Tory MP Robert Halfon says Junior Education Minister Andrea Jenkyns must apologise for her one-finger salute to voters.
Mr Halfon, the chair of the Parliamentary Education Select Committee, also said the recent merry-go-round of changes in the Department of Education risked seeing kids being left behind.
Yesterday Ms Jenkyns released a Twitter statement in which she explained why she’d stuck a finger up at the public as she walked into Downing Street last week.
But speaking to GB News, Mr Haflon, the MP for Harlow, Essex, indicated she needed to go further: “Well, I hope that the minister who was doing the hand gestures apologises. I think that’s quite important.
“This is a caretaker government. It will be in space for a few weeks and I’m guessing whoever gets elected leader will maybe appoint a new education team, but I do worry. I think this is symbolic of how Education is always the poorer relation compared to other areas of policy, particularly economics, and the Health Department, the NHS.
“Everyone talks about protecting the NHS and yet we don’t talk about protecting our children’s futures. If you just go back to the draft terms of the COVID inquiry, it didn’t even mention children until myself and many others lobbied very hard for it to be put in.
“And I think that we’re in danger of carrying on the damage that we have done to over two years of school closures for most pupils by not looking after these children properly and making sure they get the best education they possibly can, despite the remarkable efforts of teachers and support staff.”
Asked if he believes that education is being disrupted by the leadership election, Mr Halfon told Alastair Stewart: “Well, it’s a huge concern. We’ve had three education secretaries in a week. I’m very worried about what is going on. I think that there is a serious problem with the catch-up programme. It’s not reaching the most disadvantaged pupils, there are no big regional variations.
“There’s also a significant problem with the number of absent children. We’ve still got 124,000 ghost children’s not returned to school. We’ve got 1.7 million persistently absent children – that has gone up by 100,000.
“What is the government going to do to get those kids back to school by September? The Children’s Commissioner came to my committee and said she wanted them all back by September, but how are they going to make this happen? We’ve got exams coming up. Are disadvantaged pupils going to be unfairly affected because many of them weren’t in school during lockdown?”
He added: “I’d like to know what any of the leadership candidates are going to do to address deep social injustice in education. Last week, on Friday, our education select committee published a big report on the poor outcomes of children in care in terms of their education. Of course, it didn’t get much coverage because everything was focused on the leadership contest. But just 7% of these children get decent GCSE Maths and English, just 2% do apprenticeships, and just 39% of children aged 19 leave care and get into employment or training.
“Nothing is said about this. We know that 5% of children who are excluded only get Maths and English GCSE. White working-class boys and girls are underperforming compared to almost every other ethnic group. I’m talking about white working-class boys and girls on free school meals. So what is the government going to do about that?
“So if any of the leadership candidates are talking about reforms to the education system, what I want to know is how are they going to deal with the COVID deficit? How are they going to get absent children back into school? How are they going to address deep social injustice and how are they going to maintain standards and support the teaching profession?
“I also want to know if they have any new ideas, for example, there’s been a lot of talk about replacing A-levels with a British Baccalaureate.”
