They include an initiative that seeks to train parents and children about affordable and healthy cooking and a Graduate School of Education to help deliver Master’s-level courses for teachers.
The Innovation Awards were first set up in 2013 and seek to identify the “next big ideas” that will help teachers and schools to close the achievement gap between poorer students and their peers.
The four winners of this year’s awards will each receive £15,000 and a year of intensive support from Teach First to help develop their enterprises to make a greater difference to young people across the UK.
The four winners are Grub Club, the Graduate School of Education, Mindful Music, and Tales Toolkit.
Grub Club has been set up by Ashling Kirwan, a maths teacher from Kent, who noticed that some of her low-income pupils were often going without the right food and nutrition and that this was affecting their performance in class.
The idea is that Grub Club – a 12-week programme – provides training to pupils and their families on affordable and healthy cooking. It is supported by food donations from local supermarkets.
The Graduate School of Education is being set up by Matt Hood and aims to be led by Master’s qualified teachers who will lead “demanding, rigorous Master’s courses” to help teachers build on their practice supporting disadvantaged students. Mr Hood aims to launch the institution by September 2017.
The other winners covered the primary and early years sectors, including a project teaching key stage 2 pupils mindfulness using music, and interactive story-telling kits that aim to raise language and literacy levels in the early years.
Brett Wigdortz, the founder and CEO of Teach First, said: “No-one can deny the exceptional work of all teachers across the country, but where challenges persist, we cannot expect them to handle this alone. We all depend on new ideas for helping to address the wealth of challenges underpinning educational inequality.
“It is only through Britain’s greatest talents being focused on solving the issue of educational disadvantage that we will truly drive forward the solutions needed to give our young people the start in life that they deserve.”
The Innovation Awards are supported by Credit Suisse, which has also supported Teach First’s work since its inception in 2003. The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation also provides funding to Teach First.
For more details, visit www.teachfirst.org.uk/innovation-award