FROM THE CHAIR

As some of our readers will know all too well, youth comes but once in a lifetime. In our penultimate issue of The House magazine for 2021, we take the young as our theme.

The new Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi had an unusual childhood by Westminster standards – when he was a young boy, his family fled Iraq for the UK. He tells us his upbringing gave him “a true appreciation of why education is so important and just how amazing this country and its education system is”, and talks to us about his departmental brief as the system seeks to rebuild from the blows inflicted on it by Covid.

Uppermost in his in-tray will be the need to improve relations with the teaching unions; elsewhere in the magazine, the National Education Union’s Dr Mary Bousted tells us of her concerns about an exodus of teachers from the profession. It’s far from the only challenge: experts warn that lockdowns have resulted in young people feeling isolated, their schooling disrupted, and suffering greater mental strain: Tom Hunter from Dods Monitoring provides an analysis.

What of the youths of Parliament? Elsewhere in the magazine, we talk to former Liberal Democrat MP Lord Taylor of Goss Moor and former Labour MP Pamela Nash about what it’s like to be the Baby of the House, and our cover stars Alex Davies-Jones and Anthony Mangnall tell us why it’s important to have young voices in Parliament. All this and more in your House magazine.