Rachel Wolf

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Rachel Wolf is a leading education reform figure in the UK.

Career

Writing the UK's edtech strategy in No.10

In September 2015, Wolf was appointed adviser to the Prime Minister David Cameron on 'technology, innovation and education', joining the Number 10 policy unit. According to Lord Jim Knight, former Schools Minister turned edtech lobbyist, Wolf is writing the UK's edtech strategy: 'I think the macro is starting to emerge,' Knight said, 'but not necessarily from the Department for Education. Number 10, Rachel Wolf the advisor there, is the advisor to David Cameron on both education and technology, she told us at a meeting in January [2016] that she was going to have within a year an EdTech strategy.'

Working for Murdoch's edtech firm

Prior to her appointment as an adviser to No.10, Wolf worked at Amplify, the failed education technology firm launched by Rupert Murdoch at News Corp and run by Joel Klein. Murdoch’s vision for News Corp’s education division was to digitise first America’s, then the world’s, classrooms to ‘fundamentally change’ the way we think about delivering education. This is why. ‘We see a $500billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs,’ Murdoch told investors.[1]

England's free school champion

Before that, Wolf founded and ran the New Schools Network, a group established by Michael Gove to increase the number of independently-run, but state-funded, Free Schools in England.[2]

The New Schools Network was Gove’s vehicle for getting free schools moving. Wolf was ‘helped out’ early on by another of Gove’s inner circle, Dominic Cummings. To get the charity off the ground, it was also controversially handed half a million pounds by Gove’s department. Within weeks of Education Secretary, Gove, taking the reins, Cummings was urging officials to stump up the funds without delay: ‘Labour has handed hundreds of millions to leftie orgs if u guys cant navigate this thro the bureauc then not a chance of any new schools starting!!’ he wrote.

The impetus for the New Schools Network was a fact-finding trip to New York. Rachel Wolf’s mission for the Conservative Party in 2008 was to study the city’s charter school reforms. She took inspiration from Joel Klein and was keen to learn from his experience, asking for advice on ‘convincing’ arguments to persuade the public and journalists of the case for privately run schools. Klein declined an offer from Wolf to be on the New Schools Network’s council. Instead James Merriman of the New York Charter School Center became an adviser to his British counterparts.

According to Wolf:

One of the top reasons for people wanting to set up a free school, ‘to be honest’, she said, is the freedom they have over teachers’ ‘pay, conditions and recruitment’.[3]

Background

Wolf is the daughter of Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, and Alison Wolf, professor of public-sector management at King's College, London. She was educated at Alleyn's, an independent school in south London, and studied natural sciences at Cambridge.[4]

Wolf has also worked for Boris Johnson and the Institute of Education.[5]

She is married to lobbyist James Frayne.

Publications

Articles

External Resources

Notes

  1. Cave and Rowell, A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain', page 233, Vintage, 2015
  2. About Us - Our Team, New Schools Network, accessed 24 August 2010.
  3. Cave and Rowell, A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain', page 247, Vintage, 2015
  4. Hilary Wilce, Time for change: How a young woman plans to shake up the school system, Independent, 12 November 2009.
  5. About Us - Our Team, New Schools Network, accessed 24 August 2010.