A GRIEVOUS oversight troubles the Diary this week. What has Estelle Morris done to upset Good Housekeeping magazine?
The Diary’s favourite school standards minister is inexplicably missing from this noted
journal of public affairs’ list of the most influential women in Britain.
The 100 named are “movers, shakers and women with global clout”, but there’s Estelle’s further education colleague, Tessa Blackstone, up there at number three, pipped only by Elizabeth Murdoch (who she?) and Baroness Jay, but more powerful than Mo Mowlem and Cherie Booth.
There’s the ministerial Jenny-come-lately Margaret Hodge at 17 - DFEE meetings should be interesting. Anthea Millett is at 54, despite being just weeks away from retiring from the Teacher Training Agency. And, at 74, is Dame Pat Collarbone, ex-Hackney head, director of the London leadership college and more influential, apparently, than the Queen (at 89).
Even an obscure education secretary from the 1970s makes it in at 95 - a Margaret Thatcher. Whatever happened to her?
Estelle is too modest to comment, but surely she’s at least as important as Carol Vorderman?
