We owe it to society to ensure the talents of under-represented students don’t go to waste.
At the age of 14, my school attendance was poor. I was put in touch with an older pupil who took her education very seriously and thankfully she made me understand why I should too.
In fact, she had such a profound effect on me that soon after I graduated, I founded Teams Up. It’s a charity that reduces the widening achievement gap in education by helping underachieving disadvantaged pupils double their expected progress and improve their future prospects.
The need for Teams Up was – and still is – stark. As the Education Endowment Foundation has found, the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is evident even when children begin school aged 5 and grows bigger at every stage of education afterwards. Teams Up works through inspirational volunteer tutors, with the support of qualified teachers.
But despite growing the charity to more than 15,000 mentors, I was worried.
While we were having a phenomenal effect on the education of teenagers from low socio-economic backgrounds, these young people weren’t going on to secure the job opportunities they wanted.
That’s why I set up The Intrapreneurs Club in 2020. Our aim is to improve the diversity of London’s tech community and ensure that those from low-income and ethnically diverse backgrounds have access to the networks required to improve their chances of meaningful, sustainable employment.
The technology sector is increasingly appealing to young people and the barriers to entry aren’t always as high as some expect them to be. Of course, it’s also a sector that creates products for us all and, of course, needs a diverse workplace to ensure those products are right for everyone.
Our accelerator programme provides access to mentoring, business community networks and technical and personal development masterclasses led by industry experts. We offer practical workplace support to young people, from school into their early careers, with the option of a career lifetime of mentoring support. Some 95% of the young people on our programme become accredited in the professional and technical skills they have developed and more than three-quarters go on to be employed by the employers we work with.
Until only a short while ago, I was mentored by Nigel Higgins, the Group Chairman of Barclays Bank. I incorrectly assumed that Nigel wouldn’t have much time to give me and that mentoring me might be something he felt he had to do. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nigel wanted to learn from me just as much as I did from him. I now regularly exchange ideas with him about new books to read and he’s always receptive to hearing about my latest ideas.
I’m proof that mentoring and programmes like those my business runs can be nothing short of life-changing.
