We are focused on the future: not just maintaining excellence, but expanding it. Our priorities reflect both the scale of the challenge and the strength of our response.

1. Supporting those who need it most

We are determined that no child is held back by their circumstances. From the cost-of-living crisis to the legacy of the pandemic, our families face real and persistent pressures. Yet Harris students succeed, because we stand beside them with practical support and high expectations..

Many of our students come from households earning less than £7,400 a year, the threshold for free school meals. Despite the challenges they face, these children are succeeding, often against the odds. We are dedicated to improving those odds and ensuring they receive the support needed to reach their full potential.

Your support enables us to provide for these students, those who, through no fault of their own, need a helping hand. It ensures they have warm coats, meals, and dignity, while allowing their education to take centre stage. With your help, we can give them the best possible chance to shape their futures and define what is possible.

2. Supporting student opportunities

Great education is more than what happens in a classroom. We provide our students with experiences, support and opportunities that open doors: many students of all ages experiencing visiting London, visit a farm, spending a night away from home for the first time. We know the difference this makes: broadens our students’ horizons, fostering independence, and building confidence. These opportunities help our students develop a greater sense of the world, improve their social skills, and inspire them to dream bigger, opening doors to new possibilities in education and life.

Harris students are twice as likely to attend Russell Group universities as their peers nationally, despite facing disproportionately high levels of socio-economic disadvantage. This is no accident. We nurture ambition, expand horizons, and offer opportunities that many students wouldn’t otherwise have access to—from one-to-one academic tutoring and university visits, to leadership training and cultural enrichment.

Nothing brings this to life more fully than the entirely philanthropically funded Harris Experience.

The Harris Experience is a five-year, two-part programme designed for our most academically gifted but historically underrepresented students across the Federation. Built on the belief that talent is universal but opportunity is not, the programme is aimed at helping students reach the country’s most selective universities—and thrive once there.

• Students take part in a curated series of enrichment activities that build leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills.
• They visit top institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL, engage with cultural experiences from theatre and museums to orchestras, and take part in high-level seminars, masterclasses, and residential trips.

Through these hands-on experiences, they develop confidence, independence, and cultural fluency—crucial for success in both education and the workplace, but often inaccessible to those from the socio-economically disadvantaged communities Harris serves.

The Harris Experience doesn’t just open doors, it gives students the self-belief to walk through them. As a result, over 200 Harris students have progressed to Oxbridge since 2019, with many more attending other elite universities and emerging as future leaders in their fields.

3. Driving sector-wide change

We do not just want Harris students to flourish: we want to pioneer interventions that allow this for all underrepresented students.

We share our learning, partner across the sector, and invest in scalable interventions that others can adopt. Our work is pioneering in areas such as mental health support, literacy, and EAL provision—key areas which affect socio-economically disadvantaged students the most.

With over 1 in 3 of our students having English as an additional language, and many of our schools welcoming large numbers of refugees, we are pushing the boundaries of what inclusive excellence looks like. We are helping others do the same.

We are already leading the way in providing opportunities for underserved students. Your support lets us go faster and further.

• Empowering disadvantaged students to learn Mandarin: established by Harris in 2016 with the generous support of Swire, this initiative has expanded access to Chinese language learning and cultural education for over 4,000 students across 15 academies. By embedding Chinese into the curriculum, we are removing barriers and raising aspirations, demonstrating that even a complex language like Chinese can be successfully accessed by children from all backgrounds and of all learning capabilities. This donor-funded programme exemplifies how targeted philanthropy can catalyse system-wide change.
• EAL and refugee specialist support: thanks to philanthropic funding, we have been able to embed dedicated EAL and refugee consultants who support academies across the Federation. These specialists are building capacity, supporting newly arrived students, many of whom are refugees or asylum seekers, and helping us model inclusive, high-impact provision that is being shared across the sector. This donor-backed initiative is essential to ensuring that language or displacement is not a barrier to academic success.
• Mental Health: Our donor-funded mental health strategy has introduced a tiered approach across our schools, including in-school counselling, staff development, and student-led wellbeing initiatives. This investment is vital for underserved students, who are statistically more likely to face mental health challenges but less likely to receive early, sustained support elsewhere.
• Outcomes and Opportunity: Donor support also underpins our ability to expand high-quality careers provision, raise university access rates, and strengthen our curriculum offer across the Federation. These interventions are lifting life chances and ensuring that academic excellence is not reserved for the privileged few.

We are not a charity surviving hand-to-mouth. We are a pioneering force, proving what is possible and setting new standards across the sector.

Add your support to our number

Regular donations help us plan for the future. To recognise those who pledge ongoing support to our community, we have launched The Friends of Harris.

Click here to find out more, or to make a regular donation

For a confidential conversation about supporting us, or simply to find out more, please email Emily Clarke, Head of Fundraising.