I was brought up in Middlesbrough in the North East. I was the first in my family to go to university. My dad worked as a library assistant, whilst my mum stayed at home and brought up me and my two siblings.
I went to the local Roman Catholic primary and secondary school, neither of which got particularly good results. I received free schools meals for most of my childhood. After GCSEs I went to the big sixth-form college in the nearby town of Guisborough because it was the only place in the area that offered A-Level economics.
Thanks to various outreach programmes I knew that I wanted to go to university, but hadn’t really thought about where. At the end of the first-term, my personal tutor – who had himself studied for a master’s at St John’s, Oxford – encouraged me to consider Oxbridge. His intervention changed the course of my life. Soon afterwards, I saw an advertisement for the Sutton Trust Summer School, applied and got in – so in the summer of 2005 I found myself at Oxford, doing a week-long physics residential.
It really demystified the whole thing – we were given so much insight into higher education and our specific subject areas. I remember talking about the origins of the universe and string theory – going well beyond what we were being taught for our A-level exams. I was struck by how normal everyone was.
The 7/7 attacks happened the week we were there. There were lots of students from London on the Summer School, but they were well supported. I’m still in touch with a few people I met.
After the Summer School, I decided to put in an application to Oxford and won a place to study law at St Peter’s College. Once I got to Oxford I just threw myself into it – getting involved in university and college societies, as well as spending a lot of time reading each week in the library! In my second year I became JCR President of St Peter’s. It was hard work, but I really wanted to make the most of everything the university had to offer.
I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do when I finished, but I did know that I wanted to do something which had social impact. I reflected on the transformative role education had played on my own life and decided to try to get into education policy.
I spent three years at Policy Connect, working initially on skills and employment policy before setting up and running the cross-party Higher Education Commission. Interestingly, the seed funding for the Commission was provided by the Sutton Trust – that money was enough to prove the thing had legs, and the first big project we embarked on was a major independent review of the UK’s postgraduate system. That research, and our subsequent advocacy, helped bring about the introduction of the state-backed postgraduate loan system.
After that I joined the education technology company Jisc, as adviser to the company’s chief exec, and later as head of policy development. The most exciting thing I worked on was Jisc’s world-first learning analytics programme. This uses student data to predict educational outcomes, allowing colleges and universities to target interventions at individuals, thereby reducing drop-out rates, and improving results. Whilst at Jisc, I also co-authored the Higher Education Policy Institute book Rebooting Learning for the Digital Age.
Now I work at City Hall, working mainly on preparations for the Mayor taking control of £300 million in adult education funding in 2019. This offers a huge opportunity to better align London’s skills system with the needs of learners and employers.
Along the way, I’ve also developed an interest in education reform internationally. I studied for a master’s degree in education, economics and international development from UCL, alongside working full-time. I spent some of 2017 working on a major school reform initiative in the Republic of Liberia.
Make sure you find something you’re interested in: your career is going to take up a lot of time! If you find yourself somewhere you’re not enjoying, don’t be afraid to move – people don’t stay in the same sector their whole lives. Use the summer holidays to try different things – I wish I’d done that. I’d also suggest thinking about where you can work early on that will give you ‘career capital’ – basically, jobs that will allow you to develop the technical and soft skills that you’ll need later on. Most importantly, embrace the opportunities that come your way. If you’re struggling with whether to say yes to something new… you should probably say yes!
Profile photo credit to ‘Matt Lincoln – Jisc’.