There is a widespread belief among teachers, students and their parents/carers that Gavin Williamson is being rewarded for failure.

As both Education Secretary and Minister for Defence Gavin Williamson was sacked, not simply for policy failures, but personal incompetence leading to a lack of confidence among all those people who relied on him to show leadership. 

Williamson presided over a catastrophic series of errors in relation to A-Level results in 2020, where a combination of teacher grades and a computer algorithm assigned grades to students. It was the 'least favoured' option presented to him, but he hesitated and stalled. Then having made the worst possible choice, he defended the decision despite the havoc it wreaked on the lives of students. 48 hours later, there was U-turn. 

Throughout the COVID pandemic schools were presented with half-baked policy initiatives.  Schools were given impossibly short notice on the day of the Christmas holidays to institute mass testing at the start of January 2021. More decisions were delayed and then sprung on leaders and teachers. 
Even before the pandemic 4.3 million children in the UK lived in poverty. Faced with an unprecedented crisis, Williamson, and the department he ‘led’, failed to provide a necessity for our children - food. It was left to Marcus Rashford to use his fame to raise the voices of tireless campaigners in our working-class neighbourhoods to demand the government protect basic rights and dignity for children. 

In this sorry tale of incompetence and assumed privilege, Williamson fails to register a single merit. He was absent, late, unprepared, ill-equipped, or unmotivated. In education we do not reward those behaviours. 
Knighthood? No sir!