FE Week has today exclusively announced that our sector’s new apprenticeships and skills minister will be Anne Milton, a former nurse and MP for Guildford.
Here we have pulled together a few key facts about Anne, to help you get to know your next FE and skills representative:
- Anne Milton was born on November 3, 1955, in Sussex
- She was educated at Haywards Heath Grammar School (which later became Haywards Heath Sixth Form College in 1980, then Central Sussex College Sixth Form Campus in 2005)
- She trained as a nurse at London South Bank University and St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London
- Ms Milton worked as a nurse for the NHS for 25 years, specialising in palliative care
- She has four children and lives with her husband in Guildford, where she has been the Member of Parliament for Guildford since 2005
- From May 2015 to June 2017 Ms Milton was deputy chief whip in the House of Commons – she was reportedly one of the most effective and respected whips in her party
- In March 2015, she was appointed to the Privy Council, the body which advises the Queen on carrying out her duties
- Milton was parliamentary under-secretary (the lowest of three tiers of government minister) for the department of health between May 2010 and September 2013
- In summer 2007 David Cameron appointed her shadow minister for health, and the year before this she was shadow minister for culture and tourism
- Her voting record shows that she voted in favour of scrapping the education maintenance allowance in England on Jan 19, 2011
- Her election campaign leaflet championed the need for young voters to turn out, saying: “It’s always a huge pleasure to visit schools, colleges and the university to make sure young people understand more about politics and why it’s so important for them to be involved.”
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Images: PA/PA Archive/PA Images
Dear Anne
Many congratulations on your appointment. I wonder if I might just take a moment of your time to ask if you wouldn’t mind asking your advisors about the policy of Further Education students on study programmes being mandated to resit their GCSE in English and / or maths if they didn’t achieve a grade C / grade 4? The thing is, it’s not the right thing for the students, the employers think it’s a daft idea, and actually, Ofsted have come out in favour of scrapping it too. It causes quite a lot of consternation, and we honestly thought that the DfE were going to have a rethink about it, in time for the next academic intake – but then, well, the election was announced. If you’d like some guidance, I’ve got a really straight-forward strategy, ready to go, and Government wouldn’t look like it was back-tracking – more of an evolution really. Happy to give you some guidance!
Lindsey Johnson
Vice Principal
West Suffolk College
I’d like to know why Anne voted to cut the ESA. It’s incredibly sickening that a former nurse would choose to cut the payments that disabled people get.