Education Development Trust

Education Development Trust

Education Development Trust was established in 1968 as the Centre for British Teachers, originally a teacher-recruitment charity. It rebranded in 2014 and has since evolved into a diversified education services and investment entity headquartered in Reading, Berkshire. The organization operates as a non-profit but generates revenue through government contracts, school fees, and an investment portfolio. Its founder and current CEO, Dan Sandhu, also co-founded the EdTech Evidence Group, signaling an institutional orientation toward evidence-based education interventions. The trust's strategy spans program delivery, school operations, and asset management. On the program-delivery side, it has served as a major contractor for the UK Department for Education, running the National Tutoring Programme and the Behaviour Hubs network. Internationally, it partners with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the World Bank on education reform and system-strengthening projects across Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. On the commercial side, the trust directly owns and operates schools, including St Andrews School in Kent, UK, and the International School of Cape Town in South Africa. Its property portfolio also includes Waverley School and its Reading headquarters at Highbridge House. Beyond its operating assets, Education Development Trust maintains an endowment portfolio that includes an ethical investment mandate and a connection to The Bell Foundation, a separate charity focused on language education and criminal justice. The organization holds accreditations as a Living Wage Employer and a Disability Confident Leader, reflecting operational priorities embedded in its UK-based activities. It is also a participant in the United Nations Global Compact. In recent years, the trust has deepened its focus on domestic UK contracts while continuing to compete for multilateral and bilateral aid-funded education projects. A structural differentiator for Education Development Trust is its blended capital model: it competes with for-profit consultancies for large-scale government contracts while simultaneously managing a charitable endowment and running proprietary schools. This hybrid structure places it in a small cohort of UK-based education organizations that can pilot interventions with public funds, implement them in their own schools, and recycle surpluses back into mission-aligned investments — all under a non-profit charter.