Kelly Tolhurst has been appointed as an education minister, as schools minister Will Quince moves to the Department of Health.
Tolhurst, a former housing minister who is MP for Rochester and Strood, was the first junior minister to be appointed to the Department for Education under new prime minister Liz Truss.
However Quince, responsible for overseeing schools and SEND review, has moved on. Like Quince, Tolhurst is a minister of state, but her exact portfolio is yet to be confirmed.
On Thursday evening, Downing Street announced that Andrea Jenkyns, who has held the further and higher education brief since July, had been reappointed as a DfE minister, though again, her brief has not yet been confirmed.
Brendan Clarke-Smith, who succeeded Quince in the children’s minister brief in July, has moved to the Cabinet Office.
It means the DfE has three confirmed ministers, after Kit Malthouse was made education secretary on Tuesday night.
Tolhurst was first elected in 2015, when she beat former UKIP MP Mark Reckless to the Kent seat he had won the year before in a byelection.
She served in a string of junior ministerial jobs, including small business minister, aviation and maritime minister and minister for housing and rough sleeping.
Following the resignation of deputy chief whip Chris Pincher earlier this year, Tolhurst took on the role until her promotion today.
Her Rochester and Strood seat is in Medway, a selective area. Liz Truss has pledged to lift the ban on new grammar schools.
She has previously said that “grammars in Kent have worked and have done wonders for the education of many of our young people, and I am proud that family backgrounds have
not been a restriction to learning”.
Further appointments are expected.
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