A former NUT general secretary is auctioning off a selection of his photographs illustrating a lifetime in the education world.

Fred Jarvis hopes to raise money for the North London Hospice, which cared for his wife Anne before her death in 2007.

Senior political figures, including former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and the prime minister’s wife Sarah Brown, are supporting his appeal.

Mrs Brown will open the exhibition, called Pictures for a Hospice, which runs from March 22 to 26 at the Trades Union Congress centre in London. Mr Kinnock will act as auctioneer.

It will feature pictures from the exhibition Mr Jarvis put on with Tim Brighouse, former commissioner for London schools, about education in the capital in 2004.

The two girls pictured are from a school Mr Jarvis attended in the 1930s - then Plaistow Municipal Secondary School in East London, now Newham Sixth Form College.

Mr Jarvis was an amateur photographer throughout his time as president of the National Union of Students in the 1950s and at the NUT, where he worked until 1989.