urban, rural and coastal areas.

See Locations Map below.

Why areas of multiple deprivation and disadvantage?

Low social mobility and lack of educational opportunity is one of the biggest social challenges of our time.

There is a very large research-base to show that children from families living in poverty do less well in early life, fall behind their peers in school and have more employment and mental health problems throughout adult life.

Our Purpose

Our purpose is partnerships with schools, their communities and other agencies to widen opportunities and reduce disadvantage for all children and young people through securing improvements in the quality of teaching, learning and leadership.

The Projects

All projects will need to demonstrate impact in the short-term but also build capacity and capability for longer term sustainability.

They should not only add to the local context but be capable of being disseminated regionally and nationally to benefit the wider school-led system.

Our Values

Underpinning all the work of the Laurel Trust are our inclusive values of:
EQUALITY, RESPECT and TRUST.

We expect the communities of schools that work with us to reflect and practise these values.

Funding for research and innovation

Every year the Trustees invite applications from collaborations of schools that wish to conduct some imaginative research and innovation to improve outcomes for children, their families and their communities.

A new recruitment round when schools will be invited to apply for funding will take place in Spring 2024

Research Projects

This year, in partnership with schools, we have a variety of creative research programmes supporting vulnerable children, their teachers and in some projects parents/carers. Click on thumbnails below to view.

The projects are happening in areas of deprivation across the country from Blyth in Northumberland to Devon.