Franklin Scholars was founded in 2013 with a vision to help more young people help each other through tricky transitions in school. We believed fiercely in the power of peer support. Grounding our programmes in the strongest evidence of what works, we hold a commitment to continuous learning and improving through robust monitoring and evaluation. Over the last seven years, working with over 4,400 pupils and 80 schools across nine regions of the country, we have gathered a huge range of insights and lessons learned, which we are eager to share.

In early 2020, Franklin Scholars decided to take the opportunity to conduct a strategic review of everything that we had done, and everything that we had learned, over the last seven years. This review helped us answer a key question, which is: how are we really best placed to support schools and young people, in the broadest, most inclusive and most impactful way possible?

On June 26th 2020, we launch the results of this review, in the form of a seven-year impact report. We hope this report can be of value to the wider sector and highlights lessons learned through working with thousands of young people. In particular, we are excited to present the results of a large retrospective impact assessment of the Beacon Programme, presented in detail within the Technical Appendix.

A summary of this report’s findings can be found on our blog.