Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, should resign

[noblegiraffe]

Let's judge him on his record. His two stated priorities:

1. Students smoothly get the exam results they deserve

2. Schools re-open in a way that is safe for your children

Target 1: Not met. The exams fiasco will go down in education history as the biggest shambles ever, including the time Y9 SATs paper were lost by the company paid to mark them.

Target 2: Not met. Latest data shows that 55% of state secondary schools had children isolating due to contact with a positive case at school on 22nd October. 39% of secondary children in Knowsley were out of school - an area with one of the highest deprivation rates in the country.

In addition:
Universities return - turns out having massive movement of young people around the country led to massive outbreaks of covid. To be fair, that was impossible to predict.

Free School Meals: Gavin tried to blame Rishi for not giving him any money. Rishi countered with the fact that Gav hadn't asked for any money. Gav himself voted to let children go hungry so clearly wasn't going to fight for it.

Laptops for the disadvantaged: In the best DfE tradition of dropping shit on headteacher's laps just as they break up for a holiday, the number of laptops allocated for disadvantaged kids was slashed just as it became a legal requirement for schools to provide remote education for isolating pupils. How can they fulfil that requirement without the resources, Gav?

Throughout this, Gavin has been basically invisible, except for a photoshoot with a whip.

YABU: Gav has met his targets and deserves a pay rise
YANBU: Gav should resign

This is great, we’ve agreed to sack Gav and found a good replacement within an evening.

Boris - Gav out, Bob in please.

Ermmmm… nooooooo. Halfon local ish to me. Might want to research him a bit first....

Caroline Ansell was French teacher. Admittedly in private schools but it's a start.

Oh no what has he done, Piggy?

Have to bear in mind he’s a Tory so never going to be perfect.

Voting to feed hungry kids is a pretty low bar but only 5 made it over.

still waters

www.thesun.co.uk/news/5428082/defence-secretary-gavin-williamson-admits-fling-with-married-colleague-but-insists-wife-has-forgiven-him/

Caroline Ansell's DH is also a teacher.

They both (Bob and her) have somewhat dubious views about homosexuality and are both very religious, in a rather zealous fashion.

if we are going to criticise Gav for sexual Olympics,we need to look at Halfon, too...

And expenses.

But they are both better than Gav.

One of the problems with Gavin Williamson is that he doesn't seem to have any ideas about education. I'm no fan of Michael Gove, but at least he had a (daft!) vision about what he wanted to see in the education sector. I don't think Gavin has the intelligence or imagination to do so . He was probably very good at selling fireplaces.

are both very religious, in a rather zealous fashion.
....
if we are going to criticise Gav for sexual Olympics,we need to look at Halfon, too...

...not that zealously religious then!!

Halfon voted for gay marriage in NI in 2019 so hopefully has updated his views from previously.

Smiley yes, once upon a time there were people on all sides with competence and principles and decency (allowing for the necessity to stick to party lines a lot) so that people would actually resign. Seems a long time ago now. I don't expect any of them to be perfect, but so few are even competent it's scary. In other walks of life, they'd be fired. And whatever happened to leadership?

Well here’s a shortlist. The 5 Conservative MPs who voted in favour of not letting kids go hungry. They seem to at least like children.
Urgh, no that Anne Marie Morris woman is the "N**r in the woodpile" woman. Totally apt that this is the 'best' of the Tories.

Yanbu at all.
Gav Williamson fluent in stupid.

14 people have voted for a pay rise for Gav. Did they misunderstand which button to press?

eddiemair
Yes, my Labour member old boss liked Gove as he said he was one of the first education ministers to be aspirational for working class kids at comps, introducing compulsory Shakespeare and more focus on grammar etc. Unfortunately Gove didn’t actually trust teachers to deliver his vision!

Gove might have been completely odious, destroyed the teaching profession, set in motion too many massive changes too quickly and was just awful, but at least you could see where he was coming from. His plans were terrible but they were coherent.

No idea what Gav stands for. Or Nicky, Justine or dear, bland old Damian.

Boris is in a difficult position.

Having sacked, deselected, demoted oe ennobled all the MPs with inteligence, experience and a backbone, he is left with only the B-team who will obey Cummings orders and pretent to be No-Deal Bexit Enthusiasts

imagine having a cabinet where the Chancellor lost his job because he wouldn't submit to Cummings domination!

So there is probably nobody competent available to do the job.

Williamson is not the only one.

Shakespeare was compulsory long before Gove...

Not at KS3, IIRC.

The leaking secrets thing. That’s something you just don’t do. So the fact he did it proves he is so stupid he actually thinks he’s clever which is a bit tragic really.

piggywaspushed studying a whole text wasn’t though. The GCSE coursework on the previous spec could have been done well by reading one scene.

Out of a highly incompetent bunch, Gav really is a stand out performer. Or he would be if he wasn't so bland so as to make him entirely forgettable.

Halfon is going a great job on the ed committee but is far too much of a thorn in Bojo's/Cummings side to get into the cabinet.

@titchy

* In addition: Universities return - turns out having massive movement of young people around the country led to massive outbreaks of covid. To be fair, that was impossible to predict.*

Actually the uni sector was telling Gav all summer that one. So entirely predictable.

He won't resign though, he was chief whip- he knows too many secrets.

Yes they were telling him this A blind man on a horse could see the students thronging together like young people at uni do would lead to a tonne of Covid cases. He had the landlords to keep sweet too so it was nothing about education.

He is a wretch

Tbf giraffe you didn’t like Gove. You mentioned it a couple of times

you didn’t want students ranked

or Roman numerals taught

didn’t approve of AS entries going down

or performance related pay

or the new maths GCSE

and English a level too

You don’t appear to think much of greening

you don’t like this idea

or this

Or Hinds

here

and here

or here

I’m not searching for what you think about Balls I can tell you education was a farce at that point, though.

tbf giraffe you didn’t like Gove.

I had to scroll up to see if I’d inadvertently made a comment where I suggested I did like Gove, but I think I was pretty clear!

I don’t think even Gove likes Gove, sometimes! I owe him one for sacking off the CAs, though.

Balls got rid of coursework in maths so I don’t even need to give Gove credit for that.