Claire Coutinho has been appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Department for Education this evening.
The move means that all four DfE posts held by MPs have been filled by new appointees since Rishi Sunak became prime minister on Monday.
Gillian Keegan was appointed education secretary on Tuesday, and Nick Gibb and Robert Halfon were announced as ministers yesterday.
Ms Coutinho is the Conservative MP for East Surrey, having been elected to Parliament in the last election in 2019.
Coutinho was privately educated at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich before reading mathematics and philosophy at the University of Oxford.
After graduating, she worked as an associate at the investment bank Merrill Lynch.
For the past month she has been the minister for disabled people, having been appointed under former prime minister Liz Truss.
Before this week’s reshuffle, the ministerial posts at the DfE were held by Jonathan Gullis (schools), Kelly Tolhurst (schools and childhood) and Andrea Jenkyns (skills).
There has been no official announcement about their departures, but on his Linkedin page Mr Gullis lists his stint as schools minister as having concluded in October 2022.
Although portfolios have yet to be announced, Mr Gibb is expected to return to the role of schools minister, which he held from 2010-2012 and from 2014-2021.
