‘It felt like a dictatorship’: UK teaching experts hit out at government bid to cancel them

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It was a Tuesday night in March, two days before Ruth Swailes, an expert on early years education, was due to travel to Manchester to speak at a conference. Nothing about the event - launching a government-funded hub to improve the education of children under five - had struck her as controversial. But that evening she opened a message from her co- presenter, Dr Aaron Bradbury, saying the government was blocking them both from attending.

Moreover, the multi-academy trust organising the event said because these two unsuitable" experts were to be given a platform, the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to pull the plug on the whole conference.