On Wednesday 22nd November, Year 10 enjoyed a Life Skills talk from Mr Sajid Javid, the MP of Bromsgrove, Government Minister and Former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (June 2021 – July 2022), Home Secretary (2018-2019) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (2019-2020).

We asked him questions all about his day-to-day life and his opinions on charity and current affairs, and were delighted that he supports so many national and international charities, and recognises our shared passion for Outreach at FHS, in initiatives such as our partnerships with Hammersmith & Fulham Foodbank, Katherine Low Settlement, In-Deep and Mvumi School, Tanzania.

Mr Javid’s favourite role during his years as a Senior Government Minister was Health Secretary, a position he found incredibly rewarding during the unprecedented time of the global Covid pandemic. He explained in detail how to best prepare for interviews, as well as discussing the importance of media training when in a career in Public Office. He also spoke briefly about AI and gave us his overall opinion of it, how it will affect our lives in the years to come and the implications for job opportunities, both positive and negative. In the future, even teachers’ jobs could be at risk of being replaced! This was interesting as it gave us information about what it would be like finding and working in jobs in the future.

We also asked Mr Javid about his opinions on the structure of the government and his biggest influencers. To these questions he talked about how a perfect government doesn’t exist and probably never will, but our government is one of the better ones! He also explained that, from a young age, one of the people who influenced him was Nelson Mandela. We also asked him how he manages to balance his personal life with a career in political leadership, and he said he has to be very strict with his diary and block out time to spend time with his family; having a bowl of pasta made by his daughter, for example!

Overall, we believe that this talk was very inspiring and extremely informative as it was interesting to hear about politics from someone who has worked in many sections of the government. Thank you so much to Mr Javid for taking time out of his incredibly busy schedule to speak to us.

Grace Keane and Maia Redbourn, Year 10