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Steve Preston

Funding Futures Launch Charities & Social PurposeCompany NewsEvaluation & SurveysMime Publications

Funding Futures Launch

Background Children from disadvantaged backgrounds too often start school already behind their peers, and these gaps frequently widen as they move through education and into adulthood. While this pattern is familiar nationally, some local areas are successfully bucking the trend and putting disadvantaged children on a much more positive trajectory. Launching the Funding Futures resources Over the past year, with funding from Collective Futures, the Henry Smith Foundation and the Ethos Foundation, we have worked with Isos Partnership and the Education Policy Institute on a major early years project: Funding Futures. This new set of research reports and online tools is designed…
Steve Preston
December 12, 2025
Mime at the Association of Charitable Foundations Conference Company News

Mime at the Association of Charitable Foundations Conference

At Mime, we’ve always believed that data is more than just numbers on a spreadsheet—it’s a powerful lens through which we can understand our most pressing social issues. Last month, we were honoured to bring this message to the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) Annual Conference. This year’s theme, "Future-ready foundations: building resilience, relevance and readiness," set the stage for vital conversations about how the sector can adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. We were invited to lead a workshop on using data to make informed decisions, and the response was overwhelming. Not only was our workshop the most popular of…
Steve Preston
December 4, 2025
Funding Futures LA Webinar on our Early Years Research Analysis, Insight Reports & InfographicsCharities & Social PurposeLocal & Regional GovernmentSchool Improvement

Funding Futures LA Webinar on our Early Years Research

Together Mime, Isos Partnership and the Education Policy Institute recently launched Funding Futures – a set of research reports and 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 project was funded by Collective Futures, Henry Smith Foundation and Ethos Foundation. On 6th November, Mime and Isos held a webinar for over 100 local authority professionals to share the findings of the research and demo the free interactive tools we built following the research. The workshop covered: ways of measuring gaps in outcomes in…
Steve Preston
November 7, 2025
Our SEND Analysis in DfE Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value LAs Analysis, Insight Reports & InfographicsSEND & Inclusion

Our SEND Analysis in DfE Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value LAs

Many of the local authority clients using our SEND analysis services are involved in the DfE Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value initiatives. The analysis we produce supports local authorities with forecasts required for their returns, as well as the tools to identify opportunities for savings, for example through early intervention, better SEND transport planning or adjusting the mix of provision types. Local authorities often approach us and ask how we can help in future planning, and in getting better value from SEND spending. To help, we have a detailed case study on the work we do for Lambeth, but…
Steve Preston
July 6, 2023
SEN analysis 1
Ensuring your SEND data is ready for inspection Local & Regional GovernmentSchool ImprovementSEND & Inclusion

Ensuring your SEND data is ready for inspection

As part of their work to understand how local areas improve outcomes for children with SEND, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will look at the information that local areas use to monitor the performance of your SEND services. Your data should be timely, comprehensive, enable you to understand quickly how you are doing and, crucially, make it clear what your priorities for action are. If you find that this isn’t yet the case, you are not alone. Issues about the quality of data and the ability of managers and councillors to evaluate how they are doing have been…
Steve Preston
January 6, 2023

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