Ray Auvray is Executive Chairman of the Prospects Group and has managed the company since its foundation in the summer of 1995. In that period, Ray has grown the Group from a company holding a single contract in South London to a national organisation with a turnover of £100 million, including the Prospects Academies Trust, employing over 2,300, including Trust, staff and delivering a wide range of education, training and employment services to the Department for Education, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, the Ministry of Justice, Home Office, Department for Work and Pensions, Skills Funding Agency, Ofsted, local authorities, schools and colleges.

Prospects is now a wholly employee-owned company, with over a thousand staff shareholders. As a ‘mutual’ it is offering support to other mutuals spun off from local authorities or central Government.

Before joining Prospects, Ray spent 11 years heading the London Borough of Havering Careers Service, the only local authority run careers service to win the Charter Mark Award. He understands the local authority perspective well, having served as a Basildon District Councillor, Essex County Councillor and a member of the Essex Police Authority. He has also twice stood as a parliamentary candidate. He started his career as a teacher, before moving into educational administration and then the private sector.

Ray has served on a number of national careers service advisory bodies and is also a Board Director of several companies. He served as a Commissioner on the Government’s Youth Citizenship Commission in 2008-9 and was a member of a Liberal Democrat working group on mutuals. He is a graduate of Reading University and undertook further studies at the University of East London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and Freeman of the City of London.

Ray has led the Prospects Group to its current role as a major provider of educational support service, acclaimed as Education Company of the Year in 2011.