Our Current Priorities

SHINE has spent the last 10 years researching, developing and testing our educational approach enabling us to identify areas where we can make a difference and find out what really works.

As a result, we are now concentrating our work on four funding strands:

  • SHINE on Saturday projects – we are particularly keen to fund clusters of primary schools in Greater London. Our next funding round will be in Autumn 2012.
  • Serious Fun on Saturday projects. We would like to hear from independent schools in England that are interested in hosting a Serious Fun project and can identify potential partner schools in the state sector.
  • Other Saturday Programmes – innovative projects, primarily those working with secondary school students.
  • Innovation – we are also interested in funding non-Saturday projects that take a fresh approach to closing the attainment gap. We are particularly interested in projects that focus on science or maths and that have the potential for growth. We would also welcome enquiries from projects focusing on speech, language and communication at Key Stage One.

Please see our funding guidelines for more information.

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By the age of 5, disadvantaged children have a vocabulary almost one year behind that of children from middle income families|The Sutton Trust, 2010||Every year, well over 1 in 3 children receiving free school meals leave primary school with substandard maths and English - around twice as many as children not on free school meals|National Statistics, 2010||Last year, only 27% of students eligible for free school meals achieved five or more A*-C GCSEs (including English and maths) - around half the national average|National Statistics, 2010||Disadvantaged students that do perform well at GCSE are still less likely to go onto higher education at all, let alone to a Russell Group university|The Sutton Trust, 2010||Since August 2000, we have invested £14.5 million in projects in London and Manchester||This money is now helping more than 49,000 children from almost 2,000 schools