James Townsend

Executive Director, Reach Schools

James Townsend is an Executive Director at the Reach Foundation, where he leads the Cradle to Career Partnership and Reach's leadership programmes for aspiring Head Teachers and and Trust CEOs. James has previously held leadership roles at Teach First and STiR Education, where he helped found and grow the organisation to reach over 200,000 teachers globally. He started his career as a history teacher in east London.

Hall 9

1 Series one

Pupil outcomes: Learning from American 'cradle to career' place-based approaches

How can trusts and their schools establish themselves as civic anchors in their communities? In this session we will learn about Strive Together’s ‘cradle to career’ model which has improved outcomes for young people across the US. With decades of experience in working with communities to apply the model, it has been adapted over time and continues to do so to meet pupil and family needs. Strive Together brings together a range of partners to address complex challenges, supported by a local team. Together we’ll explore learnings from the model and how it can be applied within trusts of all sizes.

09:50

1 8 July

Keynote: Relational trust

James will explore lessons learned from Reach Foundation's Cradle to Career Partnership in creating schools and trusts that are both relational and rigorous.