Permanent Secretary, Department for Education
What are you most proud of achieving during 2011?
I am really pleased at the success of the government’s education reform programme. Through the hard work and dedication of staff in the Department for Education (DfE), we have helped to create over 1300 academies and 24 free schools. We’ve also overseen major policy changes in the fields of early years provision, safeguarding, and capital funding – to name but a few areas of work over the past 12 months. And on top of this, we’re on track to establish four new arm’s-length bodies and come in well ahead of our admin cost reduction targets.
I am also delighted that we end the year in a very good shape after 2010 which, in reputational terms, was a bit of a rollercoaster experience. There’s nothing like successful implementation to silence the critics.
How has the shape and structure of the department changed during 2011?
In structural terms we made our big changes in the autumn of 2010, when we created a new directorate to focus on the reform of the schools system and to deal with the multiplicity of related funding issues. That has been a major success – so much so that the director general who led it, Lesley Longstone, has now gone off to be the chief executive of the New Zealand Department of Education. And talking of success, Jon Coles, our director general for education standards, will leave in December to lead one of the largest providers of academies in the country.
What is the most important thing the department must achieve during 2012?
We need to continue apace with the reform programme ‘out there’, as that is our real success measure. Opening those new executive agencies on time and to budget matters too. And of course, the department has to manage a set of board-level changes – because as well as those departures mentioned above, I head off to be the vice chancellor of the University of Reading. It will be quite fun to be on the other side of the fence…although that is more likely to worry the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills than it is the DfE!
How is the civil service likely to change during 2012?
It will, of course, be ‘under new management’ as Jeremy Heywood and Sir Bob Kerslake take over as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service respectively. I hope they resist the temptation to seek change for the sake of change, as outgoing cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has done a brilliant job in leading us through – as he would put it – ‘turbulent times’. Gus’s continuing restatement of the civil service values of honesty, integrity, objectivity and impartiality, plus his legendary ‘4Ps’ – pride, passion, pace and professionalism – give his successors a superb base from which to carry forward the next phase of reform (but please, not ‘radical’ for the sake of it).
Which historical, mythological or contemporary figure would you most like to join for Christmas dinner?
To really liven up dinner, I would invite three additional guests: Abraham Lincoln (given my passion for American politics), John Travolta (a hugely underrated actor, not least for that wonderful movie about... American politics, Primary Colours) and Kenneth Williams (who has nothing to do with American politics, but was a comic genius).