It’s been another exciting year at Mime! In 2025, we’ve welcomed four new members of the team, moved to a new office and undergone an organisational rebrand. We’ve also published more new research, and continued supporting a range of new and existing clients.
Check out some of the highlights of our year below
1. Publishing our Advice in Community Settings evaluation report
Following a three-year evaluation of the Mayor of London’s Advice in Community Settings programme delivered in partnership with the team at Wavehill, we published our final report in November setting out key findings from the evaluation. The programme funded advice partnerships across London to embed their services in settings such as food banks and community centres, supporting Londoners at risk of, or experiencing, financial hardship. Through this work, the partnerships reached over 10,000 clients and contributed to over £8 million of financial gains, as well as further positive outcomes which you can read about in more detail here. We also had the pleasure of attending City Hall to present some of the key findings from the evaluation, and hear from some of the partnerships about the impact the programme has had and how the work has supported them in securing follow-on funding.
2. Launching Funding Futures
Over the last year, we’ve been working with Isos Partnership and the Education Policy Institute to launch Funding Futures, a set of research reports and online tools to help funders, local authorities and policy makers target resources in early childhood at a local level for maximum impact on disadvantaged children. The team, alongside colleagues at Isos, recently hosted a webinar showcasing the research, and the data dashboard we developed was particularly well received by local authority professionals. We also had the pleasure of presenting the work alongside Stella Creasy MP at a launch event at Walthamstow Family Hub.
3. Young Carers in Schools evaluation published
We also published our evaluation of the Young Carers in Schools programme, led jointly by Carers Trust and The Children’s Society. The programme supports schools across England to better identify and support pupils who are young carers, while rewarding best practice. Bringing together analysis of public data and data from the National Pupil Database, as well as qualitative insights from school surveys and interviews with staff and young carers, the evaluation demonstrated clear positive impacts the award had on young carers, as well as improved awareness and identification with schools.
4. Camden Learning school reports and post-16 platform
After a successful pilot in 2024, we have rolled out the parent report platform to all Camden schools including primaries, secondaries, and special schools! These have been used by parents to help with choosing schools for their children this year and received some great postive feedback. It has featured on the BBC again this year and will continue to be a focus for us as Ofsted report cards are brought online in the coming months. Separately, we were delighted to work with Camden Learning to build a platform to turn their Post-16 Prospectus into a website which young people and their parents and carers can use to consider their options for study in the borough after Key Stage 4. This included working with colleagues at Whirlwind to create, storyboard, film and edit a series of videos for each provider to help set the scene on what it’s really like to study there, using student voices and experiences to give an authentic view! The website has a quiz to help children think about and explore what option would be best for them, and has featured on posters around the borough as well as in guidance used in schools.
5. Little Wandle updates
We’ve continued supporting Little Wandle with their Assessments & CPD analysis and reporting this year. We’ve brought a series of new updates online to help members get the best possible insights from their data, and this includes moving the Rapid Catch Up assessments for children beyond year 1 into the Assessment Tracker, where we’re able to provide tailored recommendations on next steps. We’ve also set up enhanced new reports to help the awesome Little Wandle trainers support more members with specific advice and guidance. We’re really looking forward to continue to work with them in the new year, and seeing even more members benefit!
6. SEND Commissioning in London
This year, we were pleased to support the London Innovation and Improvement Alliance with a piece of research exploring the SEND commissioning landscape across London and how it will need to evolve as need continues to grow. Working with local authorities, NHS stakeholders, and parents and carers, we combined qualitative insight with analysis of person-level SEN2 and public DfE datasets to understand current and future commissioning needs. This was informed by our Wandsworth Mime SEND Forecasting model, which we used to produce a London-wide forecast of growth in the number of young people with EHCPs in the years to come. The work highlighted variation in commissioning approaches across London, alongside shared challenges around collaboration, data sharing and resource constraints, setting out a clear case for exploring joint commissioning approaches and more coordinated pan-London working to achieve better outcomes for young people with SEND.
Highlights from the Mime blog
We’ve continued using our blog to highlight interesting pieces of work and analysis completed by the team, and here are three of our favourites from the year:
- We published a three-part blog series which used our Wandsworth Mime SEND Forecasting model to explore how England’s EHCP cohort might grow in the years to come. We found that if the rate of requests for EHCP assessments continues to increase at a similar rate to in recent years, the size of the EHCP cohort could reach over a million young people by 2040, having large implications on the inclusion of young people with SEND in schools. Earlier in the year, we also had the opportunity to lead a session at the National Fair Funding conference, using our model as the basis for a workshop we ran on building robust and useful cohort forecasting tools.
- Following a very successful series of training sessions for councillors on using data within performance management, delivered on behalf of the Local Government Association, we shared some of the key themes from the sessions in this blog from the start of the year. This included highlighting practical tips for using data effectively, such as simple approaches to benchmarking, the value of looking beyond headline figures, and avoiding common data visualisation pitfalls.
- In response to Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation, we published a blog examining the proposed reforms to the school inspection framework and what they could mean in practice. We summarised the key changes, including the move away from single word judgements, a greater emphasis on using contextual data in assessments of schools, and changes in the approach to inspections and follow-ups. Drawing on our work with schools and local authorities, including developing school report cards in Camden, we considered the reforms from a data and inclusion perspective, and the impact this may have on the sector moving forward.
Rebrand and moving office
Back in May, we launched our exciting new brand and website following years of planning and preparation. As well as bringing a more modern and visually appealing feel to our website and services, the new brand better represents our values and the type of clients we support. To read more about why we made the change, check out this blog post here, and if you have any feedback, please do get in touch!
Also, following almost three years at our office in The Print Rooms on Union Street, we’ve moved! To support our growing team, we’ve moved into a bigger space just around the corner at the lovely Metal Box Factory on Great Guildford Street. We love to have visitors, so if you are in the area and would like to chat, please do stop by! Here we are at Metal Box getting ready for our Christmas celebrations:
Supporting our community
This year, we have made a donation on behalf of our team to Stepping Stones in Southwark. They were established in 1997 in response to a lack of provision for activities for adults with learning disabilities in the local area. They do great work providing weekly activities and classes from their community centre base in Herne Hill, as well as in the wider local community.
Coming in 2026
In 2026, we’ll be publishing new pieces of social research and continuing to support the public and third sectors with high quality analysis and insight. We also hope to keep growing our amazing team, so please do keep an eye on our vacancies and get in touch if there are any roles that interest you!
Some highlights to look out for in the new year include:
- Exciting developments to our SEND Dashboard service, including bringing in new data and adding even more powerful analysis to the school-level drilldown tool. We will also be monitoring and responding to any upcoming SEND system legislation change to ensure our analysis continues to be as useful and impactful as possible.
- Publishing our research into the long term employment outcomes for those who studied in specialist creative education providers, produced in partnership with Ipsos and State of Life for Creative PEC, the DfE and DCMS.
- Using our ONS Assured Organisational Connectivity to continue exploring and analysing data from the National Pupil Database and Longitudinal Educational Outcomes datasets for upcoming evaluations and pieces of research.
- Discussing our work and meeting more of our clients at conferences and events. For example, we really enjoyed discussing how organisations can use data more effectively to drive social impact at the recent Association of Charitable Foundations conference!
- Launching our higher education support and analysis services including exploring graduate outcomes and supporting universities to better target their outreach work and provide better information, advice and guidance in schools.
- Continuing to work with like-minded organisations and build new partnerships, so please do get in touch if you’d like to chat and explore opportunities to collaborate!
We look forward to continuing to work with you in 2026, and we wish you a restful festive period and a very happy new year!
Please do get in touch if you would like to hear more about any of these projects, products or services
