Zahawi pledges white paper to tackle illiteracy and innumeracy

Newly appointed education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, today vowed to use his own experiences of being shaped by the British education system to harness the “talent and potential” that exists “in all corners of the country”.

Addressing the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Baghdad born Zahawi said the UK “took in a young Kurdish boy, without a word of English, and made him a cabinet minister.”

Zahawi relinquished his role as vaccines minister to take over from Gavin Williamson as education secretary, but he linked his old and new jobs by paying tribute to the University of Oxford and its role in creating the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Looking ahead, he vowed to tackle inequality in education and said the new schools white paper would set out plans to tackle illiteracy and innumeracy, noting that 40% of education inequality is baked in by the age of five.

He also reaffirmed that “ensuring our children recover what they lost during the pandemic is a moral imperative.”