Honorary graduates 2017

Dr Tony Sewell CBE (LLD)

Wednesday 19 July 2017 9:00am

Tony is an educational consultant and CEO of the groundbreaking charity 'Generating Genius', which seeks to give great opportunities for students to study Science and Technology at top universities, including Exeter. He has been a member of the Youth Justice Board since 2015.

Tony was born in London from Jamaican immigrants. He first attended the University of Essex, where he studied English and then went on to train as a teacher at Sussex University. He worked as a Secondary school teacher in some of London's most challenging schools. During this period he worked on his PhD Black masculinities and schooling which became an iconic work and led to several key publications. He helped with the transformation of education in Hackney as part of the team that set up the Learning Trust and the iconic Mossbourne School. The work in Hackney had national significance given that it was the flagship of the Academy movement. Tony then went on to set up the charity 'Generating Genius'. The programme has successfully given many young people from poor backgrounds a route to top universities.

He works in both the UK and the Caribbean and helped to set up the Science, Maths and Information Technology Centre in the department of education at Jamaica's University of the West Indies. Recently he led the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson's Inquiry into London Education, this resulted in the London Schools Excellence Fund, a programme that helped London schools to achieve the top grades for their students. In January Tony was awarded a CBE for his work in Education.