A therapeutic programme for primary schoolchildren that was designed by the Kids Company founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, is to be rolled out to more schools after a pilot scheme showed a dramatic improvement in test results.
The Nurture programme, which supports children who face multiple adversities in their lives, has been running in a single primary school in central London. Not only do Sats results appear to have gone up, attendance and attention have improved and there has been less disruption in class, the school says.
Batmanghelidjh, who died earlier this month, had devised the programme after joining forces post-Kids Company with the Oasis charity, which runs more than 50 schools in five regions of England, often in areas of severe disadvantage, as part of its work.
Steve Chalke, the founder of Oasis, said there had been a 40 percentage point increase in key stage 2 Sats results for 10- and 11-year-olds at Oasis Academy Johanna in Waterloo, where the trial has been running. Now in its third year, the programme will be rolled out to other Oasis primaries and a Nurture guide will be made available to schools across the country.
It would be Batmanghelidjh’s “living legacy”, Chalke said. “It was Camila’s idea. It’s taken Camila’s philosophy of a child-centric, child-first approach. Camila had a completely unique way of understanding what should sit at the heart of education.”
Nurture is an attachment theory-based programme aimed at supporting children who, because of challenging situations in their lives, find school hard to relate to and can behave in destructive ways, harming themselves or distracting others, Chalke said.
Rather than punishing children who “kick off” in class, Nurture helps them to “connect to themselves and others and, in this way, to become more resilient whenever something upsets them or makes them anxious”.
The programme “is not a quick-burst diagnostic intervention to respond to medical or mental health conditions but instead a longer-term programme, enabling children to rebuild trust, often damaged where attachments have been impaired”.
Children are linked with a trusted adult – someone other than a teacher – who provides a safe space for children to express themselves. Then, using art, play and music, children are helped to explore and communicate their anxiety.
One parent at the school, Claire, who did not want to give her full name, has two children at Johanna and said she had seen first-hand the impact of the programme. “I have to say it genuinely has made an enormous difference to my kids as individuals, but also to the whole feel of the school,” she said. “It’s basically therapy, but the kids don’t realise. Both of mine have been miles more happy. It doesn’t sound like it would make a massive difference but it really has.”
Chalke said the programme continued Batmanghelidjh’s work at Kids Company, the south London children’s charity which closed in controversial circumstances in 2015. She, however, was reluctant to play a prominent role, concerned that Oasis would be “dragged down” by its connection with her. She even used an alias – “Ali Mac”, Camila written backwards – to stay behind the scenes.
At Johanna, where more than half of pupils are eligible for free school meals, Nurture’s impact had been “dramatic”, Chalke said. “Not only did the school’s key stage 2 Sats results for 2023 increase by more than 40 percentage points, but it became the highest-ranking Oasis primary academy, with combined reading, writing and maths outcomes far above the national rate of 59%, at 82%.”
In the next academic year, the programme will be rolled out to five more Oasis primary schools – one in London, two in Birmingham and two in Bristol. “We will expand Nurture to cover six schools. The year after, more,” Chalke said, “as we successively roll it out over the years ahead.”
Batmanghelidjh’s funeral took place on Saturday, drawing large numbers, including many children she worked with. Chalke said her work would continue through the Nurture programme. “It’s the future of education,” he said.
