Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation - the UK’s largest bursary charity - has worked with more than 100 schools since 2013 to ensure that more than 800 children and young people from areas of socio-economic deprivation or who face significant vulnerabilities in their home lives, including many who are in and on the ‘edge of care’, have gained access to the life-transforming opportunities of a bursary place. The charity aims to transform more than 2,000 lives through its work by 2024. It is hoping to increase its footprint of partner schools to more than 120 boarding schools as well as to start to consider day placements for small numbers of the looked-after children and young people that it works with from next year.
“Where I live, young people don’t have high aspirations because the environment around them isn’t showing them what is possible… my SpringBoard placement at Wellington College set me on a path that would otherwise have been impossible. The whole environment, the high expectations and being forced to go out of my comfort zone. It has completely changed my path in life and now I try to encourage people from my old school to work hard and know there are so many opportunities out there for them too.”
Royal SpringBoard pupil from Tottenham in London, now studying at Cambridge University.
