One of the great mysteries of Boris Johnson’s government is how Gavin Williamson has survived so long as Education Secretary. Labour regularly demands his resignation for failing a generation of schoolchildren during the Covid-19 pandemic. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, calls him “the worst education secretary in living memory”. Asked to grade cabinet ministers, even Conservative Party members ranked him bottom in the ConservativeHome website’s latest survey, with a satisfaction rating of minus 35.9.
Mary Bousted, the leader of the National Education Union (NEU), which has more than 450,000 members, told me: “Teachers have no confidence in him. They regard him as hopelessly and terminally incompetent, and they just expect from him poor decisions made on inadequate evidence which will make their already hard lives even harder… The teaching profession hold him in contempt.” In a poll of 6,000 teachers, 92 per cent said he should step down.
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