Stepping out of her current role as higher and further education minister, Donelan will have to quickly take on a mess of unfinished business left by Zahawi in his short 10-month tenure, notably the schools bill which last week the new chancellor was forced to erupted after opposition from former ministers and Lords supporters. But Donelan has impressed those who work with her for her no-nonsense attitude, and as someone who – unlike Zahawi or Johnson – has no interest in office crimes or making friends. As universities minister she was more often seen advising young people not to go to university, repeatedly claiming that young people were being “led” into taking on debt and decades of paying back degrees that might not be worth it. Under her watch, the student loan system in England has been reformed so that the less well-off pay back more for longer, and plans are being made to limit loans for unqualified applicants or for courses deemed to be of low quality. Donelan also led a political attack on the number of first class degrees awarded by universities and blamed those with high dropout rates. Her belief in taking immediate action led her to telephone vice-chancellors directly with complaints or requests. More recently, Russell Group vice-chancellors were surprised when Donelan called them pushing them to make more undergraduate offers this year. Last week Donelan further angered university leaders when she sent them letters making what they saw as unreasonable demands. The vice-chancellors responded by saying that “an important line has been crossed” with Donnellan’s letter. But a public row with the vice-chancellors does not hurt the eyes of the current cabinet. Donelan herself went to a state school in Cheshire, and studied history and politics at York University, but her first public appearance in politics involved a speech at a Conservative party conference aged 15 – a year younger than premature William Hague. . Her career saw her working in marketing for World Wrestling Entertainment in the US. Returning to the UK, he eventually contested and won the Chippenham seat in Wiltshire in 2015, making it a safe seat in 2017 and 2019. As Education Secretary Donelan will have to oversee the higher education freedom of speech bill going through parliament, as well as the schools bill left tattered by Zahawi, having removed clauses that seek to give the DfE more authority in the extensive and lightly regulated field of academies. in England. And Donelan will soon have to deal with teacher pay rises and possible strikes in the autumn if her offer proves insufficient. Zahawi dropped another ticking time bomb: GCSE and A-level results expected in August, which will see top grades collapse after two years of pandemic-induced inflation, causing misery and bad headlines. But Johnson and his government may not last – and whoever is education secretary in August, when the results are published, will be anyone’s guess.
