Leadership for Change Prize 2026

Strategic alignment with school priorities: enrichment must be structured, backed by senior leaders and explicitly support whole-school priorities such as personal development, wellbeing, attainment and attendance.

The 2026 theme addresses the root causes of the global loneliness crises. It directly targets student wellbeing and mental health (PSHE/SEL). By embedding the lessons into form-times, assemblies or drop-down days, you’ll gain a structured, high-impact programme that integrates seamlessly into your School Development Plan.

Multiple and varied opportunities: you must provide regular activities across the year that cover a minimum of five core pillars, including Civic Engagement, Arts and Culture, and Life Skills.

Leadership for Change hits multiple pillars simultaneously:

Civic engagement: students research local community gaps and design actionable solutions to build cohesion.

Life skills: critical thinking, advanced problem-solving and professional communication skills are explicitly taught and aligned to the Skills Builder Universal Framework.

High aspirations & celebrating achievement: schools must celebrate student participation and success using awards, certificates, or publication in school records to build high aspirations.

We provide a global platform for your students' achievements. Every student who takes part works toward writing a 600-word opinion piece or strategy pitch. Winning entries receive high-profile incentives, including: international publication in The Economist and on our website, an exclusive feedback workshop with an Economist editor, £1,000 in funding to turn the students' community ideas into reality and a seat at an international roundtable presentation with global experts.

Pupil-led inclusivity: activities must be accessible and inclusive for all students - particularly SEND, vulnerable and disadvantaged pupils—while actively encouraging pupil leadership.

Our oracy-based, highly interactive resources ensure that no student is left out. The curriculum culminates in students utilising a structured "Ideas Matrix" to design their own project proposals. This places the autonomy entirely in the hands of the young people, promoting genuine pupil leadership as they pitch their concepts to their peers and staff.

Working with high-quality external partners: schools should expand their enrichment offer by partnering with high-quality national, regional or virtual partners.

Partnering with The Economist Educational Foundation and Rolex instantly connects your school with global expertise. Your students gain a direct link to world-class journalists and editors and upskill your teaching staff with high-quality, pre-vetted educational resources.

Data-driven outcomes & continuous improvement: schools must explicitly track student outcomes over time (social, emotional and educational) and continuously improve their enrichment provision based on data.

Because all of our lessons map to the Skills Builder framework, teachers can easily collect, baseline, and monitor growth in core critical thinking and communication skills. This provides clear, objective progress data that can be presented to governors, parents and Ofsted inspectors to prove the tangible impact.