Yorkshire state schools urged to set up networks for past pupils

Christine Gilbert is now the executive chairman of the Future First charity which encourages schools to set up “old school tie networks”. The charity helps school to set up ways of bringing back successful former pupils to help teach, mentor or inspire today’s generation of students.

To highlight their work Future First is staging Back to School week this week with a series of events. As part of the campaign, Schools Minister Nick Gibb will be returning to his former school - Roundhay in Leeds. Future First currently has about 400 state secondaries which it supports, including 23 schools in Yorkshire.

Mrs Gilbert said the charity wanted to see alumni networks set up in three quarters of state schools, and added: “It is such a simple idea and for schools it is cheap and yet such a rich resource. It is such a powerful thing for a pupil to hear from someone who was once at their school. They can relate to them.”

She claimed that using alumni for help or financial support was common in both universities and in the independent schools sector, and there was no reason this could not be repeated in state schools. The charity’s promotes its Future First alumni as those in established careers such as banking, law and medicine, as well as vocational professions including photography, catering and creative arts and recent school leavers now in further education.

Many of the 150,000 former state students already signed up to support current students will return to their old school for careers assemblies and workshops. But Future First say research shows 10m adults are willing to do the same.

In recent months, Yorkshire schools signing up to Future First include Abbey Grange in Leeds, Sheffield Park Academy and King Ecgbert School in Sheffield. On Wednesday, Ash Hill Academy in Hatfield, near Doncaster, will hold a workshop aimed at developing jobs skills during which several alumni will return to talk to current students.