Cat Davison

Founder

Cat’s primary interest is in the development of educational systems, resources and curriculums that enable learners of all ages and identities to create the worlds that they want to see, with reflection on power embedded into the processes of change.

Since 2015, whilst teaching full-time and with limited resources, she has worked with over 400 local volunteers to create EduSpots, developing an innovative system for promoting community-led education. Today, the 50 ‘Spots’, which are mainly based in rural Ghana, support 15,000+ learners annually, with over £700,000 raised to invest into the community-driven model.

Her actions are fuelled by a long-term commitment to practical ethics and educational equity that led her to study philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ahead of further part-time degrees in Management Studies, Education (PGCE with QTS), and an MA in Education and International Development at University College London, where her dissertation exploring literacy as a social practice in the EduSpots context was used as a model for the next cohort. She’s been selected for courses in social entrepreneurship at Cambridge Social Ventures, the Ashoka Changemakers Academy, and Oxford University, also actively volunteering with a significant number of social impact organisations in London, Accra, Brighton and Sevenoaks.

Her passion for learning first took her into classroom teaching, where across 11 years she took leadership roles at world-leading schools including as a Housemistress at Brighton College, and as the first Director of the Institute of Service and Social Entrepreneurship at Sevenoaks School. This Institute later widened its scope to become the ‘Institute of Service and Partnerships’,  where she worked with over 300 staff, 1200 students and 90 school and community partners to drive social innovation and impact, gaining shortlisting for the national Tes Awards for Strategic Education Initiative of the Year and Community Engagement.

The ideas they collaboratively developed were shared widely with the Schools Partnerships Alliance, and the Schools Community Action network, which she chaired and developed, involving over 120 teachers across the UK in advancing the quality of reflection and impact in active citizenship education activities. She’s in the early phases of developing ‘EduCitizens’ – an idea to advance the collaboration and critical reflection in social change education in schools, which was shortlisted as a Big Change’Big Education Challenge’ semi-finalist in 2023.

In 2021, she was selected from over 8000 applications as one of two UK finalists for the Varkey Foundation’s $1 Million UNESCO-backed Global Teacher Prize in recognition of her role in advancing the teaching profession across the UK and beyond.