Educators awarded New Year Honours

Dr Lloyd, a Reader in Early Childhood at the University of East London, was a member of the co-production steering group set up by the the coalition’s then children’s minister Sarah Teather to work in partnership with the sector on developing early years policy.

Dr Lloyd, who has Dutch nationality, is named on the 2013 Foreign Office honours list after being nominated by the Department for Education.

Commenting on her award, Dr Lloyd said, ‘If there can be anything approaching a group OBE, mine must be it, since it reflects the hard work of all the early childhood sector and DfE colleagues who were involved in the co-production process during the first half of this Coalition Government. Naturally I am grateful to them all and treasure all that I learned from that process.’

The founder of the children’s charity Kids Company Camilla Batmanghelidjh has also been made an honorary CBE for her services to children and young people.

A former teacher who pioneered the use of synthetic phonics for teaching children to read has been awarded an MBE for services to education.

Sue Lloyd, the co-author of the Jolly Phonics handbooks, said, ‘I didn’t think in my wildest dreams I’d get something like this. There’s an awful lot of other people who deserve this, people who have been campaigning for synthetic phonics for a long time.  I’m very happy to have this honour for all the teachers who have realised how good synthetic phonics is.’

The three founders of parenting website Netmums have been awarded OBEs.

Sarah Russell, Siobhan Freegard and Cathy Court set up the website after meeting at a toddler group in 2001 and it now has 1.6m members.

Twenty-nine headteachers receive honours, including six heads who have been knighted or made dames.

They include Alison Peacock, headteacher at Wroxham Primary School in Hertfordshire, who has been made a dame.