Funding new ideas: Our Spring term staff innovation fund

By Will Durham

The second round of our Staff Innovation Fund has now concluded, with trustees meeting bright and early on Thursday 12 February to review the latest applications.

The fund exists for a simple reason: to back the professional expertise of WES staff. Every day, colleagues see what works inside and outside the classroom and where small investments could make a significant difference to pupils’ experiences. The Innovation Fund is designed to bridge the gap between those insights and the limits of departmental budgets, enabling ideas with clear educational value to become a reality.

Open to all employees at William Ellis School, the fund runs three times each year, with applications invited during the first four weeks of every academic term. As well as our core funding, additional income into this fund comes from our Rather Use Than Fame Club regular giving initiative which you can learn more about here.

In this round we were pleased to award the remaining £7,880 of this year’s budget across five projects:

• New tents to support residential trips at the Mill for the next decade

• Access to the London Zoo learning programme

• Additional resources to strengthen the work of our attendance team

• Chromebooks and software to enable deeper, enquiry-based learning about pupils’ local area and the wider world

• Further development of initiatives such as ARTiculate

Each of these proposals was rooted in staff knowledge of what will have the greatest impact on pupils, and each addressed a need that could not be met through existing budgets.

A strong example is the Geography department’s successful application for Chromebooks and access to Ordnance Survey’s DigiMaps. Colleagues identified that limited device access was preventing most Key Stage 3 pupils from engaging with Geographical Information Systems (GIS), an area recognised nationally as a weakness in geography provision. With this funding, and additional support secured by the school, fifteen laptops and a charging trolley will allow GIS to be embedded more fully in the curriculum. It will support a wide range of pupils, including those enrolled on the Travel and Tourism BTEC which is one of the most popular courses in the school.

This will enable pupils not only to study global issues, but also to analyse the demographics, opportunities and challenges within their own communities using professional-standard tools.

Having now completed two successful rounds, we are pleased that the Staff Innovation Fund will continue in 2026–27 with an increased annual budget of £15,000. Its growing popularity reflects both the strength of staff ideas and the value of creating a mechanism that trusts professional judgement to create additional value for pupils at the school.

Thanks to all staff, leadership and trustees for their continued engagement with this funding stream. We look forward to monitoring and reporting on the impact of the projects funded in this financial year as we move forwards.