The Rule:
Founding Vendors don't wait for the government to match them. They get matched first.
The Specific, Real Pain: We watched the first RISE evaluation land and one number stopped us.
Gif by wwe on Giphy
Half.
Around half of RISE schools faced challenges with their matched supporting organisations. (Tes, 9 Feb 2026)
Half.
Not because the vendors weren't good. Because the match was wrong.
This week, new analysis dropped that makes the problem even starker.
Schools Week published data showing that 46 out of nearly 430 schools enrolled in RISE have been matched with advisers based in completely different parts of the country .
Twelve of those schools are more than 100 miles away from their adviser. Three are over 200 miles away. One primary school in Manchester is 269 miles from its support .
That's a four-hour drive. Each way!
Sir David Carter, former national schools commissioner, put it bluntly:
Where distance is an issue the support becomes a desktop exercise with a Zoom call. I fail to see how you can build the confidence of the leaders and governors at the school being supported if you cannot get a glimpse of the culture and the daily typicality of how the school works."
Schools described the matching process as "very arbitrary." One school clearly "requested targeted SEND and nurture provision support" and received a completely different focus.
RISE advisers themselves admitted:
"I think all of us advisors have actually had some hostility." Paul Drew, West Midlands RISE adviser (Schools Week)
One adviser supporting schools in a different county confessed they didn't "know anything about the two trusts" and found it "really hard" to know whether their suggestions were right .
The result?
One trust chief executive was asked to work with a school more than two hours away. They turned it down, concluding they couldn't "adequately support this school" .
Other supporting organisations said a one-hour journey was the maximum they could manage for meaningful support .
Policy expert Loic Menzies argues the "education system has long suffered from geographic disparities in improvement capacity."
He says "one of the biggest tests for RISE" will be its "ability to work with trusts to nurture expertise and capacity in every corner of the country."
The sector is scaling a matching system that by its own evaluation lacks a theory of change.
Meanwhile, vendors with genuine results are still stuck in the same cycle.
Gif by hyperrpg on Giphy
Warm conversations. Long silences.
"Send us a brochure."
"Try again next term."
The RISE programme is trying to match schools with support at scale but the matching isn't working because schools haven't named their priority first, and geography is being treated as an afterthought.
That's the missing piece.
We built LocaeRise Match around it.
Schools declare their One Big Change. We match them to the vendor who solves exactly that in their region, ready to move, no four-hour drives required.
No cold pipeline. No budget objections. No approval loops.
Here's the new rule:
Founding Vendors don't wait for the government to match them. They get matched first.
You're in the network before it's full.
Your profile surfaces first when a school names your area.
What happened next?
A SEND provider joined last month.
They wrote one sentence in their profile:
"We guarantee reduced isolation for non-verbal KS1 pupils within one term."
Last week, a school in their region named that exact priority as their One Big Change.
The match happened automatically. No pitch. No "send us a brochure." No waiting for RISE. No 269-mile journey.
Just a school with a clear need and a vendor with a proven outcome, in the same region, ready to work.
This week's One Thing
Register at locaerisematch.com and write one sentence in your profile:
"The one outcome I guarantee for schools is…"
The Room You Don't Want to Miss
This spring, we are gathering.
In the room: vendor and school pairs working on real deployment. An eCommerce partner bringing checkout infrastructure. A banking perspective on round-up funding. A procurement lens on tenders and social value.
Hosted at one of the world's leading global tech companies in Central London.
Not a panel. Not a pitch event. A working session.
Because here is the truth those three stalled conversations are running into:
there is a £1.8 billion funding gap in schools.
Even when the head says yes, budget is usually the blocker.
Getting into schools takes 6 to 18 months, even when they want what you offer.
The right conversation does not close a structural gap.
That is why we are not building another marketplace.
We are designing a system where funding activates through commerce: checkout round-up, bank round-up, local commerce, corporate social value. Multiple flows. One school. Traceable impact.
We are selecting 8 to 10 vendor and school pairs for the Founding Cohort. We are asking vendors who have already heard "yes, but no budget" to apply to join us as we build it.
Not idea stage.
Not observers.
We'll be in touch about the roundtable directly.
LocaeRise Match
P.S. Applications close in 1 week.
Sources this week: