About Us

The Learning Challenge was established in 1994 through grants made by the Tudor Trust and Henry Smith Charity in response to the riots on the Meadow Well Estate in North Shields in 1991. The unrest among young people on the estate was part of a wider disenfranchisement, but TLC set about investigating the high truancy and non-attendance rates in the schools of the states. By teaching truants in school, TLC was able to formulate an intervention and establish a research programme alongside it.

The Action GroupSkills Intervention (AGI) was amongst the first therapeutic interventions offered in-school to disaffected students. A precursor of the Social & Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) agenda, it retains a distinct contribution to meeting the needs of children in school. The research is a rare example of a randomized control trial in a community setting. Collecting data to a three-year follow-up its outcomes have been published as scientific papers. Today TLC offers advice to schools wanting to establish evidence-based practice.