This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury, co-authors of a bestselling book on early childhood, were told by the organisers of a government-sponsored event for childminders and nursery workers, which they were due to speak at in March, that the DfE planned to cancel the conference just days before it opened because they were deemed to be “unsuitable” headline speakers.
Speaking to the Observer, Bradbury, principal lecturer in early childhood studies at Nottingham Trent University, said: “I received a phone call from the organisers saying there were some concerns about us being speakers.
Swailes, an independent consultant who advises schools and nurseries on early years education, was so shocked that she filed a subject access request, requiring the DfE to disclose any documents it held on her.
Dr Pam Jarvis, a former teacher and education psychologist who has now retired from Leeds Trinity University, said that her request had returned more than 40 pages of records in which officials had monitored her tweets, focusing in particular on her criticisms of the department’s controversial new baseline assessments for four-year-olds in their first term at school.
One modern languages expert, Carmel O’Hagan, uncovered an email from DfE officials accusing her of having “an axe to grind” on Twitter, now rebranded as X, and an Excel spreadsheet in which the department detailed who she interacted with.
Sue Cowley, an education expert who runs training for schools, tweeted her response to the records she had been sent under her name this week: “Excuse my language but WTAF [what the actual fuck] are the DfE doing spending taxpayer money conducting surveillance on critics of government policy on here?”
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