A CAMPAIGN is being launched next month to encourage former students to help motivate the next generation.

Back to School Week aims to improve networks of former students and alumni in a bid to help them provide positive role models for current pupils.

More than 400 state schools across the country, including St Anne’s Catholic College and Cantell School in Southampton, will invite former students, or alumni, back to motivate current students to academic success and career confidence as part of the event, run by the education charity Future First.

The week aims to encourage everyone across the country to give back to their old state school by becoming career role models, work experience providers, mentors or governors.

Alex Shapland-Howes, managing director of Future First said: “Next month everyday heroes from Southampton – lawyers, doctors, plumbers, policemen, entrepreneurs and web developers – will support their old state school or college in a scheme designed to change that perception.

“Alumni are invaluable because they provide crucial, relatable role models to current students. An absence of those models can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies amongst young people.

“Those who don’t expect to succeed are less likely to even try to.”

St Anne’s Catholic College recently reinvigorated their alumni netwok by hosting a reunion for former pupils from as far back as the 1950s.

“It’s amazing how much this school means to so many people and how much it has impacted generations of women in Southampton and the surrounding area,” says James Rouse, assistant head teacher.

Back to School Week is being held from October 13 to 17. For further information, log on to futurefirst.org.uk.