Lord John Nash
Founder of Future Academies
Lord John Nash was schools minister from 2013 to 2017, during which time he took five acts of parliament through the House of Lords, including the Children and Families Act 2014. During his tenure he was responsible for, among other things, free schools, faith schools, academies, independent schools and school capital. The period also saw the number of academies in the UK rise from around 2,000 to approximately 7,000.
Future and Social Mobility
In 2005, alongside his wife, Caroline, Lord Nash founded Future, a charity committed to supporting less advantaged children and young people. In 2008, the organisation took on its first academy, Pimlico Academy, which was in special measures at the time. Within two and a half years the academy had achieved an Outstanding Ofsted ranking, largely as a result of the dynamic leadership team recruited by Future Academies. Today, Future Academies supports 11 schools across Hertfordshire and London, including a newly established primary free school.
Future also supports other charities, including OnSide and the Social Mobility Foundation. The latter exists to nurture the knowledge and confidence and grow the networks of high-achieving young people through its Aspiring Professionals programme. The organisation campaigns on structural social mobility issues and aims to amplify the voices of young people that come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. OnSide, meanwhile, is a national youth charity committed to ensuring that all young people have the opportunity to unlock their potential. The organisation raises funds to build multimillion-pound, state-of-the-art youth centres in some of the country’s most disadvantaged areas.
Areas of Focus
One of Lord Nash’s particular interests is careers support and extracurricular activities for young people, and this is an area in which Future Academies especially excels. The charity runs an active programme of additional drama, sport, art and music provision, as well as offering careers advice sessions and residential trips. Furthermore, on behalf of the government, Future Academies runs the Latin Excellence programme, under which Latin has been brought to 40 schools where the subject was not formerly taught. This has given around 8,000 pupils access to Latin.
Boarding Schools Partnership
Lord John Nash is the founder of the Boarding Schools Partnership, which helps students in care or those from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds to go to private and state boarding schools and private day schools. The Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation facilitates the associated arrangements, and Lord Nash remains an adviser to this organisation.
Between 2020 and 2022, he was the lead non-executive director responsible for coordinating the activities of the lead non-executives of each government department.
