DWF wins Scottish business award

Legal practice DWF has won a national business award for its support programme for school students.

The firm took the Closing the Education Gap title at this year’s Scottish Business in the Community (SBC) awards, attended by the President of SBC, HRH Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay.

DWF was recognised for its innovative education programme 5 STAR Futures. This focuses on working with aspirational young people from low income backgrounds and provides them with a practical framework enabling them to improve confidence, build resilience and develop key employability skills for the future.

Through a range of tailored workshops the initiative now supports more than 30 schools across Scotland and the UK, including St Augustine’s RC High School in Edinburgh and Govan High School in Glasgow, and has already helped almost 900 students, helping to improve social mobility in localities where DWF is based.

Simon Price, DWF lawyer and founder of 5 STAR Futures, commented: “We are thrilled to have won the coveted Closing the Education Gap award. The success of 5 STAR Futures is testimony to the incredible pupils and schools we work with and the dedication of our people who volunteer their time.

“Our aim is to help bridge the gap between education and employment in areas of social and financial deprivation and through initiatives, like 5 STAR Futures, and long term partnerships with schools we want to tackle educational inequality to stop social background determining a young person’s future.”

Jane Wood, CEO of Scottish Business in the Community, added: “This is the first year we’ve opened the Awards to all businesses in Scotland and we’ve been thrilled with the quality of the applications. There’s such a huge amount of excellent work around the responsible business agenda that’s taking place within our communities, so picking a winner was incredibly difficult, but we are delighted to have DWF as our Closing the Education Gap winner.”