US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday to close the country’s Department of Education, the White House said.
The order will oblige Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to facilitate the department’s closure “and return education authority to the states.”
Trump has repeatedly called for the closure of the US Department of Education. During his election campaign he promised to abolish the department, justifying it by the fact that the department’s activities are redundant and create unnecessary bureaucracy. The department’s functions, Trump believes, can be performed by state-level departments.
Attempts to close the department or transfer its functions to other organisations without congressional approval could cause the Trump administration legal problems.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said Trump’s executive order could “harm all students by increasing class sizes, cutting vocational training programmes, making higher education more expensive and inaccessible.”
The order to close the department has been in preparation since Trump’s inauguration. In early March, the media became aware of forthcoming executive order from the US president that directs the head of the Department of Education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department in accordance with the law. However, the decree to abolish the ministry was not signed.
US media reported, citing senior ministry officials, that the staff would be reduced by nearly 50 per cent for 90 days starting March 11. Such a decision was taken due to the threat to close the ministry, which employs about 4,400 people.
