OCTOBER NEWSLETTER SUPPLEMENT
More ministerial appointments at the Department for Education (DfE) and more proposals for post-16 education reform have been made since the last newsletter was circulated. So, we thought you might find useful if we issued a supplement that briefly outlined what these are.
FURTHER DFE MINISTERIAL APPOINTMENTS
As you will know, Gillian Keegan was appointed as Secretary of State for Education in England, replacing Kit Malthouse who resigned on 25 October after just 49 days in office. Ms Keegan is the fifth Education Secretary to be appointed in four months. She is also a former Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills in England, having been an apprentice herself when she was younger
Ms Keegan has now been joined at the DfE by:
- Robert Halfon. Mr Halfon is he current Chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, has been appointed as Minister for Skills and Apprenticeships, replacing Andrea Jenkyns. He is also a former Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills and his re-appointment to this role means that another MP will need to be elected to take over from him as Chair of the Education Select Committee.
- Nick Gibb. Mr Gibb returns to the DfE as Minister for Schools Standards, replacing Jonathan Gullis. He returns to the position he held for more ten years before losing it in a ministerial reshuffle last year.
- Claire Coutinho. Ms Coutinho has replaced Kelly Tolhurst as Minister for Schools and Childhood.
A full list of ministerial appointments across all government departments can be found here.
Perhaps surprisingly, Gavin Williamson has returned to the Cabinet as Minister of State Without Portfolio. Sir Gavin (he has since been knighted), is a former Education Secretary who was in post when exams were cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic. He faced protests from students and their parents and criticism from the media when most of the exam grades awarded by teachers in that year were adjusted downwards by a DfE/Ofqual algorithm. The algorithm was quickly abandoned in favour of teacher assessed grades (TAGs), which were also used in 2021.
MORE POST-16 EDUCATION REFORMS PROPOSED
New prime minister Rishi Sunak says he wants to see more reforms to post-16 education. These include:
- The replacement of GCSEs and A-Levels with a new ‘British Baccalaureate’. These would include the study English and maths up to age 18, along with personal development and research projects. (Presumably, this would actually be an ‘English’ baccalaureate since the devolved UK governments have responsibility for their own education policies). Robert Halfon is also known to be supportive of the introduction of a baccalaureate for 18-year-olds which, he says, should be ‘holistic’ and comprised of academic and technical skills, combined with personal development.
- More government investment in education and skills. However, rather than providing more funding for existing colleges, Mr Sunak has proposed the establishment of a number of new ‘elite technical institutes ‘to transform vocational training’. Presumably, these would be similar to the two new ‘elite vocational colleges for the north’, proposed by Kit Malthouse during his brief tenure as Education Secretary.
Since the current government has only two years left to implement any further reforms before the next general election it seems more likely that these proposals will form part of the Conservative Party’s next general election manifesto which may, or may not, be implemented depending on the election outcome.
AND FINALLY…
A college lecturer was teaching an ESOL class. She said, ‘I normally comes before E, but can anyone give me an example of an exception to this rule’. Her students thought about this for a while, then one of them said ‘Yes, Old Macdonald had a farm’.
Alan Birks – October 2022
As usual, the views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those held by Click.
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