User:Tombewick1/sandbox

= Tom Bewick =

British educationalist and skills campaigner
Thomas Darren Bewick (born 1971 - present) is a British educationalist and campaigner. His main area of expertise is post-compulsory vocational training and skills policy. He is currently chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies — the representative body of the UK’s examination and apprenticeship assessment boards.

Bewick has advised overseas governments and corporations in several jurisdictions, including India, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the United States of America.

Early life
Bewick was born in Coventry, Warwickshire. He grew up in foster care from the age of 6 and left Etone School in Nuneaton, initially, with no qualifications.

Bewick is a descendant of the eighteenth century naturalist and wood engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753 - 1828).

He joined the Labour Party at the age of 18. He served as a volunteer for the Canadian charity, Frontiers Foundation (Operation Beaver) working as a community worker on a reserve in Wabasca-Desmarais, northern Alberta.

He returned to England in 1991 and enrolled at the University of Brighton, later transferring to the University of Bath, earning a BSc Honours degree in social policy.

Bewick continued at the University of Bath in 1994, studying a MSc in European social policy analysis, graduating from Bath, the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and fourteen other Erasmus participating universities.

Career
Bewick joined the TEC National Council as European policy officer in 1995. A year later he co-founded the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion.

He worked for the Labour Party head quarters as a national policy officer (education and employment) between 1997-1999, before taking up the role of policy director at the NTO National Council.

Bewick was an adviser to the adult skills minister, Rt Hon John Healey MP and drafted a new industrial skills policy in 2002, Meeting the Sector Skills and Productivity Challenge, creating the UK-wide Sector Skills Councils.

With Lord Tony Hall CBE, Bewick established the Sector Skills Council for the creative and cultural industries, serving as its co-founder and chief executive (2004 - 2010).

He has held a number of non-executive positions, invested in start-up businesses in both the UK and USA; and has carried out many consulting assignments since 2011.

Elected office and charitable works
Bewick was elected as a Labour councillor for Westbourne, Hove, in 2015. The Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council immediately appointed him to the cabinet-rank post of Lead Member for Children, Young People and Skills, where he oversaw a local authority departmental budget of c. £250 million; Bewick was politically responsible for 70 council maintained schools and statutory children’s services.

Standing down as Lead Member in January 2017, citing family and outside business commitments, Bewick went to the council’s back benches and focused instead on representing local residents and establishing a charity for the city’s care leavers.

In the EU referendum of 2016, Bewick campaigned to leave the European Union and chaired the Brighton and Hove official Vote Leave campaign. [link https://www.theargus.co.uk/author/profile/78511.Tom_Bewick/ ]

He stepped down from being a Labour councillor in May 2019, citing in a local press article [link https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2018/04/03/brighton-and-hove-labour-councillor-blasts-anti-semitism-in-resignation-letter/ ], that he was unhappy with the direction of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, and in particular, the poor handling of complaints about anti-semitism.

Bewick is the founder and chairman of Beyond: the Care Leavers’ Trust, supporting young people in the city of Brighton and Hove and the wider county of Sussex.

Publications and media career
Bewick has published several works spanning a twenty year career and writes regular columns in the education press.

He is the presenter of the Skills World radio podcast, broadcast by FE News.