New Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has made her first major appointment to the opposition front bench, naming former minister Laura Trott as her shadow education secretary.
Ms Trott will work alongside former minister Neil O’Brien, who, it is understood, has been named as shadow education minister.
Both will be on the opposition front bench for education oral questions in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon.
Ms Badenoch has been at the party’s headquarters in Westminster on Monday, deciding who will be in her top team.
The new shadow education secretary
Ms Trott, who is the MP for Sevenoaks, was previously a political adviser for education and family policy when David Cameron was prime minister.
She was credited with coming up with the Conservatives’ tax-free childcare policy, and was chief secretary to the Treasury under former party leader Rishi Sunak.
Ms Trott replaces former education secretary Damian Hinds in the shadow role.
She attended Oxted School in Surrey, part of the Howard Partnership Trust. When it opened, Oxted was the first mixed grammar school in Surrey.
Mr O’Brien, MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, attended All Saints Catholic College and Greenhead College in Huddersfield. He has previously been parliamentary under-secretary of state for primary care and public health and for levelling up.
Both MPs studied at the University of Oxford.
Mr Hinds became shadow education secretary in July after Gillian Keegan, who was education secretary in the Conservative government, lost her seat in the election,
The Conservative government had five education secretaries in 2022 alone. Ms Keegan took up the post in October of that year.
A Unesco report published last week flagged up concern about the high turnover of education secretaries in the UK. There have been 10 since 2015.
The report warned that short tenures make education reform more difficult to achieve.
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