Villiers Park Educational Trust is a leading national charity tackling low social mobility. We support less advantaged young people to reach their full potential.
Our reason for being is simple; a disproportionate number of able young people are not reaching their full potential, purely because of their socio-economic status. For young people from less advantaged backgrounds their performance at every stage can be hindered by a lack of networks, aspirations and opportunities. Currently in the UK success is not always achieved on merit alone, but rather on the support and opportunities given leading up to that point. This leaves those with extraordinary merit but without additional support far behind their more advantaged peers.
We work with able young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to make sure that they achieve their full potential. Our approach is unique in that we run long-term multi-intervention programmes, usually starting aged 14 and continuing through to post 18. We help young people build the skills, passion and motivation needed for success in their chosen field. We have programmes running in seven less advantaged regions across the UK, and we run courses and support for young people from all over the country.
Our impact is significant. We see over 80% of the young people we work with progress to leading universities (the national average for similar groups is 20%). We give young people confidence and self belief that ensures they thrive in higher education, and progress to high-level careers in the area they are passionate about.
Villiers Park runs a residential educational site in Foxton, Cambridgeshire, where we host almost 2000 students per year for inspiring educational experiences, including our renowned Inspiring Excellence programme.
We also have seven regional teams based across the country that run long-term programmes in the local area. These are known as our Scholars Programmes. Scholars join in Year 10, and become part of the Villiers Park community; undertaking mentoring, skills workshops, residential visits, local career and employment masterclasses, and taking part in our innovative national awards scheme INVOLVE.
In addition we run a number of partnership projects in other regions of the UK, working with universities and organisations to deliver impactful programmes that tackle social mobility and increase participation in higher education. These partnership projects are usually targetting a specific need in the local community, such as numeracy or literacy levels.
Our ultimate goal is to create a fairer and more equal society, where those in high level professions more accurately reflect the make-up of our society.
