The Department for Education has been in the news a lot recently, and not necessarily for the reasons secretary of state Michael Gove would have wanted.
Gove’s U-turn on scrapping GCSEs coincided with revelations about a substantial financial settlement following a long-running grievance that involved some of Gove’s closest advisers.
And the Guardian newspaper has revealed management consultancy Bain and Company was not only brought in to work for free last year to help draw up plans for a major restructuring, but has also been handed a place on a senior committee overseeing the changes.
This “review” concluded the department could and should go further than the spending cuts required by Chancellor George Osborne. So the DfE now plans to cut 50% of its admin budget, axe a quarter of its workforce and close six of its 12 UK offices.
While maintaining the fiction that the department is not in “a redundancy situation” – something our lawyers have pointed out is “mystifying” – senior managers have stated that “poor performers” will be “speedily managed out” using a new performance management system.
The DfE is a department in a hurry and, make no mistake, what happens here matters.
Rapid and seismic shifts
We believe Gove has been given free rein to test out a model of a skeletal civil service, stripped of many of its functions and acting more as a light-touch enabler for the private and voluntary sectors.
The signs are that his cherished free schools and academies agenda is being prioritised over other important public services, including child protection and special educational needs.
And, instead of being responsible for a comprehensive education system, the future DfE would focus on basic support to academies and free schools.
In response to these rapid and seismic shifts our members in the DfE voted for, and have started, a programme of industrial action.
This has so far led to walkouts and a work to rule, including non-compliance with the performance management regime, which one senior human resources manager complained they were ‘not happy with’, could be a breach of contract and would “disrupt” the work of the department.
We did point out that was the intention. As our members are fighting back in the workplace, Gove’s wider political project is now coming under increasing scrutiny from MPs and some sections of the media – though at the time of writing the secretary of state’s plans continue to be praised in the right wing press of course.
- 25% Planned reduction in staff
- 50% Cut to admin budget
- 6 Offices to close out of a total of 12
