Raedan Institute CoE

Raedan Institute CoE Charitable Organisation - Based in Leicester. Check website for further details
Education - Wellbeing - Outreach

A child getting slower at their homework is sometimes good news.Sounds wrong. Stay with us.We're strict about timing. Wo...
25/09/2026

A child getting slower at their homework is sometimes good news.

Sounds wrong. Stay with us.

We're strict about timing. Work gets done, homework gets done, we check. Regularly.

But when a student isn't pulling their weight, we don't just push harder.

We sit down with them and the parents. This is what we're trying to achieve. Your child isn't focusing. How can we help?

Sometimes the answer is fewer hours. Sometimes more. Aftercare, online resources, one-to-one booster support. It depends on the child, honestly, and we don't always get it right first time.

Here's the bit parents miss.

The moment a child stops trying to give the right answer and starts actually thinking, it looks worse from the outside. Slower. Messier. Wrong turns.

That's the signal something real is happening.

You have to be paying close enough attention to see it. Most of the time it hides inside what looks like a bad week.

We've learnt to watch for it.

THIS RAMADAN WE NEED 500 GUARDIANS!!We are seeking 500 dedicated individuals to become Guardians of the Raedan Institute...
25/09/2026

THIS RAMADAN WE NEED 500 GUARDIANS!!

We are seeking 500 dedicated individuals to become Guardians of the Raedan Institute by committing to a monthly standing order of just £10.

Your generous, ongoing contribution will directly support the impactful and transformative work we are doing, helping us continue to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those we serve.

Your support is vital in enabling us to create lasting change and empower communities.

Contribution Amount: £10 PER MONTH

"Whoever guides someone to goodness will have a reward like one who did it." – Sahih Muslim

DONATE NOW: https://www.raedan-institute.co.uk/donate/

Classrooms were never designed for learning. I mean that literally.Rows of desks. All facing one board. One adult talkin...
24/09/2026

Classrooms were never designed for learning. I mean that literally.

Rows of desks. All facing one board. One adult talking, thirty children quiet.

I used to think that layout existed because it works.

It doesn't. It exists because it's easy to supervise.

The design comes from Prussia, early 1800s. The state wanted obedient soldiers and factory workers, and it needed one teacher to control a large room cheaply. Rows solved that. Silence solved that.

Actually, silence didn't solve anything. It just made the problem invisible.

Because if you wanted a room built for learning, you'd build almost the opposite. Kids facing each other. Movement. Noise, honestly. Questions going sideways, not just up to the front.

We know from research that children learn through talking, arguing, trying things. The standard classroom forbids nearly all of it during the exact hours set aside for learning.

My daughter got told off last year for explaining a maths problem to the girl next to her. Explaining it. That's teaching, which is the deepest form of learning, and it counted as disruption.

The room worked exactly as designed that day.

Just not for her.

Ask a tutor this one question before you pay them a penny."Can you show me evidence of previous students going up two gr...
23/09/2026

Ask a tutor this one question before you pay them a penny.

"Can you show me evidence of previous students going up two grades or more?"

Not testimonials. Evidence.

Most tutors will go quiet here. Or hide behind "we can't share that information."

Which sounds official. It isn't.

You can show all of it redacted. Delete the student's name. Show their actual work. The baseline assessment they came in with, next to the GCSE result they left with.

I do this with every parent who asks me. Takes five minutes.

If a tutor can't show you that, they're selling you a promise. Not a track record.

One more thing while you're at it. Ask if they're DBS checked.

Some of them aren't. That still surprises me and it shouldn't by now.

You'd check a builder's previous jobs before letting them near your house. Your child's grades deserve at least that.

A father rang us last week and barely mentioned the grades.His daughter came to us from a school where she'd been badly ...
22/09/2026

A father rang us last week and barely mentioned the grades.

His daughter came to us from a school where she'd been badly bullied. Low self-esteem. No real motivation left.

She's just passed English and maths.

That put our GCSE pass rate in those subjects at 100% this year, which sounds like the headline. It wasn't the headline for him.

What he actually wanted to tell us was that she's more confident. More resilient. She approaches things differently now.

The grades were almost a side effect.

Honestly, that's what we track anyway. Not marks first. Whether a student is becoming an independent learner, whether the motivation is starting to come from them instead of from us.

Most tutoring never looks at that. It's the whole game.

We'll take the 100%. But the phone call was better.

Here's my prediction for schools over the next ten years.The ones still standing in 2035 won't have better curriculums. ...
20/09/2026

Here's my prediction for schools over the next ten years.

The ones still standing in 2035 won't have better curriculums. Or more iPads.

They'll have changed the model itself. How children actually learn in the building.

I keep coming back to the numbers. School refusal climbing. Mental health referrals climbing. Persistent absence climbing.

A system doesn't lose children that fast by accident.

The response so far has been patches. Attendance officers. Wellbeing leads. Letters home.

All of it treats the child as the problem. The child who won't come in.

But some children stopped coming because the model asks them to sit still for six hours and call that learning. And for a growing number, their body just says no.

I used to think the fix was more support around the existing model. More adults, more interventions.

I don't think that anymore. The model is the intervention.

The schools that survive will be the ones that let learning bend around the child. Flexible timetables. Smaller groups. Actual relationships before content.

Not because it's kind. Because the alternative is empty seats.

Some heads already know this. Watch which schools their local authority quietly sends the refusers to.

That's where the next model is being built.

More phonics rarely fixes the child who's struggling with phonics.We know how that sounds. It's what parents come to us ...
19/09/2026

More phonics rarely fixes the child who's struggling with phonics.

We know how that sounds. It's what parents come to us for.

But when a child falls behind, the instinct is to find what's missing and pour more in. More maths. More revision. More worksheets on a Sunday.

We used to do a bit of that too, early on. It didn't hold.

So now we start slower. A baseline assessment first, then three or four weeks of set tasks before we predict anything.

Not because the assessment is clever. Because the child's relationship with learning takes that long to show itself.

A kid who's decided they're bad at maths will fail worksheets you know they can do. You can't see that in week one.

Once we understand the mindset, the actual teaching gets easier. Sometimes embarrassingly easier.

The missing content is almost never the root. It took us a while to accept that ourselves.

In almost every first session, the parent apologises before the child does anything."Sorry, he's a bit restless.""She mi...
18/09/2026

In almost every first session, the parent apologises before the child does anything.

"Sorry, he's a bit restless."
"She might not answer you."

The child hasn't even sat down yet.

We've watched hundreds of these first sessions now and the shape of them barely changes. We talk to the parents. We watch the child, can they sit still, are they fidgety. We ask small questions. What do you like, what don't you like, what did you like about your old school.

Those few minutes tell us more than any formal assessment does.

Not because of what the child says. Because of what's already been decided before they walked in. How they've been taught to feel about learning. What the parent has been told to expect from them, usually by a school, sometimes over years.

The apology is the bit we pay most attention to. A parent doesn't apologise like that unless someone's made them do it many times before.

So our rule is simple. Nobody has to prove anything in the first session. We're not testing the child. We're mostly undoing what the room expects.

The restless boy from that first line, by the way, sat perfectly fine once nobody was waiting for him not to.

A five year old who reads early is not showing you intelligence.I know how that sounds. But the research on reading time...
17/09/2026

A five year old who reads early is not showing you intelligence.

I know how that sounds. But the research on reading timelines is fairly boring once you actually read it, and boring in a useful way.

Children learn to read anywhere between four and seven. Some later. By around age eleven, you mostly can't tell who started when.

Finland doesn't begin formal reading instruction until seven. Their literacy outcomes are among the strongest measured.

So early reading tells you a child read early. That's the whole finding.

The harm sits on the other side. A six year old who isn't reading yet, and knows a classmate is, doesn't conclude "my timeline is different." He concludes he's bad at this. Before instruction has properly started, he's already decided reading isn't for him.

That belief lasts longer than the gap ever would have.

My nephew didn't read until nearly seven. Actually closer to seven and a half, his mum corrects me every time. He reads more than anyone in that house now.

The comparison was the problem. Not the child.

Two beliefs feel responsible. Both keep your child stuck.The first one is that more effort in the same direction will ev...
16/09/2026

Two beliefs feel responsible. Both keep your child stuck.

The first one is that more effort in the same direction will eventually work.

More reading practice. More sessions. More of the thing that isn't working, just harder.

I believed this for a long time. Effort feels like the safe choice because nobody can accuse you of doing nothing.

But if the method is wrong, doubling it doubles the wrong thing. A child who fails at the same task fifty times hasn't learned the task. They've learned they fail.

The reframe: before adding effort, ask if the direction deserves it. Sometimes the honest answer is no, and that answer costs nothing except pride.

The second belief is quieter. That waiting for the system to help is a neutral act.

You've referred, you've flagged it, you're on the list. So it feels like the matter is in hand.

It isn't. A year on a waiting list is a year of school happening anyway. The child doesn't pause while the paperwork moves.

Waiting is a decision. It just doesn't feel like one because nobody signed anything.

The reframe there: treat the wait as time you own, not time on hold. Small things you can change at home while the system does whatever it does.

Neither belief makes anyone a bad parent. That's what makes them hard to spot.

They both look exactly like doing the right thing.

Address

2 Overton Road
Leicester
LE50JA

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 2:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 2:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 2:30pm
Thursday 9:30am - 2:30pm
Friday 9:30am - 2:30pm
Saturday 11am - 2:30pm
Sunday 11am - 1pm

Telephone

+447725974831

Website

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