Part 1: Who We Are
This is the first post in a short series about why Waypoints Education exists, what we're trying to build, and how we plan to get there. We're starting with the basics: who we are, and why we started.
The short version
Waypoints Education is a Community Interest Company built around one belief: education should be about more than exam results. It should give young people real opportunities to find their voice, explore what they actually want out of life, and build the skills to get there. We'll do this through working in partnership with schools, communities and anyone within the education sector while also running youth-led events, public speaking support, and careers-focused workshops.
That's what we do. This post is about why.
Why I started this
Creativity is one of the most valuable things a young person has, and I don't think our education system knows what to do with it. It wasn't built for the world we're actually in - it was built for a much more rigid one, and it's still asking students to fit into that shape.
I remember what it felt like to be a student trying to figure out what came next, with guidance that pointed toward the same handful of well-worn routes regardless of who I was or what I actually wanted. I've since watched teachers - genuinely good ones - get boxed in by curricula and exam targets, with less and less room to actually engage with the young people in front of them. That's not a criticism of any one school. It's a structural problem, and it's one a lot of people inside the system already recognise. The harder part is doing something about it at any real scale.
That's the gap Waypoints is trying to close.
What we believe
Everyone should have the chance to create something and put it into the world. That's true for a student figuring out what they want to say and how to say it, and it's true for a teacher who joined the profession to shape young lives and is now stretched thin trying to do it. We think a better education system isn't just a system that serves students better - it's one that works for the staff, schools and communities trying to hold it up too.
We're not naive about how big that problem is, or about the fact that plenty of dedicated people are already working on pieces of it. What we think is missing is a way to connect that work - students, schools, educators and researchers - into something that reaches further than any one person or one school can manage alone.
Where this series is going
Over the next few posts, we'll get more specific. Post two is about what we actually want to do - for students and for the staff around them. Post three looks at why we think this matters right now, with some of the evidence behind it. And post four is the plan: how we're actually going to build this, starting with the event we're using to prove the model.
We have big things planned, and I can't wait to show you what we've got in store, in time we hope that we can all work together to make a better, more inspiring and equitable education system for all.
- Rahul, Founder, Waypoints Education