Interview with Jess Easton, Director of The Engagement Platform (TEP)

“If people could really understand engagement, where it comes from and what drives it,
I think we would see significant improvements in areas we traditionally measure, such as attendance, persistent absence and outcomes.”

Jess Easton is Director at The Engagement Platform (TEP), where she leads the insights work, supporting Schools, Trusts and Partners to understand how engagement shapes outcomes for pupils, employees and families.
 
Previously, as Director of CPD, Jess worked with hundreds of schools nationally and internationally to design and deliver professional development that makes a lasting impact in classrooms.
 
SWIFT member schools have the opportunity to work with TEP as an engagement monitoring platform and partnership, including training and ongoing support. Following the publication last week of new research on reading age and perceived control, we spoke to Jess to learn more about her role and the work of TEP. 

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1. What personal skills and experience do you bring to your role as Director at The Engagement Platform (TEP)?
I am most proud of having spent over 15 years in education, beginning my career as a Secondary Teacher of Mathematics in 2010 and investing a great deal of time in developing my craft. I progressed through leadership roles, including Head of Department and School Improvement Lead across a trust, before becoming part of the group that founded White Rose Education.
 
In my role as Director of CPD, I found it incredibly empowering to support Schools, Trusts and teachers to deepen their pedagogical knowledge of Mathematics. However, one of the most important lessons I learned was that improving practice in classrooms only goes so far if the wider culture is not moving in the same direction.
 
Often, the limiting factors were not about pedagogy itself, but about culture, buy-in and shared direction across the organisation. That experience is what ultimately led me to TEP, where the focus is on understanding culture, engagement and the conditions that enable improvement to stick.
 
Both TEP and White Rose are deeply mission-led organisations, and that has stayed with me throughout my career. It is genuinely empowering to work with people who are committed to improving education for everyone.

2. What do you find to be most rewarding about working for TEP?
One of the things I have always enjoyed most is building networks and communities. TEP is about connecting people and amplifying the work of those doing incredible things in education.
 
The partnerships we build with schools and trusts, and the sense of community that develops through that work, is hugely rewarding. Hearing the stories of how organisations are using engagement insight to improve culture, buy-in, attendance and outcomes is what really drives us forward.
 
3. With TEP’s emphasis on rigorous research and trustworthy data, can you share an example of which
It might be helpful to start by explaining how we develop our question sets. Our Directors of Research, including Professor John Jerrim from UCL and the ImpactEd Group, draw directly on established research and psychometrically test each question after each of our census windows to ensure it is valid, reliable and meaningful to the sector. We are very deliberate about not asking questions that do not serve a clear purpose.
 
Over time, we refine and evolve these questions. For example, issues around safety have been explored in more depth recently because of how that data was behaving and because of its growing importance across the education sector. Seeing the question set respond to sector needs is incredibly powerful.
 
A good example of the impact of this approach comes from a Trust that joined TEP after running internal surveys using tools such as Google Forms. While those surveys were cost-effective, they did not allow leaders to understand how their results compared to the wider national picture.
 
The Trust believed they had a wellbeing and workload issue, as these scores appeared low in their internal survey. When they engaged with TEP, they discovered that while wellbeing and workload scores were lower relative to other internal drivers, they were actually above the national benchmark. Leadership and line management, however, were below benchmark, despite leaders believing this was a strength.
 
By benchmarking nationally and then drilling into contextualised data, the Trust realised that Middle Leaders in particular were struggling with buy-in to strategy. This prompted a shift in focus towards leadership culture and CPD, rather than continuing to invest heavily in wellbeing initiatives that were already performing well.
 
Uncovering and challenging those assumptions enabled the trust to target its resources more effectively and take a more strategic approach to cultural improvement.
 
4. How is working with Schools and Trusts through SWIFT’s offer benefiting your work at TEP?
We are really pleased to be working with SWIFT in partnership. It enables Schools and Trusts to understand not only the national picture, but also what is happening regionally.

In the South West, for example, TEP supports organisations to see where things are going well compared to national benchmarks and where there may be opportunities for improvement. That combination of reflection, challenge and context is incredibly powerful for leaders.
The region is also benefiting from growing momentum around engagement work in rural and coastal areas, where funding can be limited and insight is particularly valuable in targeting effort and resources effectively.

5. What is your greatest hope for improving engagement in schools and classrooms?
As a relatively young organisation founded post-COVID, my greatest hope for TEP is that engagement becomes better understood across the sector.

We break engagement down into emotional, cognitive and behavioural drivers, from wellbeing, inclusion and workload, to how people think about school and how they act within it. When leaders truly understand these drivers and where they are coming from, engagement becomes a powerful lever for improvement.

If we can help Schools and Trusts get to grips with engagement in this way, I believe we will see significant improvements in the outcomes we traditionally measure, such as attendance, persistent absence and attainment. Ultimately, my ambition is for engagement to be recognised as central to improving education across the sector.

We thank Jess for sharing her insights into engagement and the work of TEP.

Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant

find out more about tep here