20 November 2025
Trust Visit | Lift Schools
Location
Lift Schools, 1 EdCity Walk, London, W12 7TF
Date and time
20 November 2025 09:30 - 15:45 pm
About this event
Lift mission and beliefs
● Education changes lives and Lift Schools exists to unlock success for every child.
○ Our mission is to provide an excellent education to every child, in every classroom, every
day - providing a high quality universal offer and targeted support.
○ With excellent leadership and teaching in every school, we are determined to help children
go on to lead successful and happy lives.
○ We believe that trusts are a force for good and we aim to be open and collaborative with
others - going beyond our network to influence and assist the sector to benefit more
children and communities.
We tie our ambition to a concrete goal: Lift 490
There are four elements to our 490 goal, which build on one another. By 2028, we want 90% of our pupils:
- to be secure readers for their age
- to reach the expected standard in the key stage 1 phonics check
- to meet the expected standard in reading, writing and maths
- to achieve a grade 4 or above in English and Maths GCSE
Lift 490 is one of our wider set of 10 top trust goals. These underpin both network and school
improvement.
Trust background
● Our multi-academy trust is made up of 57 primary, secondary and special schools, educating more
than 33,000 pupils across the country – from Middlesbrough in the north to Devon in the south
west, Essex in the east and the Isle of Wight in the south. A full map can be found here. Significant
improvement in Ofsted profile and outcomes over the last four years.
○ 31 primary schools
○ 21 secondary schools
○ 5 special schools
● We cover five regions: North, Midlands, South West, East and London & South. Each region is led by
a regional education director who is responsible for ensuring the high quality delivery of education
at all schools across the region. Lift Schools has a central team based at EdCity, London, and
several regional offices with support staff across the UK.
Potential themes for Challenge Partners visit
● Aligning strategic and operating planning - the development of our operating model.
● Lift 490 mission - an audacious goal, informed by data and delivered by rigorous execution.
● Responsible and innovative AI - AI works initiative with 75 teachers (see Project H blog here)
● Education strategy - implementation at scale.
○ Culture & Climate survey - using insights from pupils and teachers to drive school
improvement.
○ Lift Talks 2025/26 - using a national campaign and framework design to energise the
network and provide principal agency to deliver strategic work across our schools.