Thoughts from our Co-founder, Henry Faber

This Impact Report evidences a successful year of delivery from the team, standing as legacy to hard-fought progress, innovation and results for Oppidan’s work in schools. I wanted to share my personal takeaways from a happy year in schools.

Proving distance is no obstacle.

I could never have imagined that our work in schools might grow so quickly to reach such a broad base of schools. One day we’re at Eton or Harrow, the next in Skegness with Greenwood or Liverpool with Dixons, the next to Oldham with E-ACT, then back to London, before overseas trips to Seoul, Spain or Ghana. Every setting has its own unique context, but we’ve been encouraged to see the consistency of appetite for what we can offer. We are proud to serve students not just of different cultures, but diverse demographics too. We believe our mentoring is for all students.

Increasing touchpoints.

In previous years, too many of our partnerships have been one offs with flash-in-the-pan impact. Schools trust us increasingly to build out a ‘journey’ of events across the school year, and it’s made a huge difference to the consistency of the offering and the understanding and buy-in from students. I’m proud that this year we’ve managed to increase the frequency of our work with each student, while bringing down our cost per interaction. Affordability is everything to the longevity of our partnerships with schools.

Quick wins with role modelling.

Nothing beats a great experience of role modelling. We benefit from an unfair advantage in existing outside the normality of a school day. Time and time again we’re noting our impact in the fresh excitement and valued impartiality of something different, delivered by someone different. We are proud of the celebrated successes of our mentors and feel we’re privileged to share this stable of great people with schools. Every moment shared by that mentor has an individualised value and a ripple effect that’s hard to measure but isn’t hard to see.

Personalisation in reporting.

Our 1:1 written reports are a key area of impact for the school and young person. We know that at their best, our reports can get right to the core of a student’s personality and need. A thoughtfully written report adds clarity, direction and accountability to that young person’s progress. To understand young people clearly and quickly is an Oppidan quality that we want to build on and be known for. Next year we will continue to fixate on the quality of our personalised reports.

A tight team, dedicated to the mission.

Finding good people is difficult, but we’re getting better at it. With each small iteration and improvement, we’re seeing a team that feels tighter in spirit, more diverse in experience and more uniform in excellence. I want to shout out all 55 mentors for those 5am starts, the Zipcar traffic and delayed trains, the hurried lunches and the late-night report writing. From all of us in the core team, we thank you.

As we finalise this report in the summer of 2024, we rest, listen, discuss, design, hire, train and then from 1st September, we go again. Thank you to all those who have contributed to a memorable year of growth and progress for the children with whom we’ve worked.