Lord adonis biography

About: Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis. Adonis began his career as an academic at Oxford University, before becoming a journalist at the Financial Times and later The Observer. Adonis was appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair to be an advisor at the Number 10 Policy Unit, specialising in constitutional and educational policy, in He was later promoted to become the Head of the Policy Unit from until being created a life peer in , when he was appointed Minister of State for Education in HM Government.

Like Jenkins, Adonis speaks with rhotacism. Following the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum , he became a key campaigner against the result of the referendum on British departure from the EU, supporting the People's Vote. Adonis's Greek Cypriot father, Nikos, emigrated Cyprus as a teenager, becoming a waiter in London , where he met Adonis's English mother.

Adonis lived in a council children's home until the age of 11, when he was awarded a local education authority grant to attend Kingham Hill School , a boarding school in Oxfordshire. From to , Adonis was an education and industry correspondent at the Financial Times , eventually becoming their public policy editor. In the following year he joined the Labour Party.

During the mid-to-late s he was politically active for Labour in Islington North , the constituency represented by Jeremy Corbyn , and was selected as Labour candidate to contest St George's Ward for Islington London Borough Council in He remained in this role until , when he was promoted to become Head of the Policy Unit. He was closely involved in the London Challenge.

Having been the architect of the academies policy in the Policy Unit, Adonis was also able to be the driving force in Government behind the programme, which replaced failing and under-performing comprehensive schools with all-ability, independently managed academies, run on a not-for-profit basis.

Lord adonis biography

By the time he left the Department in October , academies were open and more were in the pipeline. Research by the Department of Education suggests that performance at these early "sponsored" academies increased more quickly than in similar schools in the mainstream sector, however these figures do not take into account underlying factors which affect which schools are likely to become academies.

He encouraged state schools to adopt practices of the private sector and generally believed in giving individual schools more independence and autonomy from central government and the local education authorities , although he voted against schools having more independent authority in the houses of parliament in His criticism of under-performing comprehensives made him unpopular with some trade union members and some on the Labour Party's left-wing.

In Adonis supported the conversion of some independent schools under financial duress into state academies, portrayed at the time as a new style of direct grant grammar schools although not selective. As Tony Blair 's head of policy, Adonis was regarded as the architect of tuition fees in — a policy he criticised and disowned 13 years later.

In May , while reviewing potential cycle "super highways" with Kulveer Ranger and then-London Mayor Boris Johnson , the group had a narrow escape when a passing lorry's back door "suddenly flew open, dragged a parked car into the street and smashed into another — just feet from the group". In this role, he pioneered the plan for High Speed 2 , the proposed high-speed railway line from London to Birmingham and the north of England.

The plan was published shortly before the election , and has since been adopted and taken forward by subsequent governments, with some changes to the proposed route. This electrification programme, except for the Cardiff to Swansea section of the Great Western, was taken forward by the coalition government. Adonis was a key figure in the aftermath of the general election , which produced a hung parliament.

He was reputed to favour a Lib—Lab deal and, given his SDP background, was a member of Labour's negotiating team that attempted to form an administration with the Liberal Democrats. After the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party , Adonis stepped down from frontline politics. Adonis later returned to active politics in , as part of Ed Miliband 's Shadow cabinet reshuffle.

He worked with former Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna on crafting Labour's industrial strategy, and previously took up the role of Shadow Minister for Infrastructure in the House of Lords, [ 24 ] and overseeing the Armitt Review looking at future infrastructure plans for the Labour Party. In July , Adonis became the director of the Institute for Government , an independent charity with cross-party support and Whitehall governance working to improve government effectiveness.

Lord Adonis is a Trustee of Teach First , the charity which recruits graduates to teach in state schools, as well as a Trustee of the vocational education charity Edge , and a Governor of the Baker-Dearing Trust, which supports the establishment of University Technical Colleges, technical schools for to year-olds. His book on education reform — Education, Education, Education — was published by Biteback in September Adonis considered standing [ 33 ] to be Labour's candidate for Mayor of London in , but ended his putative campaign in February , endorsing Tessa Jowell.

In his resignation letter, he wrote that, as well as Brexit, the recent decision to end the InterCity East Coast rail franchise three years early, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, would also have forced him to quit. He also claimed that "taking us back into Europe will become the mission of our children's generation". In , Adonis also became a weekly columnist for The New European , a newly created newspaper which campaigned against Brexit and supported the People's Vote campaign.

Labour's share of the vote was 6. Adonis was formerly married to Kathryn Davies, [ 3 ] who had been a student of his; [ 9 ] the couple had two children. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Andrew Adonis was a key architect of the academy programme - and remains a big supporter.

His journey from a Camden council flat to the House of Lords has taken him through children's homes, a comprehensive so violent he was afraid of going to school, an independent boarding school, Oxford University and Downing Street. It's the sort of improbable trajectory more associated with a Dickens novel than contemporary political biography.

When so many politicians seem to have come out of the same jelly mould, he is the political insider with the insights of an outsider. Speaking in his Westminster office, this former Labour education minister and key adviser to Tony Blair, says his own experience has given him the "instincts and prejudices" about what needed to change.

In the s, as an education correspondent for the Financial Times newspaper and then as an adviser to Tony Blair, he says he systematically visited schools - and was "shocked and horrified at how bad many comprehensives were". He recalls that on one school visit he was locked in an office because the staff wouldn't allow him to walk around when the pupils were there.

Lord Adonis became one of the chief architects of a new model of school, designed to tackle underachievement. It was the academy - state schools with the autonomy of independents. It might be said this hybrid of state funding for an independent education was what had worked for him. Retrieved 18 May Retrieved 31 August — via Twitter. Evening Standard.

Retrieved 8 May The i. Retrieved 8 August This page was last edited on 3 November , at Basis of this page is in Wikipedia. Non-text media are available under their specified licenses. Contact WIKI 2. Wikipedia Makes No Guarantee of Validity. Official portrait, In office 7 March — 14 December In office 15 January — 7 March In office 5 June — 11 May In office 3 October — 5 June In office 10 May — 3 October Labour —, since Adonis, Andrew 21 November Napoleon the Great.