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  • Tim Clark on the Future of Education

    Tim Clark

     

     

    “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is a failure”.

    Commonly, but probably wrongly, attributed to Einstein

     

     

    The Challenge

    How do we prepare young people for the future and “future proof” our education system?

    In 2017, the shocking assertion was made that, “around 85 per cent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet”.  [“The next era of human/machine partnerships” published by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future] As a consequence of revolutionary changes in the jobs market, the same report controversially highlights the need for far more “in-the-moment” learning so that, “the ability to gain new knowledge will be valued higher than the knowledge people already have”. Transferable skills and the appropriate mindset will, therefore, be paramount.

    The Historical Context

    Sadly, the history of technical, vocational and practical education in this country has been one of neglect and missed opportunities.  In 1918, the Fisher Act (which raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14) recommended the introduction of “continuation schools” for those who left school at 14: pupils would be required to attend for 320 hours each year whilst holding down jobs. Many provisions of the Act were, however, cut owing to the post war depression. In 1926, the report by Sir W.H. Hadow, had, as its ideal, “the awakening and guiding of the practical intelligence, for the better and more skilled service of the community in all its multiple business and complex affairs……It has been amply shown that for many children the attainment of skill in some form of practical work in science, handwork or the domestic arts may be a stimulus to higher intellectual effort”. The need for a broader curriculum was repeated by the Norwood Committee in 1941:

    “At the primary stage the main preoccupation lies with basic habits, skills and aptitudes of mind…. It is the business of secondary education, first, to provide opportunity for a special cast of mind to manifest itself, if not already manifested in the primary stage, and, secondly, to develop special interests and aptitudes to the full by means of a curriculum and a life best calculated to this end.”

    Despite the dated language, the demand for a curriculum that recognised both that all pupils are different but also that all could and should benefit from schooling, is manifest. Such reports, of course, envisaged the use of “selection” and the provision of different types of school for pupils of different abilities and aptitudes. It is one of the tragedies of post-war education that very few technical schools were built so that in most areas the existence of only two types of secondary school, grammar and secondary modern, reinforced the idea of pass or fail rather than of “selection” for the most appropriate type of school.

    There is, however, absolutely no need to return to the idea of providing different types of school: wide ability schools should simply be able to offer courses that are appropriate for all their intake. This was recognised by the seminal Butler Act of 1944 (which raised the leaving age from 14 to 15 and to 16 as soon as was “practicable” – eventually enacted in 1973) which did not insist on selection but simply required Local Authorities to ensure that schools were “sufficient in number, character and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes”. Although most LA’s did opt for selection, the Act was permissive and allowed for both selective and comprehensive systems.

    The Current Government’s Action

    In recent years, the prime manifestation of the government’s commitment to skills has been through the development of the apprenticeship programme and this commitment has, without doubt, been impressive. To date, 691 “standards” (ie approved apprenticeships) have been offered, ranging from 12-18 month Level 2 (GCSE standard) qualifications, through to Level 7, degree level qualifications, lasting up to six years. The various routes or disciplines include agriculture, catering and hospitality, construction, digital, education, engineering and manufacturing, health (up to and including becoming a fully qualified doctor), legal, finance and transport.

    Unlike traditional school/college-based courses, apprenticeships permit students to learn on the job in the workplace, to earn a salary but to also spend at least 20% of their working hours training or studying. To complete the course, apprentices must undertake both ongoing assessments and end-point assessments. One major and very positive organisational change is that from 2024 students will be able to apply for an apprenticeship through UCAS, the charity currently responsible for undergraduate degree applications. This “one-stop-shop” will help youngsters to compare the full range of occupations, training and education opportunities open to them. It will also help to build parity of esteem between technical, vocational and academic career paths. John Cope, Executive director at UCAS and board member of IfATE [Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education] has commented that, “AT UCAS, we know over 50% of those who set up their account with us are interested in doing an apprenticeship, while data from IfATE shows 84% of those who become an apprentice feel they made the right choice. This new partnership will boost numbers and make sure more people are making the right choice.”

    Two Areas for Consideration

    The current and recent governments’ drive to increase practical, technical and vocational opportunities is to be much applauded. Two aspects of current policy should, however, be challenged. Firstly, to start an apprenticeship, students must be at least 16 years old: much less is currently being offered to broaden the curriculum pre-16. Secondly, there is amongst some, a misunderstanding of the term “skills”.

    1.     Pre-16 Education

    The insistence on waiting until 16 before a pupil can commence most practical courses is unhelpful, not least because for most who embark on some form of apprenticeship, this only becomes an option after they have “failed” traditional academic subjects at GCSE. Every year, over one quarter of teenagers fail to attain basic passes at GCSE (a Level 4) with many of them knowing one or two years before they even get into the exam room that they are not going to be successful. What incentive is there for a young person to work hard, to behave or even to attend if they know at the end of the course, they will achieve little? As I have argued many times before, this is definitely not a call for “prizes for all” but it is a simple recognition that by having a broader Key Stage 4 (14-16 years old) curriculum we shall be able to engage far more youngsters in their learning, see many more achieve worthwhile outcomes (rather than a string of poor GCSE grades) and, most importantly, prepare them much more effectively for the uncertain and ever changing world of employment. The other, often overlooked, consequence of moving away from the one size fits all GCSE approach is that we could also raise standards in traditional academic subjects as programmes of study and examinations could be targeted more to those who are academically able.

    “We are not indulging in the fallacy of supposing that there are two types of pupil, the able and “academic” and the less able and “practical”; but we do strongly believe that many, though not all, of our average and less than average pupils may find through practical activities a sense of achievement which can energize the rest of their work.

     

     

    The pride and pleasure of a measurable achievement is considerable.

    There can be, too, an intense creative satisfaction in making and doing which is especially important for those who do not easily achieve expression in words.”

    “Half Our Future”, 1963, Sir John Newsom, a report into the education of 13-16 year olds “of average and less than average ability”

     

    2.     What Are “Skills”?

     

    The whole skills vs knowledge debate is one of the most puerile and unnecessary arguments in education. Education must be based on knowledge otherwise we are in the realms of fiction or make believe, but knowledge is only really important when it leads to understanding and when the student has the skills necessary to use and apply the knowledge. Unfortunately, for some, “skills” are seen purely as practical, hands-on skills, whereas every subject, including (and perhaps, especially) the traditional academic subjects such as literature and history, require skills – the skills of comprehension, application, manipulation and evaluation. A minister stated a few years ago that he was “in favour of Shakespeare and skills”, completely missing the point that the skills required to study Shakespeare are equally important to, but different from, the skills required to programme a computer. Society and the economy require a wide range of skills and examinations should be geared even more to the application and use of knowledge rather than the pure Gradgrindian retention of facts (although the process of changing the nature of examinations has been evident for some time).

     

     

    “Knowledge is essential for learning. It underpins all higher order skills. If we want our pupils to be able to analyse and evaluate, we must first ensure they know and understand what they are analysing or evaluating.”

    During the weekly subject quizzes at Michaela School, the questions pupils are asked “force them to think about, apply and manipulate their knowledge.”

    Katherine Birbalsingh, “The Power of Culture”, Headmistress of Michaela School

     

    The continuation of traditional academic subjects, at least to a basic level, is also essential to avoid a utilitarian approach to education and to ensure that every young person has at least some understanding of the country and world in which we live. Every child should also, regardless of background or ability, be exposed to high culture: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mozart and Monet should not be the preserve of the rich or academically able.

    The need for a broader range of skills was reinforced by the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs” report published in 2020. It argues that by 2025, the top fifteen skills needed globally include:

    1. Analytical thinking and innovation,

    3. Complex problem-solving,

    4. Critical thinking and analysis

    9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility [“soft” skills]

    “Soft skills” are life skills that are not subject specific, but which are essential for young people to become active and valuable members of society. Skills such as resilience, stress tolerance, teamwork, leadership, creativity, enterprise, critical thinking, problem solving and the ability to be flexible should be taught from the sandpit onwards and, again, are successfully inculcated through traditional academic subjects as well as through sport, music, drama, school trips and activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. They are most successfully ingrained when they are part of the whole school ethos – what used to be termed the “hidden curriculum” – whereby pupils are immersed in an environment which challenges (but equally, supports) and which develops character as well as specific knowledge and skills.

    This need for the development of broader, more generic and transferable skills was also identified by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of University of Oxford in 2013. Their research into “The Future of employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” considers the impact of AI, technological developments, computerisation and sophisticated algorithms on employment. “Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers [interestingly, earlier technological advances tended to impact on skilled workers] will relocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation – i.e. tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”

    As I argued in “Better Schools – The Future of the Country”, the introduction of a non-academic leaving certificate at 16 or 18, which records and evaluates attendance, punctuality, behaviour, attitude, application and commitment to extra-curricular activities and to school life, would raise the importance of such soft, but crucially important, skills. It would also remind youngsters that they, and no one else, are accountable for their attitude, behaviour and work ethic. What could be better preparation for adult life than the teaching personal responsibility?

     

    Tim Clark has had a very distinguished career in education. He was a teacher for 32 years and a Head for 18, firstly of a grammar school which he led to be “outstanding” in all areas and to be one of the highest performing schools in the East Midlands. Latterly, he took over an out-of-control academy in the London Borough of Hackney, sited on one of the largest and most deprived council estates in the country. In the words of Ofsted, he “transformed” the academy and left it as a well-disciplined, high performing school of first choice. In 2019 he moved into education consultancy and professional development training, working with schools across the UK and abroad, most recently in Nigeria and Spain. He stood for parliament against David Blunkett in 2005 and remains an active member of the Party.

  • Dinesh Dhamija: India has a new Greta Thunberg

    Dinesh Dhamija

     

    Prasiddhi Singh from Tamil Nadu, who will attend the Dubai COP28 climate summit this week with the Indian delegation, is just 11 years old and already has a Foundation which has planted tens of thousands of trees and earned the praise of Narendra Modi.

     

    As a keynote speaker at the Harvard World Model United Nations and on TedX, she has astonished audiences with her maturity and wisdom. “Trees never eat their fruit nor rivers drink their water,” she says. “Rather than looking up to the government and leaders, we should focus on the actions we can take to make a change.”

     

    When the COP28 begins later this week, Prasiddhi’s energetic optimism will contrast with lethargic inaction elsewhere.

     

    There will be no US President Biden. No Chinese President Xi.

     

    There will also be some embarrassing silences. What new fossil fuel deals does the COP28 president (and chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) Sultan al-Jaber hope to sign during the event? What does UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have to say about backtracking from previous climate pledges on emissions and oil drilling?

     

    India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, will arrive at COP28 with a tailwind of achievement in renewable energy generation, goodwill from his successful chairing of the G20 talks in Delhi, and a package of ambitious emissions-reduction plans.

    India has pledged to build 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, tripling the current level and making up half of the country’s energy mix. Alongside are green hydrogen projects, low-cost finance for energy transition, plans for carbon capture and storage technology, and steps to phase out old and inefficient coal plants.

    “Government policies and incentives have positioned India as a rapidly growing clean energy market,” says Sandiip Bhammer at venture capital fund Green Frontier Capital. “India is committed to a low carbon future.”

    As a solar energy entrepreneur, with a 270-hectare photovoltaic park in development in Romania, I’m very pleased to see India taking the lead on renewable energy and emissions reductions. There are always short-term political temptations to shy away from climate action and energy transformation. Doing something new is never easy.

    But the alternative is potentially catastrophic. It is unconscionable that so few world leaders are prepared to act for the good of future generations, pandering to the fossil fuel lobbies that donate to their parties and ignoring the evidence of their own eyes.

    If we want the 11 years olds of today to inherit a world worth living in, we need to pay attention to what people like Prasiddhi Singh are saying.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published imminently.

  • Book review: Amy: In Her Words

    Christopher Jackson discusses the great singer Amy Winehouse would have been 40 this year

     

    The case of Amy Winehouse is so tragic that we could be forgiven for not wishing to revisit it: the druggy freneticism of her short unhappy life is something one is as much inclined to turn away from as to look at. But as a major anniversary rolls round – Winehouse would have been 40 this year, and in her prime – there is the widespread realisation that there is still a market for our morbid fascination with her unhappy fate.

    In the case of the new coffee-table book Amy: In Her Words, the proceeds are going to Amy’s Place, a rehab centre which obviously does good work, according to two testimonials by addicts who have been treated there. But inevitably, given Winehouse’s short life, it is all a bit of a scraping of the barrel.

    The title itself can’t help but be underwhelming. Of course, what we care about is Amy Winehouse’s life in music, and so there is an element of loss and even deflation about this project at the outset. We are reduced to her words now, when it is her voice we would love to hear.

    Even so, it would be very churlish to deny that Winehouse could have a wonderful way with language. We have to remember that what we now consider the completed achievement constitutes what in another life would have been just a very promising start. Had Winehouse lived she would probably have been on her ninth album by now, and we’d know more about what she was capable of. Instead, due to her early death, we sometimes find ourselves allotting maturity to what she did, because it’s all we’ll ever have.

    She was so young – and yet this book shows that a certain wisdom and self-awareness was lodged in her all along, as if in compensation for the likelihood of her early death. “Good words to describe me: loud, bold, melodramatic,” runs one entry.

    But there was always something remarkable about Winehouse, which means we’ll always want to learn more. Winehouse was physically very slight, even before she became bulimic. But the voice itself could do anything: there was always something preternatural about its sheer extent and force coming out of such a vulnerable frame.

    It might be that the great voices seem complete very young. Bob Dylan was a great singer by the age of 22 partly because he sounded like he had access to the wisdom of an octogenarian. The same might be said of Billie Holiday – like Winehouse, an alcoholic who died young – who sounds in a song like ‘Strange Fruit’ as though she has come into the world with an innate knowledge of how things are which would somehow not have changed had she lived to be 100.

    The lyrics don’t matter all that much in Winehouse for the simple reason that the voice is so good that it obliterates all before it. However, she did have a verve with language which shows that she had been paying attention to the linguistic possibilities showcased in Britpop, especially in bands like Blur and Pulp. The content of the lyrics can be dark and depressing since they reflect a life which we wish had been otherwise, but songs like ‘Rehab’, ‘You Know I’m No Good’ and ‘Back to Black’ all have spirited lyrics which mean we can’t dismiss out of hand the notion of a collection of her words.

    Nevertheless, there is a caveat. In those three songs I have mentioned, there are two depressing factors. The first is her self-loathing, leading to an apparently logical insistence on the continuation of drug abuse. It is impossible to listen to ‘Rehab’ without thinking the singer has got the matter precisely wrong and that rehab is really the best place for her. It’s a magnificent track, but in the line about her preferring to listen to Ray Charles than to go to rehab, one wants to be pedantic and remind her that she could just as easily listen to Ray Charles in rehab: if she’d done that she’d still be around today. “Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen,” as the great Clive James put it.

    The second unfortunate aspect of the words is the description of her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil who is by any standards one of the least appealing plus ones in the history of popular music. Phenomenally vain, there remains the sense that Fielder-Civil took Winehouse for granted, using her as a sort of bank for drug money and not minding about the effect their shared addictions had on her. In the documentary Amy, he sometimes seems to be acting the pantomime villain, until one realises that he really is this way – assuming the complicity of the viewer out of a pure ignorance and arrogance which stood out even in that pointlessly hedonistic decade the so-called Noughties.

    This is what injures these songs from the lyrical perspective and marks out their immaturity: the subject of the song seems so plainly overvalued that we wonder about the validity of Winehouse’s overall perception of life. The scene in Jamaica and Spain in ‘You Know I’m No Good’ for example can in no way have been a ‘sweet reunion’, since it unfortunately was a reunion with Blake. One can sense through the misguided protestations of the lyric that his interest in her carpet burn is transactional and that the singer has fatally misjudged everything about the situation.

    Perhaps we simply know too much about her life. We know nothing of Shakespeare’s life, and it may be that the Dark Lady treated the playwright as badly as Fielder-Civil treated Winehouse. But sometimes it helps not to know, and there must be few Winehouse fans who delight in the notion of Fielder-Civil. We wish she were singing about someone else, but she’s always singing about him.

    Even so, this book reminds us that she could be very funny. There is a brief journal entry berating herself for her eating habits: “No fucking carbs, bitch.” There is also an amusing story in this book of Winehouse in court. When accused wrongly of assaulting a dancer, she showed a leg to the judge and said: “Could someone with feet this small be intimidating?” But every page of sweet drawings, or little notes to self, all of which tapers off by the release of her first album Frank in 2003, is full of an understandable yearning on the part of her bereaved parents who have compiled the book that she were still here.

    This is a book then about the girlhood of someone who dramatically lost all sense of innocence very quickly due to excessive drug and alcohol intake. Why does addiction lead to a loss of innocence, which is really a loss of self? It’s because we cease to dream and wonder which is what children do; instead we’re caught in a loop, unable to look ahead and no longer open to enchantment about what life may yet contain.

    The fact that we wish it could all have been so different for Amy Winehouse can make us forget that sometimes, in precious instances, it was. That was when she was sober in the vocal booth – and then she showed herself to be one of the great singers of any era.

    In certain instances, we talk of God-given talent and sometimes what we are noticing is a huge juxtaposition between a person’s daily life and what, all of a sudden, they can be capable of. The classic example of this is Mozart, though his life has been somewhat Hollywoodised by the Peter Schaffer film Amadeus (1984). It is impossible to shake the sense that something wonderful was bestowed on Winehouse – a complete musical soul which in a remarkably short space of time rushed to maturity, en route to its own destruction.

    The great example of this is her rendition of ‘Valerie’, her version of the Mark Ronson song which had originally appeared on the 2006 Zutons album Tired of Hanging Around. Here, Winehouse shows us what she might have been capable of had she lived: there would have been extensive proof across a large catalogue that she had few obvious peers in the interpretation of song.

    It’s worth remembering that ‘Valerie’ was initially written from the male perspective and so there’s something inherently fun and joyous about Winehouse singing it; the song acquires a certain Sapphic feel just by virtue of her doing it at all. This is important because too many cover versions lack a decent reason for their existence: one needs to know why one isn’t singing a new song, but redoing an old one. Winehouse knew that by taking on this track she would shine a new light on it.

    I am especially fond of the song because, written in 2006, it can transport us back in time to an era just before the widespread adoption of the mobile phone and WhatsApp. The Internet had been invented, yes, but we were still communicating over written email. In this song, the singer – Ronson/Winehouse – goes to the US and meets a vivacious ginger-haired girl who he falls for. He returns to the UK – the song is actually based in Liverpool – and looking out over the sea which separates them, thinks back on his time with her and asks her questions about how she is, whether she’s changed the colour of her hair, and whether she’s got over her legal problems. Today, we’d be in contact, sending photographs of ourselves across the Atlantic.

    The song is fixed in a moment in time when that wasn’t possible, and the heart would ache imagining what someone who we’d left for good was doing. The way Winehouse sings the word ‘hair’ – ‘did you change the colour of your hair?’ – in the first verse is sublime, doting on the physical detail she loved about the vanished girl, but playfully too as if the primary emotion of recollecting her is joy in spite of absence. The same trick is then repeated on the word ‘lawyer’ on verse two – its light-heartedness suggests the girl’s troubles are already surmounted, if only because she’s singing this song to her on the other side of the world.

    The song makes you think of a certain togetherness which the imagination could create when it sought to overcome distance; by association it makes us think of the secret distances between us in the interconnected world we now have.

    It is the good nature of the song and the generosity of Winehouse’s performance which marks ‘Valerie’ out and makes us mourn her all the more. Most songs written by men who have been separated from their women take a jealous turn: the song will usually say something to the effect of: “I bet you’re with some other man and I’m jealous enough to write this song about my predicament.”

    Such songs reflect how many people feel, but they’re essentially selfish. ‘Valerie’ isn’t like that at all: it roots for the girl no matter what she’s doing. It wants her well-being and her friendship come what may. It’s an extremely good song, but it took Winehouse to turn into a great record.

    In wishing she had lived longer, we can forget that she lived at all – and that we wouldn’t wish for more if she hadn’t hit such heights. ‘Valerie’, most of Back to Black, some of Frank, the incredible skirling vocal in the bridge to her cover of Carol King’s ‘Will You Love me Tomorrow?’ – most of us have outlived Winehouse by many years and never found such glory within ourselves.

    In the end, the attempt to resurrect Winehouse in this book, and in the upcoming film Back to Black starring Marisa Abela, bump up against the fact that she resurrects herself every day the world over on iTunes and Spotify. That’s the good news about her: the music is where her life always was, and where it will always be.

  • Meet the Mentor: Q&A with Finito senior mentor Tom Pauk

    Mentoring is part of what we do at Finito. Kicking off a new series, Tom Pauk answers our questions about mental health, his career, and the mentor-mentee relationship

     

    Tell us about your career before you joined Finito.

     

    After studying drama, my efforts to become an actor ended with a whimper rather than a bang, and I retrained as a solicitor. The career that followed was a “game of two halves”, half-time marked by the global financial crisis of 2007-08. In the first half, at City law firm Allen & Overy, then in-house at American bank Citigroup, I’d specialised in large cross-border lending transactions. In the second, I helped restructure loans borrowers had taken out in more prosperous times but were now struggling to repay. After leaving the bank in 2017, I began mentoring young men in prison, returned to Allen & Overy, now in a role mentoring lawyers in the early stages of their careers, and began writing plays. My professional life, it seems, had come full circle!

     

    Did you feel your education prepared you for the workplace?

     

    A degree in drama could not have prepared me better for the cut and thrust of commercial law, an above-all collaborative endeavour with a diverse cast list of characters, long “rehearsals” with unfeasible deadlines we somehow always managed to meet. At the conclusion of an especially high-profile deal there was the added satisfaction of reading the “reviews” in the financial press. The practise of law is essentially an exercise in problem-solving. In my case, a love of modern languages and playing the violin had also prepared me for the intellectual rigour of law, and I was even able to use my mother tongue Hungarian in transactions with Hungarian clients. So to anyone reading this wondering whether a knowledge of an obscure language might prove useful one day, the answer is a resounding Yes!

     

    Did you benefit from mentorship during your career?

     

    When I’d started out, mentoring was still very much in its infancy. Fortunately, I was able to benefit from the law firm equivalent, the “seat” system, under which trainee solicitors move from one department (or seat) to another every few months to build up expertise in different areas of a firm’s practise. Each seat is supervised by a senior lawyer — part mentor, supervisor and critical friend — overseeing a trainee’s professional development. Over the course of my training contract I was exposed to a variety of mentoring styles, which then shaped my own approach when I assumed the role. But I continue to benefit from ongoing, less formal mentoring in the shape of the extraordinary people I encounter and who inspire me with their wisdom. So in actual fact I’ve never really stopped being mentored.

     

    What are the most common misconceptions about a career in the law?

     

    I think there’s a general (mis)perception that law is a dry, bookish occupation, and that lawyers are aloof from the rest of society, be they pin-striped solicitors in their ivory towers or wigged-up barristers bowing obsequiously in courtrooms. In fact lawyers are widely dispersed throughout society, in the public sector (civil service, local authorities, regulatory bodies), in companies and banks, charities and NGOs. If you’re a young person considering a career in law you’ll be able to select from a wide range of specialisations that play to your unique skills and interests.

     

    Mental health is a particular passion of yours. Can you describe how your interest in that area came about?

     

    There were occasions, especially early on in my career, when my mental health was impacted under the pressure of work. Symptoms included poor sleep, high anxiety and irritability, and a compulsion for checking work emails 24/7. Back then, there was a stigma around discussing one’s mental health, let alone seeking help when you needed it. Worse, it was regarded as a sign of weakness, possibly even career-limiting, to self-disclose. So one’s natural instinct was simply to keep quiet and soldier on. Thankfully, we’ve evolved to a more enlightened view of wellbeing in the workplace, with a plethora of interventions designed to promote a healthy mind as well as body, including mental health first aiders, mindfulness, and discouraging staff from checking work emails after hours. Eight years ago, the memory of my own experience led me to train as a volunteer at a mental health charity. At The Listening Place I’ve seen vividly for myself how poor mental health can quickly escalate into crisis, and how being truly listened to can be life-saving. Literally.

     

    Work-life balance is something you’ve been vocal about. What are the most common pitfalls people fall into there?

     

    Most people understand the importance of achieving a sensible work-life balance, at least intellectually,  And it’s hard to argue against. But here’s the challenge: we’re not necessarily aware of the pendulum as it is swinging in the wrong direction. Whether it’s staying ever-later in the office, checking, or worse, responding to emails at weekends  (“because it’s already tomorrow in Tokyo”), before we know it life is work and work is life. Of course we tell ourselves that it’s only temporary, that as soon as we’ve broken the back of whatever it is we’ll take our foot off the accelerator. But it isn’t that simple, for we may unwittingly have recalibrated our benchmark of what a normal working day is. We’ve trapped ourselves into believing our own indispensability (“If I don’t do it no-one else will). We assume that working harder improves performance, demonstrates commitment to our employer and enhances our prospects for promotion. I’d counsel anyone reading this to challenge these assumptions and to listen out closely for the whirring of your inner pendulum!

     

    You obviously have a passion for mentoring. What are the most common challenges you’re seeing among your current crop of mentees?

     

    I’m certainly seeing the longer-term impact of the pandemic. This is the generation whose educations, family and social lives were disrupted by successive lockdowns. And I’m in awe of just how well they’d adapted to remote ways of studying and working. Another challenge is the sheer number of high-calibre applicants vying for limited places on the graduate recruitment schemes of investment banks, accountancy firms and corporations. Training contracts in City law firms are similarly over-subscribed, and with increasing candidates achieving top grades there’s now a far greater reliance on critical reasoning and situational judgement tests, presentations, written assignments and long assessment days. However I’m also sensing some really positive new trends, with mentees less motivated by achieving huge salaries than they are by finding a fulfilling career. And finally, one positive legacy of the pandemic: Finito mentees are often engaged in volunteering activities, whether it’s repurposing old computers and teaching older people how to use them, mentoring disadvantaged kids, or stacking boxes in foodbanks. Something, finally, to celebrate in challenging times.

     

    Do you vary your process for each mentee, or do you have a particular approach which you use with each candidate?

     

    Mentoring is a transformative tool for supporting the development of a mentee, and because no two mentees are the same the mentoring process does inevitably vary. Having said that, there are common features in my approach.  In the first place, it’s not about the mentor. Our prime responsibility as mentors is to listen attentively at all times to our mentees. Listening actively (as distinct from merely hearing) is a skill that one develops with practice. And it’s crucial we’re responsive to the stated needs of our mentees rather than clinging stubbornly to our own agendas. One unique aspect of mentoring is our willingness to share our own knowledge and experience to support the development of our mentees. A word of caution however, because this has nothing to do with being directive. What we’re aiming to do is empower our mentees to think and act for themselves. Finally, mentoring is a two-way street. At its most fruitful the relationship between mentor and mentee is one in which sharing and learning opportunities arise for both participants. I’m forever learning from my mentees.

     

    What do you know now in your career which you wish you’d known at its start?

     

    Hindsight being a wonderful thing of course, here’s three things I tell my mentees. Firstly, it’s important to pace yourself, especially when starting out in a new role and you’re trying to make a good impression. Keep something of yourself in reserve for when you really need it. Secondly, don’t plot out your entire career from the get-go. Life has a mischievous habit of opening new doors and leading you in new directions. And thirdly, know where you add most value, and focus your energies accordingly.

     

    Do you have any new challenges on the horizon?

     

    I’m excited to have just been appointed to the board of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, whose endowment supports people tackling the root causes of conflict and injustice. Along with my governance responsibilities, I’ll also be involved in grant-making decisions, an area entirely new to me.

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Beautiful Charity: an interview with The Twinning Project CEO Hilton Freund

    Twinning Project CEO Hilton Freund is changing the lives of UK prisoners by giving them employability opportunities in football, writes Christopher Jackson

     

    The great and the good of football are filing into Downing Street: representatives of the charitable foundations of the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal – clubs famous the world over. At Number 10 they’re eager to disabuse you of your mobile phone the moment you arrive but it isn’t personal. Myles Stacey OBE, the special advisor who takes us up to the meeting room, points to a cubby-hole next to the Cabinet room and says: “Ministers have to put their phone in there before a Cabinet meeting so you’re not being singled out!”

    That means the discussion upstairs isn’t recorded, but it’s a remarkable occasion, convened by the likeable Hilton Freund, the Chief Executive of the Twinning Project, an organisation which uses football to help rehabilitate prisoners into jobs.

    Around the table on that day, the possibility of football as a force for good in local communities is repeatedly brought home. The central fixture of your local area used to be your church – now it’s the football stadium. I note time and again in the contributions an admirable sense of responsibility towards those who have been unfortunate enough to choose a life of crime.

    Afterwards, I ask Freund how is involvement in The Twinning Project began. “I have known [Twinning Project founder] David Dein a long time. David was the former vice chairman of Arsenal and he was vice chairman of the FA: he currently still advises FIFA and UEFA on a number of initiatives. After David left Arsenal FC he began public speaking and doing motivational talks. He started primarily in schools and then moved into the prison environment: he just felt that football could do more to create employability opportunities. He reached out to me in 2018 and asked me get involved.”

    Dein’s initial approach to Freund came in early 2018; by October 2018 the Twinning Project had launched. So did Freund come on board as a CEO figure? “Not at first. Once we launched, we quickly recognised that some of the non-premier league clubs would need financial support in order to do this. We knew we had a responsibility to raise funds to help them, so we set up our own charity which was incorporated in mid- 2019: at that point I became the official CEO.”

    Thinking back to the Downing Street event I recall how many of the clubs’ foundation heads complained about the perception that the whole of football is rolling in money. This may be the case when it comes to the eye-popping player salaries we all read about, but it doesn’t mean that the charitable arms of those clubs have ready access to cash. Was all this factored in at the inception of The Twinning Project or did it come as a surprise? “We were acutely aware of it very early on,” explains Freund. “There is a clear division between the club and the community trust or the foundation: the money that swills around the premier league doesn’t become a pot with which to carry out football-based provisions in the community.”

    So how is the Twinning Project funded? “We are a sports-based intervention into criminal justice. We have received little from the Ministry of Justice. We have secured some funding from local police and crime commissioners and from some local charities. But mainly we’ve sought to raise funds through some big events, such as an audience with David Dein and Arsene Wenger. We are a national charity so what we find is we prefer our events to raise unrestricted money and unrestricted funds: these are what helps cover my overheads which are significant.”

    Those overheads tell you about the scale the organisation which Dein and Freund have built in a brief period of time: “I’ve got staff all over the country who are essentially project managers. If you can imagine, I’ve got a guy in Manchester and he looks after 20 clubs and 20 prisons. I’ve got a similar guy in London who looks after 20 clubs and 20 prisons. They all need taking care of.”

    Does Freund have access to the players’ help ? “Access to the players is actually limited,” Freund says. “Access to the club ownership is easier than access to the players.” Why is that? “The players are restricted: they have got a number of initiatives that the clubs have themselves which tend to take priority.  What we don’t want to do is compromise our relationship with our football club partners because it’s putting pressure on them to make players available. To date, although our relationships are rich and very warm with football, we are very careful about how we activate our player engagement.”

    So what exactly does the Twinning Project do? “The idea of football in prison is not new. It’s been happening for years that football clubs go into prisons, but it’s been spasmodic: what we wanted to do is to offer a sustained consistent delivery. What we were seeing was football club representatives going into prison, having a kick around and then leaving and not going back for six months or a year. That’s why we approached The Football Association to create the FA Level 1 coaching qualification which can be delivered in the prison environment.”

    So where can that journey take prisoners? “On completion of the course, prisoners can achieve Level 1 certification which puts them on the ladder to further football-based education should they choose to go that route.  It’s the first step to education, but the important thing is they’re beginning to upskill and engage with a football club at the same time: they are actually on a big interview as well. So when they are released from prison, the football clubs have experience of working with those prisoners, making them that much more employable by those organisations.”

    What’s fascinating is the variety of roles which prisoners end up doing. Freund lists the possibilities and you can see how passionate he is about the potential range of positive outcomes: “I’ve got guys working as coaches – but I’ve also got guys working as stewards on match day, baristas in the coffee bar, as barmen in the club, or in maintenance roles.  70 per cent of prisoners leave prison without a job. It should be no surprise that 65 per cent reoffend in the first year. But if they have got some work and the stability which comes from engagement with a big brand like Everton, Manchester City, Arsenal, Plymouth Argyle, you are less likely to reoffend.”

    For Freund then, employability is the key metric in driving down reoffending. “Those in criminal justice will tell you there is a couple of things that prevent people from reoffending. The first one is their age. For people in their late teens and early twenties, when you are in a gang, going to prison is deemed a badge of honour. The second thing that prevents people going back is a stable relationship: if you have a wife and children, or supportive parents, you’re that much less inclined to want to go back in. Sadly, a lot of people are victims of inter-generational criminal activity.  If your mother or father has been to prison there is a very good chance you are going to prison too. But lack of a job upon release is another – and that’s what we’re committed to tackling.”

    Do any of the prisoners go through Freund’s programme and decide that football isn’t for them, but then go into some other form of business? Freund answers in the affirmative. “I have got a great example of a young man at Lincoln City who wasn’t into football but he was in prison when Lincoln City visited: he is now studying accountancy though the Lincoln City Foundation. We recognise that not everybody loves playing football but everybody understands the power of football brands: we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this is not just a football-based provision.”

    This makes me wonder whether Freund would consider broadening the Twinning Project to include other sports? “My sweet spot is football,” he replies. “Nigel Wray, the owner of Saracens Rugby Club, sits on my board of trustees – we have entertained the idea of engaging with rugby.” The trouble, he says, is that football is so much more powerful: “Nothing really rivals the level of passion you get with football. When you consider the lack of money with the football club foundations which sit alongside very rich football clubs, the case becomes even harder with other sports. Take cricket as an example. Even at Lords they struggle to make money: to work with other sports codes would increase our funding exposure. It’s a real challenge.”

    The Twinning Project is now impressively expanding its football offering into the US, where soccer is the fastest growing sport. This prompts some interesting reflections on the difference between UK and American prisons. “Let me tell you something: you don’t want to go to prison in the US. Prison for me should be rehabilitative. In the UK, it is:  your punishment is the loss of your liberty, and you are being prepared on day one for the day you get out. In the UK prison system, you can work, you can study, you can do sports-based activities, and you can go to the gym.”

    And in America? “You go to prison in the US and there are 80-90 men in a dormitory three bunks high. There is no privacy. Locking prisoners in a cell for 23 hours a day is not going to rehabilitate anybody – it’s going to make them angry.  We have to work with these individuals to create an environment of nurturing, learning, skilling, and improving these people for when they come out. I was on Rikers Island in New York. You don’t want to go to prison there: it’s another level.”

    And what’s the reception been like in the US? “We work with an organisation called the International Prisons & Corrections Association,” explains Freund. “We have made a presentation to them and, off the back of that, we were given the opportunity to speak to the heads of prisons commissioners and deputy commissioners across the US. There are 50 states, and we have pitched to over 20, and 14 loved the idea.  But you’ve got a federal system: what’s going on in California is very different to what’s going on in New York or Texas. US prison reform is a political hot potato around which elections are won and lost.”

    And where next? Has Freund got a 5-10 year plan? “We are currently in advanced conversations with South Africa; we are in conversation with Roma football club in Italy.  We have been approached by Australia. The only thing holding us back is money: I can’t be in a million places at once but what we have managed to do is come up with a provision in the UK which we can be very proud. There are 92 football clubs in the football league; currently 73 are engaged with the Twinning Project.”

    That’s an incredible achievement and could only have been achieved by passion: “As you can tell, I am hugely passionate about this. I eat, live and breathe it.” He certainly does – and his story is a marker about what can be achieved with that passion – and a window also into the way in which our collective passion for football can be leveraged for good in our communities.

  • Harvey Soning on the importance of not going to university and learning on the job

    Harvey Soning

    My education wasn’t what you’d expect. My grandparents on my mother’s side came from Russia and Poland – that was in 1912. Within two years my grandfather was conscripted into the First World War. He spoke very little English but learnt very quickly in the trenches – mostly swear words.

    On the other hand, my father’s parents were here a generation before and were quite anglicised. My father’s father – a second generation immigrant – was an entrepreneur who built one of the first cinemas in the country in Staines. One month he had money – the next he didn’t: in that sense, he was a typical entrepreneur. In 1945, my Dad came out of the Air Force Bomber Command with £300 and went into the retail business. He became a successful businessman with a property portfolio.

    At the age of 14¾, I had the most diabolical school report: I was drawing aeroplanes and battleships when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. We lived in Willesden at the time and my father said enough was enough. The headmaster said the best thing my father could do, was to send me to an aircraft factory in Cricklewood and see if they would give me a job and draw aeroplanes for the rest of my life.  Fortunately, my father phoned George Farrow, of Peachey Property, his friend in Kent, and said: “I’ve got this boy Harvey, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with him”.  George said: “Send him to me and we will make a man of him.” Peachey Property was based in Petts Wood, Kent, and so it was quite a commute: Willesden Green to Charing Cross, then Charing Cross to Petts Wood. I was paid £24 a week, of which £15 went on the fares even in those days. That’s how I got into the real estate industry.

    My education was, as they say, on the job. It was January 1st, 1960, when I started.  There were no bank holidays not the three-days-a-week in the office like there is now; it was full-on office work. The Corps of Commissionaires Sergeant used to clip me round the ear quite hard to make sure I had a clean desk –it’s how I was brought up and trained. You had to be the first in and last out: eight in the morning to eight o’clock at night.

    You could almost say that the old work ethic has now been all but destroyed and in the same way the mobile phone is destroying the art of communication, but this is the world we’re living in. In the 1960’s, London was being rebuilt. The smart money was buying the plentiful bomb sites, especially in the City and the East End.

    Despite the long hours, I got the property bug. Shelter is fundamental to human beings, whether that be a cave or modern home. We all must buy food and clothes – so retail is inevitable – and the retail has a supply chain, so you need warehousing and factories and so on. All of which makes real estate one of the most important factors of human life on earth, after food and water.

    It was on my 15th birthday that I started working in real estate. I have always admired the architecture and the sheer guts of these people to put these buildings up, From the early entrepreneurs such as Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855) and John Nash (1752-1835) who built this country, and then latterly for Irvine Sellar and Renzo Piano who built the Shard in the midst of a recession.

    Of course, you mainly read of the successes, but there have been lots of disasters as well.   More people have lost fortunes than the few who have succeeded. There are tens of thousands of people in this country involved in real estate as agents, architects, builders, and developers. I go to cocktail parties at Christmas, and look around me and think: “Wow, how do all these people earn a living in the Real Estate Industry”.

    I started life at Peachey Property Corporation who seconded me to estate agents for experience. I stayed there until the late 60s – a good 10 years – then I joined a company called Guardian Properties in which my father was a shareholder. Unfortunately, that went the way of many other real estate companies in 1974, which was the first crash after the Second World War. It was a secondary banking crash that brought down public-private real estate companies. At that point I thought: “Sod this business of working for other people” and I formed James Andrew as a commercial estate agency. I certainly didn’t think it was going to last for 50 years!

    I had £5,000 and named the company after my two eldest sons. I immediately received a desist letter to stop using the name because there was already a company with the same name in existence. I couldn’t afford new notepaper – you had to write letters to each other in those days, so I reversed the names. One of my first clients was Gerald Ronson who is still a client after 50 years, Sir Martin Sorrell followed a few years later. We have some very loyal clients including Sir Lloyd Dorfman, a Sovereign Wealth Fund, and a major Japanese Institution, who have been with us for 35 years.

    I don’t think setting up a business has changed all that much since we came out of the dark ages. Human beings are great at invention – whether that invention takes the form of technology, medicine, electronics, or some other commercial enterprise, and look at the tech businesses that have grown in the last 20 years. It’s the human drive. You have got to prove in a very small way that what you are trying to do actually works – and I would advise doing that with as little money as possible.

    The 1980s was amazing to witness. You have to hand it to Margaret Thatcher and her advisers as well: she had a great vision. When you met Thatcher, she was always straight to the point: no pleasantries about family life or anything like that. Right away the facts came out: she had a great brain.

    After what her successors have done to the economy, we’re now in a different world. We are still suffering from austerity and Covid 14 years after the last financial meltdown. There has always been tax, the only consolation being if you are paying tax, you are making a profit; tax runs the country. Has tax been a disaster for the real estate industry? Not really.  Corporation tax hasn’t moved too much either way with the changing of the governments. For private individual rates have not been the problem it’s the removal of allowable expenditure. Local taxation whether it be residential or commercial property is starting to hurt more and more, especially if you have a vacant property where there is no income. I am pleased Entrepreneurs’ Relief is still 10%-20%, depending on the circumstances, and CGT on most transactions.

    I would prefer to see entrepreneurial relief, at even lower levels to encourage new start-up businesses, as we talked about before. I think there should be at least a 5-year period before any tax on start-up businesses is charged. The government should also be providing more money for young entrepreneurs; we certainly need to encourage young people in this country to create the growth the economy requires.

    We need more bursary schemes for students and apprenticeships.  I am involved in a bursary for the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors.   We have been very successful and have got 30 youngsters going through university that would have had no chance of being involved in higher education or know about the real estate and construction industry. It’s a great country of opportunity.   We need governments to encourage people to try and progress themselves out of the mire.

    Harvey Soning FRICS, is the founder, Chairman and CEO of James Andrew International

    Ambassador to the Royal Air Force Museum

    Founding Member of the Natural History Museum Foundation

     

  • Opinion: 2024 will be the year of the jobs elections

    Finito World

    Around election time, everybody always quotes Jimmy Carville’s dictum: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This is fine insofar as it goes, but it still begs the question of what makes a winning economy.

    The answer isn’t as clear-cut as one thinks. Both Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden face re-election in 2024 and both can point to certain improvements in their respective economies, with inflation significantly reduced from its peak: nearing five per cent in the UK, and three per cent in the US.

    So far so good. But voters can be forgiven for looking at these statistics and refusing to cast automatic votes for the incumbents. That’s because the price rises we experienced along the way are now embedded in the economy. Everything from your weekly shop to your Netflix subscription is more expensive – and ongoingly so.

    On a day-to-day level, what the consumer wants isn’t so much lowering inflation as deflation. Only deflation makes an individual cheer as they leave the supermarket, but few economists think it’s the solution: it makes CFOs squint sceptically at their spreadsheets, mulling what to do about the niggling fact they’re now making less money. Their only recourse is to spend less, which lowers growth.

    That’s why 2024 is likely to be the year of the jobs elections. If falling inflation is actually the optimal position but doesn’t feel great for consumers, then more will depend on psychological factors in the economy related to people’s experience of the workplace.

     

    For a start, how painful all the price rises really are will depend on whether your employer was kind enough to meet your financial anxieties with a salary rise. To their credit many have, but workers usually attribute salary rises to their own brilliance and in 2023 many regarded these as a necessity: besides, a salary rise is meant to put you in a better economic position – not to be a symptom of treading water.

    Secondly, your overall mood will depend on how you feel psychologically about your work and career. Ronald Reagan famously asked during the 1980 Presidential election which he would go on to win handsomely against the then incumbent Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off?” We tend to answer this in the affirmative if we’re fulfilled at work.

    When the likely challengers Sir Keir Starmer or Donald Trump ask this question in 2024 what will the response be? In the UK, it’s unlikely that the demons of the Truss interregnum will have been laid to rest.

    Between now and election day, homeowners will all the time be coming off fixed rate mortgages into a higher interest rate environment, and they are unlikely to blame their own failure to secure a better paid job for the pain they will be feeling. They’re more likely to blame Truss and her successors.

    The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has done a good job of steadying the ship, but people don’t vote in droves on that score: they might tacitly respect a degree of competence, but they’re unlikely to be in a celebratory mood.

    Besides, unless you had a very large salary rise, or secured a better job than the one you had before, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have much spare change out of the rise in the cost of living (including mortgage costs), and the likelihood you will have been caught up in some sort of ‘fiscal drag’ – that’s to say, you’re probably in a higher tax bracket than you feel you should be. If you are, then you’re part of a £45 billion problem, which the government is hoping you won’t notice. What they’re hoping is that you will notice the £15 billion cut from National Insurance.

    This is why Sunak and Hunt – and to a lesser extent Biden – are in such an electoral pickle. There simply isn’t enough good news in the economy to offset the bad. Most economists agree that the situation is solveable only with better growth, but both economies are lower on productivity than they should be – in the UK, it is a miserable 0.3 per cent less than what it was during 2022.

    Of course, the dip in productivity has its own story to tell about the pandemic and its aftermath. With hybrid working now the norm, many workers are less productive and happy to be so if it leads to a superior work-life balance. As much as this might be very lovely, there remains the deeper question as to whether it’s a financially sustainable happiness.

    To look at the slow growth figures is to suppose that it isn’t: it might be that the strain we all feel in relation to prices is intimately related to the sense of relief many feel at not having to commute so often.

    There is a sense, then, that something has to give. Liz Truss has shown that we can’t cut taxes in an unfunded way without the bond markets intervening. Sir Keir Starmer and the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves may find that with the tax burden at a historic post-War high they have less wiggle-room than they to raise taxes and increase spending. The bond markets are not in a good mood.

    We can already see signs that Reeves understands all this: her much-touted £25 billion Green commitment has now mysteriously vanished, in acknowledgement of the fact that the cost of it injures the very people Labour need in order to win a handsome majority, which is clearly in reach.

    That has its own story to tell in terms of sustainability jobs: if even Labour has come to believe that there is no way to afford a Corbynesque injection of money into the renewables sector, then either the green agenda is gone by consensus for the time being, or Labour is more exposed on its left flank that it realises.

    Even when it comes to immigration – traditionally considered a separate subject to the economy – the apparent failure of Sunak’s Rwanda policy means that the conversation has moved onto jobs. Specifically, anyone who is trying to tackle the problem at all is now looking at what constitutes viable skilled labour entering the country and what doesn’t. Former prime minister Boris Johnson is already arguing that an annual salary of £40,000 is a sensible threshold at which to secure a visa, though he doesn’t say why he failed to introduce such a policy while he had the chance to do so as prime minister.

    This opens up onto broader questions about what jobs UK nationals are prepared to do and what they won’t. This in turn opens up onto the gigantic question of welfare reform, so far left largely alone by Conservative governments since the streamlining exercise of Universal Credit.

    Whether we like it or not, this election year is an opportunity to look in the mirror. It is as if the old challenge which JFK uttered in his Inaugural Address 60 years ago is about to be laid down all over again: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Perhaps the world is always raising that question, for the simple reason that the global economy is competitive and we can’t afford not to answer it. But in 2024, it is being raised with particular urgency – and especially with regard to our working lives.

     

  • Gillian Keegan on Maths to 18, apprenticeships and why Sadiq Khan is good for Conservatives

    Gillian Keegan

     

    Now that we’re coming into a General Election year, I feel confident that we’re going to see Rishi Sunak’s strength and leadership come through and prove the doubters wrong.

    So how do we win? I think it’s very important that we provide a great focus on business education; we need to work harder on encouraging young people in setting up their own businesses.

    Rishi Sunak’s Maths to 18 policy is sometimes misrepresented, but it’s of huge practical importance to understand about working capital and the administrative side of business, all of which obviously goes back to the importance of mathematics as a core subject.

    There’s an entrepreneurial element to the policy which has been missed in too much of the commentary. What we need to champion is the acquisition of knowledge about the pragmatic side to life.

    That’s why citing our educational achievements is going to be a big part of our strategy for the next election. Many of our universities have now set up entrepreneurial centres, and the government is already thinking about ways in which we can help entrepreneurs: they’re the lifeblood of our economy.

    But I do accept that when it comes to Maths to 18, it will be absolutely crucial how we sell that policy. Young people already know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform their lives within their lifetime – in fact, it’s already doing so. What we have to do is to demystify that and sell it as something that’s going to help you in your life. This stuff is going to be changing how our houses work, our jobs, and our education: we have to make sure it’s something that people don’t see as a threat. When the Maths to 18 policy was raised, everyone imagined it amounted to making it compulsory to take the subject at A-Level. That’s not what we’re talking about, and we need to make sure we bring everyone along with us according to a proper understand of what the Prime Minister is really championing.

    As I look ahead to the next General Election, I sometimes think that the current London Mayor Sadiq Khan is doing rather a good job for us. Take the free school meals policy that he’s introduced. It sounds fantastic on the face of it, but it costs a fortune and is only for the course of a year. Also, nobody in City Hall seems to be thinking about how you deliver it. This is where Labour is always weak: in the crucial realm of reality.

    By stark contrast, the Conservatives have been very pragmatic: Rishi Sunak knows how to get things done. So, for instance, we have an international student strategy which we’ve developed over the past couple of years which targets international students, and seeks to recognise that our education system is one of our biggest exports.

    I recall vividly one trip to Egypt where everybody was talking about how fantastic our education system is: at King’s College London, we train most of the world’s defence leaders, as well as most of the senior army figures. Of course, we all see the immigration figures, but I’ve put the case firmly that immigration can be vital to the economy and to the health of our world-class universities. It’s a question of balance.

    Another area where Rishi Sunak has been highly strategic is on creative industries, where the government has put a range of policies in place to recognise that this is our second biggest sector. We’ve tried to make sure that student loan finance is available in the short term and in smaller chunks. On a separate front, we’re also seeing an increase in nursing and medical schools, as well as full time or part time apprenticeships: but we need to change the culture around recruitment. My local hospital for instance recently returned from a trip to the Philippines to recruit nurses over there; and I explained to them that it’s perfectly possible to recruit them here.

    There’s so much more to do. I have also spoken to recruiters at big companies and corporations: what they find is that a lot of kids do well in school but then lack the social skills and understanding of social interaction suitable for the working world. But a lot of that will come back to the Maths to 18 policy: we need to create a numerate and pragmatic workforce which understands the realities of life.

     

    The Secretary of State for Education was talking at the In and Out Club

  • Simon Callow on his upbringing, life as an actor and the dangers of the art house flop

    Simon Callow

    I am sometimes asked by young people who want to be actors whether I can help – realistically, there’s not much I can do because I’m not Laurence Olivier so I can’t invite people to come and work in my theatre.

    But when asked for advice, I tell young people that it’s a very, very hard life.   If you are considering this route, you must first ask yourself: “Do you need to be an actor?” Unless your life depends on it – unless it’s the only thing that you can imagine yourself doing – then don’t even think about it because it’s a life of rejection and disappointment.

    I lived in Streatham until I was five and then I went to live in Berkshire where my mother was the school secretary for two years, before we returned to Streatham. When I was nine, I went to Africa; we returned eventually in 1962, and I lived then in Gypsy Hill.

    I didn’t think I was going to be an artist until much later. I had no idea but my grandmother had been a singer, and even been on the stage. She was a contralto – one of those deep female voices that you don’t really hear so much nowadays.  But the life was not for her since she suffered quite badly from nerves so big concerts were difficult. However, she did sing at the Albert Hall to celebrate the end of the war in 1919.

    She was a very theatrical human being as was her father – who was Danish and had been a clown in the Tivoli Club, and then became a ringmaster in Copenhagen where he married my great grandmother, a bare back horse rider. He came from a long line of equestrian folk and came to London and became an impresario. So theatre was there but not close to hand.

    As a child I was rather extrovert.  When I was out with my grandmother shopping I would be doing routines and someone said to my grandmother: “This child should be on stage, he is very gifted.” My grandmother was delighted by that idea and told my mother the good news and my mother said: “Over my dead body!”

    When I was in Africa, aged 9 or 12, in Lusaka, Zambia at school we did little playlets but tiny stuff. When I went to boarding school in South Africa at a school called St Aidens in what was then Grahamstown, I did actually act in plays but I have very little memory of it – except there is a photograph of me dressed up as an angry old man shaking my fist.

    When I came back to England, I went to a school called the London Oratory which was in those days in Chelsea but subsequently moved to Fulham and became quite a famous school partly because Tony Blair went there. It was a pretty terrible school and we had no drama at all. I knew nothing about acting at all. But London was all around me, and from my personal experience, I was overwhelmed by the work of the National Theatre and the Old Vic. I wrote a letter to Laurence Olivier who suggested that I might apply for a job in the box office.

    Since that time, I’ve been very lucky in my career, and I do get recognised, especially after Four Weddings and A Funeral. However I’m not Jennifer Lopez and I’m not Brad Pitt so the true burdens of fame aren’t something I’ve had to bear.

    I’ve had my share of setbacks. Not all movie executives or financiers are especially responsive to my art, but then that’s especially normal when people cross over from theatre into film. Take Tom Stoppard, as an example, who has sometimes seen his scripts go unmade: he is essentially a playwright, and he knows what he’s doing. But when executives read a Tom Stoppard script they probably don’t see dollar signs. Instead they think: “This is very clever, this is very interesting but where’s the money and the audience?”

    I have sometimes had to face the fact that I’m not commercial. I directed one film called The Ballad of the Sad Café which was a sort of mildly respected flop. An art house flop is the worst sort of film you can make. You could make an art house success, and that’s very good. You can also make a commercial flop – but if you brought it in on time and under budget then you would still be a safe pair of hands. But an art house flop is an absolute no-no.

    Even so, things are looking up and I have some movies in the pipeline, which are very promising. But the thing about making movies is that it’s very expensive, and people don’t like spending their money – except when they sometimes go mad and think that they are making art like Warren Beatty’s famous flop Ishtar, where everybody spent more and more money because he was Warren Beatty.

    This is all partly why I am quite nervous when I am doing plays with other people: on my own I am my own master completely and even if were to forget a lump of the text I can make it up, and I am now quite good at improvising Dickens and Shakespeare. I note that the solo play is becoming a trend. I see that Eddie Izzard has just done Great Expectations, and that Andrew Scott has done Uncle Vanya as a one man show. The only novel that I have ever done as a one man show is A Christmas Carol which works because it is this amazing magical performance where you can jump from one scene to another: the narrator of A Christmas Carol in our version is a conjurer and that makes sense.

    I am often asked about my next one man show. I’m sure Gore Vidal would make an entertaining evening but I don’t think I would be the person to do it. I am always nobbling writers to write me things and they are always a bit daunted by it. They are adapting at the moment a novel by an American novelist called John Clinch. Clinch he writes two kinds of novels: straightforward narratives and prequels somehow interconnected to already existing novels. One he wrote was called Marley; I happened to review it for The New York Times – and I immediately took an option out on it because I could see huge cinematic potential in it, as well as solo performance potential. I’m on a third draft of it, and getting close to something performable now.

    I’ve now been writing about Orson Welles for over a quarter of a century: I have become a more nuanced viewer of the human scene than I was when I was younger but that’s not surprising. But lately I’ve been thinking about fiction too: there are about half a dozen novels swirling around in my brain and I would love to write them, but I have so many other things that I have still got to do before that. I also want to write about my family – but not in fictional form:  I have just got to get it out of my system.

  • Reviving Varanasi: A Journey to India’s Holiest Place

    Dinesh Dhamija

    I’ve just spent a few days in Varanasi, India’s holiest place, celebrating my brother-in-law’s 70th birthday.

    Coming back to this city and seeing India’s mightiest river brought back all kinds of memories.

    In 1999, 24 years ago, my brother and I said farewell to our father and scattered his ashes in the Ganges. As children, we would come to Varanasi and visit the ghats, the temples and the shrines.

    The difference from those days to the present is astonishing. Just to take one example: the Kashi Vishwanath temple – the holiest of the holy places for Hindus – has been completely renovated and is now at the centre of a wide, calm, beautifully-designed precinct and avenue leading down to the river, allowing pilgrims to worship and visitors to enjoy the extraordinary architecture and atmosphere.

    Spread over 5000 hectares, the project cost $95 million and included the restoration of 40 temples along the route, which had been ‘lost’ over the centuries through haphazard development.

    Varanasi – or Benares (‘City of Light’) as it is sometimes known – is one of the world’s oldest cities. This is one of its charms. There are layers upon layers of history jostling together next to the holy river.

    It had also become a problem. As India’s population rose and ever more pilgrims made their way here, the overcrowding became oppressive, even dangerous. Varanasi is the Hindu equivalent of Mecca: worshippers are encouraged to visit at least once in their lives.

    The transformation of the Kashi Vishwanath temple is an example of 21st Indian development at its finest. It welcomes international visitors, who would previously be alarmed by the chaotic bustle. It elevates one of the country’s great architectural marvels to its proper status. And it showcases a new kind of India: clean, orderly, proud of its heritage and appealing to a new generation.

    Anyone who has spent time in India knows that there are thousands of amazing places to see. But for those who are yet to come here, the stereotypical view is: let’s go to the Taj Mahal. And maybe the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

    Broadening this narrow vision is a great service to India and to its visitors. They could consider visiting the majestic peaks of the Indian Himalayas, the idyllic waterways of Kerala, the Ajanta caves of Maharashtra, the tiger reserves of Tamil Nadu or the ancient, ruined temples of Hampi.

    Many visitors remark on how much has changed in India in recent years. It’s true and welcome. I would say that the transformation of Kashi Vishwanath is one of the most important and profound changes and I’d urge anyone coming to India to see it for themselves.

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book is The Indian Century.