Who is Kemi Badenoch?

[RoyalCorgi]

Interesting article about Kemi Badenoch - hope someone else has a share token. It says she was behind the decision to issue a section 35 order to stop the Scottish GRR bill going through, and that she'd been working on it in the background for several months, even though it was Alister Jack who eventually issued the order:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/who-is-kemi-badenoch-rottweiler-about-to-step-out-of-the-shadows-dkhmrzd3t

Share token here

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f8b2ddf0-e051-11ed-b345-4f26be9c4278?shareToken=ac122e936d197964cf4047c15cfa1ab1

Hope it works.

She’s bright and hardworking- has a Masters degree in Engineering and a Law degree. Is also very definitely gender critical. Possible future leader.

but has awful ideas about education, and particularly special needs

The downside is she is a free market fundamentalist who shares the views of Patrick Minford - and Liz Truss - on the economy.

Preferable to the quasi fascist Braverman I suppose. But there's a world of Future Leaders gone from politics. Like Anna Soubry or Rory Stewart. It's almost as if being leadership material rules you out of the job?

My God! The nasty, personal comments about Kemi on the message board are shocking.

I can't quite work out whether they are from stuffed shirt Tory 'gentlemen' or from obsessional Labour trolls - or maybe a bit of both.

Yes she has the future leader air about her.

I actually think she'll be brilliant in opposition too.

I agree she will be good in opposition. The article made me wonder if they will take action on the petition. I think overall they should. Looking at it coldly, doing it now - if they lose - means they'll be able to really challenge Labour if they win. Same with gender woo in schools and elsewhere. If they don't, the charge will be "why didn't you care enough to change in when you were in government?"

Labour have been so awful in opposition. I was really disappointed in their covid performance for example. It was Tory backbenchers that got us out of endless lockdowns.

The article itself is strange. It's like they're assessing her for a job. Which it kind of is but kind of isn't. I don't think I've seen an assessment of male MPs with perceived "leadership gaps" before. And there is loads of scope for column inches in that regard!

I'm afraid Rory is lost to the gender wars. Too bad, I really rated him once. He's too busy playing at politics with Alastair Campbell to do the real thing.

I don't think we really know what her thinking is on this. She's made a few comments on specific things, but not really how she sees it all working together.

I like her a lot. And yeah, Rory's a disappointment.

I'd be interested to know more because there is nothing about Special Ed in the article. What do you know about her ideas on Education and Special Ed, PaltnSepper?

It was from when she ran for leader last summer, not this article. She was in favour of cutting out things like TAs, no individual needs in education, bigger classes, no fun stuff, etc. Can't remember the exact wording now but I was appalled at the time after reading her campaign material. There were threads about it at the time.

My sense is that she doesn't think the current arrangements work, but I'd like to know what she'd see as an alternative.

Well that took some digging out! Out of all the Mumsnet threads about Badenoch there were a handful of posts that basically said no more than you did about education, with no details and no citations.

One post mentioned her Leadership Campaign launch speech so I have tracked it down to this quote in The Guardian:

Culture warrior Kemi Badenoch is already a winner with Tory right
13 July 2022

"Her official campaign speech on Tuesday stressed her desire for “free markets [and] limited government”, promising that an administration led by her would “discard the priorities of Twitter”.

As with most speeches, there were few specifics, but what ideas for waste-trimming it did contain might be difficult to put into practice, for example the idea that money could be saved by taking resources from “superfluous support staff and peripheral activities” in schools."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/13/kemi-badenoch-tory-leadership-culture-wars

There was a letter in response on 14 July:

Nick Toms is worried by Kemi Badenoch’s idea to cut down on support staff in schools

As the former chair of governors at Jubilee primary school, where Kemi Badenoch was a governor, I am shocked that she can say resources can be saved from “superfluous support staff and peripheral activities” in schools (Culture warrior Kemi Badenoch is already a winner with Tory right, 13 July).

As she will know from her time at the school, which serves some of the most deprived parts of Brixton, south London, there are no superfluous support staff. Teaching assistants play a vital role in aiding teachers in classes where many of the children come from highly disadvantaged backgrounds and need all the help they can get. Some are allocated to specific children as part of their educational needs assessment. There are no unnecessary office staff.

I do not know what she means by peripheral activities. If she means depriving children of sport or music opportunities, then that is shameful. To my recollection, at no point during her time as a governor did Ms Badenoch ever propose cuts in staff or activities for our children. She knew then that it would be unacceptable. It’s even more wrong now, when state schools are struggling for funds following Covid, with much already cut to the bone.

Ms Badenoch’s position is surprising for someone who was equalities minister. Cuts of this sort would inevitably lead to a widening of the gulf between the poorest in our society and those who attend private schools. Ms Badenoch’s war on woke appears to mean a war on some of the most underprivileged and vulnerable in our society for her own political and personal gain.
Nick Toms
Brixton, London

I wasn't able to find any more details about what exactly she meant and searched Twitter for her Twitter handle plus "superfluous".

The only thing of note that turned up, ie. factual rather than abuse or just "I disagree" type tweets, backs her up:

Thread by Solomon Kingsnorth:

https://twitter.com/solomon_teach/status/1546962764010340352

which links to a chapter from this book:

Bad Education: Debunking Myths in Education

https://www.mheducation.co.uk/bad-education-debunking-myths-in-education-9780335246014-emea-group#tab-label-product-description-title

Chapter 5
Supporting learning?: How effective are teaching assistants?
Rob Webster and Peter Blatchford

https://maximisingtas.co.uk/assets/content/bad-education-tas-chapter.pdf

The Chapter is hosted on this website:

Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants
https://maximisingtas.co.uk/research.php

The MITA approach has been independently evaluated, completed April 2023:

Training and support for heads, teachers and teaching assistants on how to use TAs in the classroom
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/maximising-the-impact-of-teaching-assistants

---

The basic argument, from skimming that lot, seems to be:

> simply increasing the number of TAs proportional to Teachers has resulted in poorer educational outcomes

> Teachers agree with this evaluation

> there would be better outcomes from better training, deployment and support of fewer TA's

----
Solomon Kingsnorth is a pseudonym. The writer is a primary school teacher who blogs on education policy
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/solomon-kingsnorth

The TA stuff is very interesting. Would be good to see a breakdown by key stage or even primary Vs secondary. I used to teach secondary and I can definitely see where that's coming from. Some were great but really they were more of a behaviour management tool at that stage than helping learning and progress. Some were just useless. Some were entirely manipulated by the kids - I had one boy who, if he was in my lesson with no TA, would stay the whole lesson and usually get some work done, after a lot of behaviour management to start with. But if he had a TA with him, he'd kick off massively and refuse to work until she would take him off to the inclusion suite to have a drink and a play on a Chromebook. His book would come back to me with the date and title written in (by her) and nothing else done. So I can see how the negative progress can arise.

She is highly intelligent impressive and has courage, speaks with clarity and has opinions which are more interesting than the usual cut-and-paste right wing stuff. I was disappointed with her for saying (replying to a Labour MP in a debate about expanding the list of protected characteristics) that you couldn't expect a Conservative to consider a left wing solution. I think any politician, especially a PM, should be open to any coherent solution, whatever its provenance. She sounds a bit like the kind of person whose mind is impossible to change once made up. This can be a huge strength or a huge weakness. KB reminds me of Thatcher in some ways. I see her as an exceptional Minister, but I wouldn't want her as Prime Minister.

Interestingly the author of this article was being lambasted on here last week for "pushing labour" by writing the DH interview
I'd be interested to read about Badenoch but the share token doesn't work - anyone else got one?

A recent thread Elspyth:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5001696-in-praise-of-kemi-badenoch?reply=132884743

From Janice's twitter:
https://x.com/LyntonBRB/status/1755933727123796306?s=20

Given your position re the trans issues - it's a bit disingenuous to say that your choice of interviewee is not, at least in part, an endorsement of some positions she holds.

Must be doing a good job when both sides think she supports the other one