Johnson Forces Out Top Education Official to Quell Tory Anger
Boris Johnson’s School Face Mask Reversal Outrages U.K. Tories
(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson forced out Britain’s top education civil servant, seeking to distance himself from a series of recent mishaps and policy U-turns that have prompted growing outrage from his own Conservative Party.
“The Prime Minister has concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership at the Department for Education,” a government statement said Wednesday, announcing the departure of Jonathan Slater, who’d been in the post for four years. His removal follows the resignation this week of the head of England’s exams regulator, Sally Collier, after a controversy where the government was forced to regrade results from exams children didn’t sit.
The twin moves are a sign of Johnson aiming to wrestle back the initiative on education, which has been marked by chaos in recent weeks and has become a lightning rod of discontent about the government’s handling of the virus crisis, including from Johnson’s own Members of Parliament. It’s also become a key economic issue: if Johnson is to achieve his goal of returning British life to normal, he needs schools to re-open so parents can go back to work.
The announcement of the change of personnel at the Department for Education followed the latest reversal on education policy that had upset Johnson’s Conservatives, when the government said English children over the age of 11 would be required to wear face masks in schools if they live in areas with high levels of coronavirus.
‘How Stressful’
Until Tuesday, the government had insisted masks would not be needed even as Scotland had already made it mandatory in their secondary schools. Late that day, a new policy was announced.
“We’re a government that is dealing with a global pandemic,” Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told BBC Radio on Wednesday, defending his handling of his brief. “We’re having to deal with challenges that I certainly could never have imagined.”
In an address to schoolchildren on their first day back streamed live on Twitter, Johnson blamed a “mutant algorithm” for disrupting exam grades, acknowledging “how stressful” it was for students, but stopped short of apologizing for his government’s errors. He reiterated he is determined to get children back in class.
“The risk to your health is not from Covid because, statistically speaking, your chances of suffering from that disease are very, very low,” Johnson told pupils at a secondary school in Leicestershire in the east Midlands. “The greatest risk you face now is continuing to be out of school.”
England’s schools are due to reopen at the start of September. Under the new guidance, staff and pupils in secondary schools in areas subject to local lockdowns must wear masks when moving around the building and in communal areas where social distancing is difficult to maintain. They won’t be required in classrooms.
In less risky areas, it will be up to head teachers to decide whether masks are a requirement.
The change comes after mounting pressure from teachers and labor unions to make schools safer. But it has outraged many in Johnson’s Conservative Party.
“The government just cannot make this stuff up now on the hoof,” Charles Walker, a usually loyal Tory who is vice chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, told Times Radio. “Saying one thing on Monday, changing its mind on Tuesday, something different presented on Wednesday. It’s just not acceptable.”
He is not the only rank-and-file lawmaker to be angry. Marcus Fysh, who is a supporter of Johnson in taking a hard-line Brexit approach, is openly critical of the premier’s handling of school re-openings.
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