Transforming lives via Civic Leadership and Social Value

Ahead of the CST Annual Conference this week, Louise Wolsey explains how Civic Leadership and Social Value are driving London & South East Education Group’s mission.

In today’s world, educational institutions are redefining their role. No longer limited to teaching and learning, colleges and schools are becoming vital civic anchors – serving not only learners but entire communities.

For us, a £100m Education Group which operates as a social enterprise, this approach has reshaped our purpose. Guided by the belief that education should build resilient communities, we focus on generating social and economic value beyond our core mission of simply being an education provider.

Through our Further and Higher Education College, Multi-Academy Trust and new Charity (the LASER Education Foundation) we are collaborating with a wide range of partners to help increase our civic and social impact – and using meaningful metrics to validate and measure this.

Measuring Impact

To truly understand and enhance our civic contribution, we have adopted a pioneering approach to measure our impact. The TOMS (Themes, Outcomes, and Measures) Framework, developed by the National Social Value Taskforce and supported by the Local Government Association, allows us to quantify our social value in real, monetary terms.

This ‘social value calculator’ provides a reliable metric for evaluating activities. It enables us to assess and articulate how our actions benefit the community—be it by promoting local employment, supporting our staff and students to volunteer and/or local procurement.

Expert Guidance

Our approach to social value hasn’t been developed in isolation. We’ve sought advice from thought leaders and organisations dedicated to maximising community impact including the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, which guided us on strengthening local economic resilience, ways to support local employment and aligning procurement practices with community needs.

We’ve pioneered our Social Value calculator via our national Good for Me Good for FE campaign. Over 150 college are involved in this campaign, with staff and students generating millions of pounds of social value through volunteering and fundraising activities.

We are also proud to be members of anchor networks supported by the Mayor of London and Greenwich Local Authority, where we join forces with other civic-minded organisations to amplify local economic development. 

These partnerships help us align our actions with those of other ‘anchor institutions’—ensuring our communities are places where people and businesses can thrive.

Driving Civic Leadership

In practical terms, our civic leadership is woven into our projects and daily actions. We are actively working to promote responsible, local business growth, connecting our procurement decisions with opportunities to support small enterprises.

Our commitment to local skills and employment is evident in our many training programmes/qualifications – all of which provide pathways for people to enter the workforce, equipped with the skills our communities need.

Additionally, we work alongside wider stakeholders including Local Authorities and the Police, to support the safety and wellbeing of our communities. We also have a commitment to sustainability and the environment, driving this agenda across our whole organisation.

We also had the opportunity to contribute to the Greater London Authority and Bloomberg’s post-COVID London Recovery Board Anchor Institutions Impact Framework. This initiative underscored our commitment to regional resilience and recovery, through education as well as wider social and economic support.

Since 2019, we’ve generated over £160 million in additional value for our communities—equivalent to roughly a third of our annual turnover.

This achievement highlights that our role as an educator is not only financially sustainable but socially transformative. As the scope of our work expands, particularly through our new charity, the LASER Foundation, we anticipate that our impact will grow further in the coming years.

While quantifying social value in monetary terms is a useful starting point, we’re committed to exploring new ways to measure and articulate our impact. Going forward, we plan to focus more on community-centered outcomes – which will be driven by LASER.

Our ongoing mission, through our College, Trust and Foundation, is to align our core educational purpose with broader public benefit – transforming people’s lives through the power of learning.

By Louise Wolsey is Group Chief Strategy Officer at London & South East Education Group