Jodie reed

Jodie one of the UK’s leading policy experts on early childhood, prevention, schools and families. She is an accomplished strategist, researcher and facilitator, with a track record of leading reforms nationally and locally.

Jodie brings significant experience in designing national strategies to improve public services for children and families. She spent a decade in strategy roles in the civil service, including advising education ministers on how to close the attainment gap, drafting the Children’s Plan, and leading teams responsible for developing academies strategy and producing a new cross-Whitehall early years strategy for the Prime Minister. Early in her career she also led the public services team at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), publishing widely on schools policy and social mobility.

She has a deep interest and expertise in early education and childcare policy and delivery. She led free entitlement reform for DfE for a period and during a secondment to the charity Ark, was responsible for the strategic development of 17 school-based nurseries and initiated a new early years venture for disadvantaged families – 'Ark Start'.  She also published a paper that led to increased government support for school-led provision. Since joining Isos her projects have included national research on nursery closures for the Local Government Association, local authority support around the extension of the free offer and developing future early years policy direction for the Government of Jersey.  She regularly writes and advises on early education and childcare policy for national organisations and media. She is also a governor at an Outstanding London primary school with inspiring nursery provision and was previously a trustee at a community nursery.

Much of Jodie’s recent work focuses on empowering local systems and services to work better together. She regularly helps local authorities who are seeking to engage partners meaningfully (including in the family hubs space) to provide more effective early help and support. She is the Learning Partner for the national place-based charity Thrive at Five, who build better outcomes for babies and young children through collaborative approaches and has also led a range of research and analysis to develop understanding what enables systems of support to work effectively for children and families, with outputs including influential reports on Working for Babies during COVID and working Beyond Boundaries to achieve early years integration in London. She has contributed to national research on the enablers of children’s services improvement and the role of local authorities and other partners in supporting vulnerable children for DfE.

Alongside public sector work, Jodie provides a lot of support to third sector organisations who seeking to improve their impact. Organisations with which she has worked have included social enterprises and a range of national charities such as the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, the National Childbirth Trust and Home-Start UK. She is a trustee at the national charity for no/low-income women, Young Women’s Trust.