Sighs of relief were heaved as Gavin Williamson was finally shuffled out of Education (but not into deserved oblivion, instead being knighted for 'services to not publishing Boris kompromat').
The chaos of the DfE, the unclear and nonsensical guidelines, the shambles around school closures, the leaving it till the very last minute to tell schools what they should be doing, the exams disaster were blamed on his useless leadership.
So when Nadhim Zahawi was appointed, people looked forward to a more 'evidence-based' approach. He'd been seen as doing a good job as vaccines minister, so surely a safe pair of hands.
So have things got better?
No. Things have got to the point where the generally exceptionally reasonable headteachers' unions, the ASCL and NAHT have been forced to publish an open letter to Nadhim Zahawi pointing out that there's a crisis in schools and that he is doing nothing to fix it and indeed possibly making things worse. They have written previous letters to Zahawi and he has not even bothered to respond.
What are the issues? Covid chaos in schools, pupils without teachers, year groups being sent home. Nonsensical guidelines being sent to schools at the very last minute. Concerns about being able to effectively run imminent exams given huge levels of staff and pupil absence - and the horror that the govt plan to go ahead with publishing league tables with the results of these.
Basically, it sounds like exactly the same mess we had under Gav. The letter says that headteachers and school leaders are at the end of their tether and are stepping down due to lack of support.
Was it not a Gav issue, but simply Tory policy to create chaos in education and refuse to talk to school leaders about how to fix it?
The letter is worth a read:
www.ascl.org.uk/ASCL/media/ASCL/News/Press%20releases/Joint-letter-to-Secretary-of-State-Lack-of-support-for-pupils-and-staff-4-April-2022.pdf