Damian Hinds held meetings with two former Labour education secretaries within weeks of taking office, new records show.
Dates of meetings published today reveal that the incoming education secretary met with both Lord Blunkett and Charles Clarke for general discussions “covering the wider Department for Education agenda”.
Mr Hinds who replaced Justine Greening, in January this year, has also held introductory meetings with Lord Jim O’Neill, a former Treasury minister and vice chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, and Baroness Camilla Cavendish, the former head of David Cameron’s policy unit in his final 14 months as prime minister.
Lord Blunkett was the education and employment secretary in Tony Blair’s first Labour government from 1997 to 2001. Mr Clarke held the post of education and skills secretary from 2002 to 2004.
The meeting schedule, published by the Department for Education today, also shows that Mr Hinds had two meetings with the Catholic Education Service in his first two months in office.
After becoming education secretary, Mr Hinds had been widely expected to remove the 50 per cent faith cap of new schools - something the Conservative Party had pledged to do before the last election and which the Catholic Education Service has been calling for.
However, he announced that the 50 per cent faith cap would be staying in place but new funding would be made available for voluntary-aided schools, which can choose all their pupils on the basis of faith.
The first meeting with the Catholic Education Service is described as an introductory meeting and the second a general discussion about the wider DfE agenda.
Records also show the meetings held by other ministers within the department between January and March this year.
This includes academies minister Lord Agnew, who has met with various academy sponsors including the troubled Wakefield City Academies Trust and Durand Academy Trust.
WCAT announced last year that it would be giving up all of its 21 schools as it did not believe it had the capacity to run them.
The DfE has also published details of ministerial foreign travel today. This shows that £8,688 was spent on school standards minister Nick Gibb’s visit to Fiji for the Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers on February 24 this year.
