Our patrons

Professor Tim Brighouse
Professor Brighouse is one of the UK's most respected educationalists. He is the former Chief Education Officer of Birmingham City Council, co-Vice-Chair of the Government's Standard Task Force (1997 - 1999) and a Member of the Governing Council of National College of School Leadership. As Professor of Education at Keele University, and Visiting Professor of Education at the Institute of Education he has written widely on education and education policy. Since 2003 he has held the role of Chief Adviser to London schools.

Baroness Helena Kennedy
Helena Kennedy QC is one of Britain's leading lawyers. As a life peer, she also participates in the House of Lords on issues concerned with human rights, civil liberties, social justice and culture. She has written and broadcast on a wide range of issues, from medical negligence to the rights of women and children. She is currently President of the National Children's Bureau.

Nick Pearce
Nick Pearce is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a regular commentator on radio and television and writes for the national press on public policy issues. He was formerly a Special Adviser at the Home Office and at the Department for Education and Employment, where he worked on further and higher education, skills policy, and asset based welfare. Before this he was involved in education policy at IPPR and acted as an adviser to the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion Unit, working on policies for disadvantaged teenagers.

Sir Mike Rake
Sir Mike is Chairman of BT Group plc. He is Chairman of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, as well as a director of Barclays PLC, McGraw Hill Inc and the Financial Reporting Council.

From May 2002 to September 2007 Sir Mike was Chairman of KPMG International. Prior to his appointment as Chairman of KPMG International he was Chairman of KPMG in Europe and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK.

He was the driving force behind KPMG UK's award winning Corporate Social Responsibility programmes, and established the KPMG Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to tackling education disadvantage amongst young people and took the initiative in setting up the Every Child A Reader initiative in 2005.

Sir Steve Robson
Sir Steve is a former senior civil servant, having retired in January 2001 as Second Permanent Secretary of HM Treasury, where he was Managing Director of the Finance Regulation and Industry Directorate.

Professor Susan Tresman
Professor Tresman was formerly Chief Executive of the British Dyslexia Association. Before joining the BDA she worked for the Open University in many capacities, latterly as Director of Student Retention. She has published widely in the education field and held a number of governmental advisory roles.

Stephen Twigg
Stephen Twigg is well-known in education circles, in his role as former MP for Enfield Southgate and Minister for Schools and Standards in the Department for Education and Skills. Previously General Secretary of the Fabian Society, he is now Director of the Foreign Policy Centre.

Sir Digby Jones
Sir Digby is the UK skills envoy and president of Heads, Teachers and Industry (HTI).  He regularly visits businesses around the UK and across the world, taking their views back to those who make the rules. He appears frequently on television and radio and in newspapers, promoting the interests of wealth and job creation.  He holds various other positions, both corporate and charitable, including that of Commissioner on the Commission for Racial Equality, a Director of Leicester Tigers, Vice-President of UNICEF and Chairman of the Cancer Research UK Ambassadors.

Professor Rod Morgan
Rod Morgan became Chair of the Youth Justice Board in April 2004. He was formerly HM Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales, a post he took up in August 2001. Before that he was Professor of Criminal Justice in the faculty of law at the University of Bristol, where he remains Professor Emeritus.

Rod is the author of many books and articles on aspects of policing, criminal justice and penal policy and, during his academic career, he led many empirical research studies on these topics. For over 20 years, he was a lay magistrate, chairman of a youth court and a member of an independent monitoring board for a remand centre.

Rod has been a member of a police authority and the Parole Board. He has chaired a district council crime and disorder partnership and Bristol's Race Equality Council Criminal Justice Committee. He has also served on many working parties and committees, official and unofficial, on aspects of criminal justice, and he acts as advisor to several grant-giving and voluntary bodies working in the same field.

He is the co-editor of the principal text in the field of criminology in the UK, and is currently preparing a similar text on probation policy, research and practice.

Helen Edwards, CBE
Helen Edwards is Director General of the Home Office's National Offender Management Service (NOMS). She is one of the country's leading experts on rehabilitation of offenders and has overall responsibility for reducing re-offending in England and Wales.

Helen previously worked as Director-General of the Home Office's Communities Group. She was responsible for the Home Office's work on volunteering, the voluntary and community sector, race equality, faith, community cohesion and civil renewal.

Prior to joining the Home Office in 2002, Helen worked at NACRO, the national crime reduction charity where she did a variety of jobs over an 18 year period including spending the last five years as Chief Executive of the charity. Before joining NACRO she worked for the Save the Children Fund in the London Borough of Lambeth and originally trained and worked as a social worker for East Sussex County Council. She is a Trustee of the Washington based Eisenhower Foundation, a Fellow of the RSA and has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex. In 2001, Helen received a CBE in recognition of her services to offenders.

Shirley Cramer
Shirley Cramer is Chief Executive of Dyslexia Action, a national organisation providing educational services for people with specific learning difficulties. She has more than 20 years' experience in both the public and the voluntary sectors in both the UK and the US.

Ms Cramer began her career as a social worker before taking a Masters degree in Social Administration from Columbia University in New York. In the 1990s she ran the National Centre for Learning Disabilities in New York and was subsequently Director of the US National Co-ordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities in Washington DC.

Sir John Cassels CB
Sir John Cassels was formerly a career civil servant. He was Director of the Manpower Services Commission 1975-81 and second permanent secretary of the Management and Personnel Office. He later became Director General of the National Economic Development Office (1983 - 1988). He wrote a book entitled “Britain’s Real Skill Shortage – and what should be done about it” (published 1990) and was chairman of UK Skills (1990 – 2000).

Sir John was Director of the independent National Commission on Education, whose main report, ‘Learning to Succeed’ was published in 1993; a follow-up report, published in 2003, appraised progress over the last 10 years and proposed new areas of work.

In 2001 he chaired the Modern Apprenticeship Advisory Committee. He has since acted as special adviser to the Task Force set up by the government to help in developing apprenticeships.

Julia Goldsworthy MP
Julia Goldsworthy is Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Falmouth and Camborne.  She was born and brought up in Camborne, where her mother was a teacher. She won a scholarship to Truro School, and then went on to study History at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

After university she worked as a researcher for Truro and St Austell MP, Matthew Taylor, before becoming Education Adviser for the party. Then, after moving back down to Camborne, she worked on local issues for the Liberal Democrat team in Cornwall, and took up a post helping local businesses and organisations get the most out of regeneration funding.   She was elected to parliament in May 2005.

She is a member of the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee and the Liberal Democrat Health Team..

Jeremy Hunt MP
Jeremy Hunt was elected as a Member of Parliament for South West Surrey in May 2005 and is a member of the Conservative party. In December 2005, he was appointed Shadow Minister for Disabled People. Jeremy grew up in Surrey, where his parents still live. He went to school in Godalming, then on to Oxford University, where he graduated with a first class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He worked for a management consultancy and then taught English in Japan.

On his return to the UK, he set up his own educational publishing business, publishing guides and websites to help people find the right course or college. Running this has given Jeremy a lifelong interest in education. He believes passionately that standards must be kept high so that all children, whatever their background, are given the best possible start in life.

Meg Hillier MP
Meg Hillier was elected as Labour Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch in May 2005. She was previously a member of the London Assembly, representing Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest. She was a local councillor for eight years, and was the youngest ever Mayor of Islington in 1998/99.

Meg, a former journalist, has worked in or campaigned on housing issues for a decade and chaired the London Assembly’s inquiry into housing for key workers in 2000. She also chaired the London Assembly’s Culture, Sport and Tourism committee and led the Assembly’s cross party work on London Weighting.

She is a trustee of the charity War Memorials Trust.