The Conservative MP is famously anti-arts education.
Nicky Morgan has replaced Jeremy Wright as the new Culture Secretary in a cabinet reshuffle under newly appointed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Morgan, who was previously chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee and the Education Secretary under David Cameron from 2014 to 2016, was appointed to lead the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
As Education Secretary Morgan has previously claimed that students taking GCSE’s and A-Levels are “held back” by an “over emphasis” on the arts. In 2014 she made claims that students who chose arts and humanities-style subjects risk restricting their future careers, suggesting that “traditionally favoured” topics like maths or science open more doors. At the time she claimed: “too many young people are making choices age 15 which will hold them back for the rest of their lives”.
“If you didn’t know what you wanted to do… then the arts and the humanities were what you chose because they were useful, we were told, for all kinds of jobs,” she said.
Nicky Morgan has been the MP for Loughborough since 2010 and voted for the UK to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. She was a mainstay in David Cameron’s cabinet, but took more of a back-seat during Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations. In September 2018, she stated that she “would not serve in a Boris Johnson cabinet.”