Education: A forgotten issue?

In April 2016 we published School report: How can charities work best in the school system?. In it we argued that charities have a vital role to play in improving educational, emotional and social outcomes for children and young people by working with schools.

While working on this report, we noticed that, in terms of charitable donations from the public, education is a relatively forgotten issue. This is intriguing, given the significance of education in our society. In terms of its importance to the public, education is on a par with healthcare. Yet, as our analysis shows, health charities receive a great deal more voluntary donations.

Here we present new figures from our own analysis of Charity Commission data, which shows the extent of the disparity of income between health charities and education charities. We ask what this means for education charities’ ability to speak up on important issues in this area.

The lack of large, visible charities that can campaign and bring issues to into the public’s consciousness may be holding education back in this country.

Let us know what you think on twitter via @NPCthinks and #SchoolReport. If you’d like to discuss the issues further, please contact Rachel.Wharton@thinkNPC.org