Partnerships


We began working with schools across


Dagenham. However, our desire to help as many young people as possible meant we were spreading ourselves too thinly. This led us to focus more closely on one school so we could make more of an impact. I contacted my former headteacher, Andy Buck, who had been tasked with leading a new secondary school set up under the PFI (private finance initiative). The idea of developing high-quality facilities to raise pupil aspirations in a deprived area chimed with our own objectives – and we began working with the Jo Richardson Community School in 2007, and with its current headteacher, Ges Smith, from 2014. RPC supported us from the start. Limitless


London’s goals of increasing social mobility aligned closely with the company’s CSR agenda to improve diversity in the legal profession. What’s more, the buy-in from RPC’s managing partners has encouraged employees across the firm to come on board with our mentoring programme. RPC has offered help with funding, but we’ve


never needed much. It’s always been more about the wealth of wisdom and experience that people are willing to share with students in Dagenham. RPC has provided internal admin resources and support for the annual programme. Employees have taken on this work, in addition to their regular responsibilities, because they genuinely care about the community and the students. Limitless London is focused on Year 10 so that


if students realise they might like to follow a particular career path then they’ve got time to improve their academic results and research, prepare and train. During careers week, everyone in the year group is offered a mock interview with volunteers from RPC and elsewhere. We then run five career workshops over the year


for a group of 20-25 students, selected after completing applications. Each pupil is matched with a mentor and after every workshop they have a one-to-one coaching session. Four workshops are held at RPC’s St Katharine


Docks offices. RPC also runs a workshop at Jo Richardson because it’s important for mentors to see mentees in their school environment. When the students meet people at RPC, they’re excited to realise that many are just like them (some, like me, may have even grown up round the corner). Often for the first time, they begin to believe that they can have a successful career in the City too. During the workshops, students get to


interview high-profile business people, often drawn from our client companies, such as Google. RPC itself has more than 750 employees and offers 25 different careers paths, and we hold a speed networking activity with people from across the organisation, including IT, design, marketing, law, accounts, finance and HR. We also work on interview and application


skills, and public speaking and presentation, as well as confidence building. We tell the students


that they can achieve whatever they want, but we also give them the hard facts about being prepared to compete against students from more privileged backgrounds. It’s great to see students confidently exploring


new opportunities and challenging themselves. I mentored one student of African origin whose parents had said they couldn’t afford to pay for university. They weren’t aware of student finance, so I explained the options to the student and by the next session he was considering university. He went on to study maths at Warwick!’


GES SMITH has been the headteacher at Jo Richardson Community School since 2009. In 2018, the school won the Pearson National Teaching Award for ‘School of the Year – Making a Difference’. It has been graded good with ‘outstanding features’ by Ofsted.


‘O


ur comprehensive school very much mirrors the diversity that characterises much of London – and this is one of its strengths. About 60%


of our 1,650 students, aged 11-18, are from ethnic minority backgrounds (mainly Eastern European, Black African and Indian). Many have had little


FundEd SUMMER 2021 41


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