David Laws | Schools Week

David Laws and Natalie Perera, Executive chairman and Executive director, Education Policy Institute

I’m at the new Education Policy Institute offices at 9am on a sweltering Monday to meet its executive chairman, the former Liberal Democrat schools minister David Laws, and Natalie Perera, an ex-civil servant turned executive director. I’m envisioning some kind of breakfast banter over croissants, a la Richard and Judy, or maybe more Fern and […]

Revealed: How Gove was forced to create UTCs

As education secretary, Michael Gove was forced to create university technology colleges by George Osborne and David Cameron, a former senior minister has revealed. David Laws, a Liberal Democrat who served as schools minister in the coalition government from 2012 to 2015, told Schools Week that Gove “never liked” the policy, but had it “imposed” […]

Access to the best secondary schools ‘hasn’t improved since 2010’

Access to high-performing secondary schools has not improved since 2010, and has become more geographically unequal, according to a report by the Education Policy Institute. The think-tank compared the availability of places in “high-performing secondary schools” – those with good value-added scores over a four-year period. It found that around a fifth of local authority […]