James O'Shaughnessy

James is the Managing Director of Floreat Education, a charity opening new primary schools in London. A passionate advocate of the potential of character education to transform children’s lives, he created Floreat in order to implement the evidence and practice of character virtue development while delivering outstanding, knowledge-rich academic education. James also chairs the International Positive Education Network, a global movement to promote the ‘academics + character and wellbeing’ approach to education worldwide.

James is the Director of Mayforth Consulting, a consultancy that supports the delivery of innovative projects, and is co-founder of EDSPACE, a shared workspace for education entrepreneurs. He is Chief Policy Adviser at Portland Communications, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham, an Advisor to Character Lab, a Visiting Fellow at Policy Exchange, and a governor at Lena Gardens primary school in Hammersmith.

James was Director of Policy and Research for Prime Minister David Cameron between 2007 and 2011, latterly in No.10 Downing Street. Prior to that he was deputy director at the leading think tank Policy Exchange, where he wrote and edited several reports on school reform. James holds an MA (Oxon) in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford.