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Lord John Nash, schools minister from 2013 to 2017, is also the founder – alongside his wife, Caroline – of the charity Future. Through Future Academies, it now supports 10 schools with 7,000 pupils across London and Hertfordshire, as well as a Curriculum Centre, which prepares teaching materials. On behalf of the government, it also runs the Latin Excellence Programme, which has brought Latin to 40 schools not currently teaching the subject. The charity’s most recent success is Phoenix Academy in Hammersmith. In special measures when Future Academies took it on, Ofsted has now ranked the academy as Outstanding in all categories.
Through Future, Lord Nash also supports the Social Mobility Foundation, a charity that directly supports young people to unlock their potential, broaden their horizons and create opportunities. The organisation’s Aspiring Professionals Programme supports students from Year 12, lower sixth or S5 all the way through to their first graduate job and is completely free of charge. The Social Mobility Foundation provides mentorship, career workshops, skills sessions, university and degree apprenticeship support, and work experience with top employers for those on the programme. During his time as a schools minister, Lord Nash took five acts of parliament through the House of Lords, one of which was the Children and Families Act. The new laws introduced by the act are designed to improve the way children are treated. With this in mind, the act aims to, among other things, do more to improve children’s homes, get more help for young carers, help children who are looked after by their local councils to do well at school, and allow foster children to continue living with their former foster carers until they are 21. |
