LKMco is now The Centre for Education and Youth: A new name for our second decade

After a long and exciting build up, today we are announcing our new name.

We are The Centre for Education and Youth.

Over the last ten years, LKMco has played a central role in the big debates that have shaped the education and youth sectors.

At a policy level, we not only nudged things in a better direction than they might have gone otherwise, we also shaped concrete changes. Meanwhile on the ground, dozens of organisations and thousands of teachers have supported millions of young people in new and more evidence-informed ways thanks to the support we have provided.

It is now time for us to have a name that represents what we do: sitting at the centre of things, a hub whose spokes provide an intermediary between the education and youth sectors, between practitioners and policy makers, between think and action.

Some might describe what we are doing as a rebrand but perhaps that’s not quite the right term.
Our name is changing, making it easier for us to explain what we do (no more garbled intros on the radio, no more awkward “what does the ‘K’ stand for?” questions at events).

On the other hand, we know from our annual social impact reports how much people like our friendly and informal style; our commitment to marrying the highest standards of rigour with pragmatism and practical action; and our willingness to cross the barricades and bring together groups with different agendas.We also know that our mission is more relevant than ever.

Firstly, it is all children and young people we are interested in and we must continue to push society to recognise its responsibilities.

We will therefore balance our work on the big overarching issues that affect everyone- such as assessment, accountability and teacher recruitment, with an ever-keener lens that zooms in on marginalised groups – like the young and homeless – who are too often forgotten.

Secondly, we will continue to talk about “fulfilling transitions” because whilst academic attainment opens doors, young people deserve to experience a broad mix of opportunities and to be equipped with whatever they need in order to write their own life stories.

Finally, we will continue to chart children and young people’s journeys all the way through to their transition to adulthood – conducting projects focused on the early years and home learning environment as much as studying inequitable access to post-compulsory studies and the labour market. We just cannot afford to view these stages in isolation.

Therefore, what we do, and how we do it, remains the same.

However, we are using this opportunity to put a stake in the sand. To renew our commitment to making the next decade a better and fairer one than the last – because only then will society move a step closer to ensuring all children and young people make a fulfilling transition to adulthood.

We will mark the occasion by launching a new report “A Decade in the Making: What next for young people in England?” at our 10th birthday party and you can read one of the contributions to the report from Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman in today’s Times Education Supplement.

We hope you will join The Centre for Education and Youth as we head into the next decade, whether by reading our work, subscribing to our newsletter, contributing to our research, commissioning a project, or funding us to grow our impact.

Please get in touch and let’s discuss how we can make the next decade a really good one for children and young people. Email us at our new address: [email protected]