Chris Wormald
Permanent Secretary, Department for Education
Which events or policies have dominated your attention during 2012?
This has been my first year as a permanent secretary, so the biggest event of the year for me was rejoining the Department for Education in March. We have a large and well publicised reform programme in the department covering structural reform of education, the expansion of Academies and Free Schools, reform of the curriculum and qualifications, and the reform of children’s services. But the biggest thing for me since March has been the review of the Department for Education that we published in November.
How have the shape and capabilities of your department changed during 2012?
In March 2012 the department changed radically as three new executive agencies joined us, replacing 12 NDPBs. This made the department 75 per cent larger, and means we are much more involved with frontline delivery alongside our traditional policymaking functions. We are still working through the capabilities challenges this brings.
Which aspects of the Civil Service Reform Plan are most important to improving the capabilities and operations of your department?
The DfE review was itself a key commitment of the Civil Service Reform Plan. The review found that there is no one thing that will transform the department – the focus will be on a range of ‘ways of working’ issues that are about what people do when they get to their desks in the morning. So there is no one thing I can pick out – it’s about looking across the organisation.
What are the main challenges facing your department in 2013?
2013 is all about implementation. We have a clear set of policy priorities and a review that charts the future of the department until 2015. The challenge now is to make all that happen.
Cracker jokes are notoriously bad. Can you give your colleagues a good joke to tell over the Christmas dinner table?
I’m useless at jokes, so my excellent private office has gone beyond the call of duty and stepped in to provide the following:
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The barman says: “Is this a joke?”
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