David Bell is Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education (DfE) and former Her Majesty's Chief Inspector. He joined us today in conversation with Tony MacKay and conference delegates.
Tony MacKay started the session by asking
what it's been like for the DfE in the run up to the election and now that the coalition has formed. Bell answered that it's been the most interesting part of his career to date. The DfE drew on Scottish and Welsh experience of coalition to tap into sources of experience and advice. They also looked internationally, particularly at New Zealand.
During the pre-election period (known as purdah), they spent a lot of time analysing manifestos, looking for overlappig policies. After the coalition was formed, the coalition document helped as it is a programme for government in black and white. Of course, it doesn't cover every policy and Bell highlighted the need to be sensitive to possible disagreements within the coalition. He made clear that the role of the civil service is to provide advice when disagreements occur, and that policy decisions are made solely by the centre of government. So far, he said, everything has been stable with a good policy programme. He also felt that we should be proud of the way we've handled the transition as a nation and credited the civil service for their help in making things go smoothly.
He outlined the
new structure of the ministerial team at the DfE and talked about how the Secretary of State wanted to set a new direction for the department, but that Michael Gove believes passionately in both education and improving the lives of children and families.
How should leaders engage professionally with the politics of education? Bell felt that the most important role of leaders was to have an awareness of the political environment and to interpret the external to the internal as it was impossible to seperate politics from education when £50 billion a year is spent on it.
An executive head of two schools felt that the transition had not been great and that there was too much of a drip feed of information on academies. Bell responded that the government had only been in office for five weeks and that the Secretary of State had put a premium on moving quickly and showing that the coaltion can take decisive steps to further their policies. The consquence of this is that not all information can be immediately available.
A primary head asked
what lessons Bell had learned from the civil services of other countries like Sweden and Canada. Unfortunately, Bell replied, it's almost impossible to find parallels - all you can do is look past cultural differences and see how others have responded to the same problems we face. Tony MacKay added that it is often difficult to see the complexities of the differences between countries when making comparisons. Bell added that, despite the difficulties, he would prefer to see inter-country comparisons made than the continuing comparisons of modern education and that of 1953.
Iain Gilmour (
@iaingilmour) asked
how Bell maintained his integrity when he disagreed personally with government policy and when hard work is discarded due to policy changes. Bell reminded the audience that his role, and that of all civil servants, is to implement the policies of the elected government. Although it was always disappointing for civil servants to see their work abondoned, they need to keep to the civil service values of political impartiality. If he felt that a policy conflicted too much with his personal values, then he couldn't continue to do his job.
Tony MacKay asked
about the role of advisers in the DfE. The special advisers in the department are both from the same party as the Secretary of State (this is true of every department) and they help to avoid the politicisation of the civil service by acting as a bridgehead and allowing civil servants to avoid becoming embroiled in political debate.
When asked to name the
top three policy priorities that school leaders should be concerned about, Bell said:
- greater autonomy in a more diverse system of providers, with a premium on collaboration. Ofsted arrangements will be "sharpened up" and more information provided to the public
- fair and transparent funding system - the pupil premium
- changes to the National Curriculum. He asked the question of whether the current generation of teachers know how to go about creating the curriculum - he saw a big leadership task in making sure they can.
When asked about the ethics of moving to the academies/free schools system, he said that he personally did not feel "ethically compromised" by the direction of travel and that Michael Gove is keen that the greater autonomy is driven by fairness.
On the future of Every Child Matters and children's centres, he was pleased to see that the front line had been protected from cuts and felt that the coalition was interested in the role of children's centres, although they may want to re-orientate some aspects of them.
He said that a substantial range of announcements on behaviour were to be expected, but that he couldn't say any more at this point.
On the final question about what the pupil premium might mean for Pupil Referral Units (PRU), Bell suggested that targeting funding at individual children would have a positive impact as schools should be able to use it better and ensure that the money goes to the PRU when a child is excluded.
In conclusion, he outlined how he thought a system of autonomous schools might work through leaders collaborating out of enlightened self-interest, with important threads connecting schools - a system of choice.
Peter Clarke
