Who are TFTF?

Think for the Future is an organisation that partners with schools nationally to deliver structured interventions which are proven to have a positive and measurable impact on student behaviour, attendance and school engagement.

Think for the Future was founded in 2012 in partnership with the University of

Nottingham. We started by working in very challenging school environments trialling different models of intervention designed to drastically improve outcomes for the hardest-to-reach students by reducing exclusions, improving behaviour, and transforming educational journeys. From the start we were heavily focussed on capturing impact data and comparing the success of different

models of delivery.

We have spent the last 10 years developing and refining our services; including our

Behaviour and Resilience Mentoring Provision, our Inclusion Centre Management Provision and Purple, our Impact Data Analysis System.

Disengagement from education is a problem that many schools and young people face across the UK. This can be caused by both extreme high-level behaviour and exclusions as well as poor mental health and wellbeing. The relationship between disengagement from education and behaviour/wellbeing is complex and nuanced. In many cases it is not only the effect of behaviour and low emotional wellbeing, but can be the cause too.

As an organisation we understand that school leaders have to have clear boundaries in managing behaviour, and in many instances, schools are forced to permanently exclude students for the safety of staff and other students in school. However, as an organisation we believe that the outcomes being achieved by students who are permanently excluded are not good enough. Something has to change and we want to be an important part of this change.

Disengagement from education is much wider than permanent exclusions, in many ways these cases are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Looking at the data into the causes of permanent exclusions, we can see that over a third of exclusions are caused by ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. Disruption to learning in the classroom has huge knock-on effects on the welfare of teaching staff and also negatively impacts the learning of other students.

Furthermore, there are many students that we would describe as ‘disengaged from education’ who don’t demonstrate any challenging behaviour. They may be suffering from poor mental health, low self-esteem, and challenging environments at home. Schools do a huge amount of brilliant work to identify and support these students, however what we also know is that too often they fall through the net. This might result in low educational attainment, or long-lasting poor mental health and wellbeing which has consequences far beyond the reach of education.

We provide schools with targeted interventions for groups of students who are disengaged which has a big focus on prevention and early intervention.

Visit our services page to find out more about what this could look like in your school.