Farcical week shows education needs a long-term vision

As Lenin put it, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen”. Well, over the past few days, it seems as if decades of change have taken place every other hour.

So, at the time of writing (Friday morning), James Cleverly is Education Secretary (the third this week), while the only other ministers in the Department for Education are Will Quince (who has returned a day after resigining) and Baroness Barran. Boris Johnson intends to remain in charge of a caretaker government until a new Prime Minister is appointed and presumably shuffles the ministerial deck of cards once more.

If that results in another Education Secretary, it will be the eighth since Michael Gove’s tenure ended in 2014.