{"id":199142,"date":"2025-10-14T10:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T10:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/199142\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T10:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T10:06:07","slug":"many-mistakes-were-made-in-planning-for-school-closures-williamson-tells-covid-inquiry-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/199142\/","title":{"rendered":"Many mistakes were made in planning for school closures, Williamson tells Covid inquiry &#8211; live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Gavin Williamson?published at 10:16 BST<\/p>\n<p>10:16 BST<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Gavin Williamson\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/ace\/standard\/640\/cpsprodpb\/vivo\/live\/images\/2025\/10\/14\/1bed9a50-b4db-4c20-b1f0-692616ad5140.jpg.webp\"  width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, PA MediaImage caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gavin Williamson in 2020 at his office at the Department of Education in Westminster<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gavin Williamson, who is speaking now, served as education secretary for just over two years under Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He began his parliamentary career in 2010 and became chief whip under Theresa May, who later promoted him to defence secretary in November 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Williamson was sacked two years later after facing accusations of leaking information from a top-level National Security Council meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was back in the cabinet less than three months later, when Johnson named him education secretary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When the pandemic broke in 2020, he became responsible for tricky areas including home-learning and the return to the classroom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He faced fierce criticism for his handling of the 2020 school exam period, which saw multiple U-turns on grading after exams were cancelled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Williamson was ultimately dismissed in September 2021 and received a knighthood the following year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who is Gavin Williamson?published at 10:16 BST 10:16 BST Image source, PA MediaImage caption, Gavin Williamson in 2020&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-199142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}