News analysis Learning curves for the DfES mandarins

7 Dec 06
'They'll be back. But we'll be ready,' says David Bell, permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills.

08 December 2006

'They'll be back. But we'll be ready,' says David Bell, permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills. 'My experience as chief inspector of schools at Ofsted was that nothing drives improvement more than the certainty of re-inspection.'

A wide, wry smile flickers across the face of the amiable Scot. He has a challenge on his hands, but he is relishing it.

The Cabinet Office this week confirmed that it would publish the second wave of Departmental Capability Reviews, Whitehall's fledgling inspection and performance regime, before the end of 2006.

Nervous mandarins at the departments for Communities and Local Government, Trade and Industry and the Cabinet Office itself await public scrutiny of their future leadership, strategy and policy delivery capacities.

But in an interview with Public Finance last week, Bell had the determined look of a man keen to re-engage with review teams that others consider their bête noire.

He is three months into his compulsory post-DCR action plan – and regards July's review as an ideal opportunity to put lasting improvements in place.

Despite a relatively successful review – only the Department for Constitutional Affairs scored higher in the first four assessments – Bell says he is wrestling with 'complex' but 'critical' issues that must be addressed before the inspectors call again in 2007.

The DfES review team prioritised three areas for improvement: internal people management, the need for a clear departmental strategy, and a need to clarify the respective roles of civil servants and ministers to improve policy delivery.

'The DCR illustrated that, as a small department with a large reach, we've got very complex delivery chains. We rely on a huge number of non-departmental public bodies – from the Higher Education Funding Council and Learning and Skills Councils to the National College for School Leadership,' Bell explains.

The review team promulgated the idea of a DfES group: a systematic attempt to involve all relevant organisations in the future planning of education and skills policy and management.

'The question is how to ensure that organisations that are crucial to delivery feel that they are part of our core mission, at the same time as enabling them to do what we want them to do,' Bell says.

'The worst thing we could do is micromanage organisations. But on the other hand, the DfES is a ministerial department and reflects government priorities, so we can't just say “over to you”.'

This dilemma, he says, is not helped by 'fuzzy lines of causality' across the education sector. While his department initiates and implements core policy, 25,000 individual schools, colleges and universities are equally responsible for academic standards, for example.

'I do not delude myself that I can sit in my office in Westminster and pull a lever and somehow everything will change in classrooms. We have to think about how we can have the most impact through the system.'

The answer, he says, lies in quickly clarifying the DfES's aims and disseminating responsibilities for policy goals rapidly to empowered DfES agencies – 'but also making sure that we're holding them to account for what they do'.

However, improving his department's transparency is easier said than done. The DfES has long been criticised for giving potentially conflicting messages – for example the simultaneous focus on raising school standards and the Every Child Matters programme, which promotes a range of education outcomes.

Bell says the answer is to educate the public about the overlap. Ministers and officials, he says, are 'travelling up and the down the country trying to tell a more coherent story about what we stand for'.

Ministers, officials and coherence: further food for thought. The DCR review team reported that the DfES suffers from blurred lines of responsibility, and therefore accountability, between senior officials and ministers. The Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank recently suggested that should lead to a new public policy divide: where ministers assume responsibility for policies and mandarins take responsibility for managing programmes.

The Home Office could soon oblige. As part of its action plan, Home Secretary John Reid and his permanent secretary Sir David Normington might introduce a 'contract' codifying the two parties' responsibilities. But Bell believes that would not reflect the 'nuanced' relationship between senior officials and ministers.

'It will be quite hard to nail this one down in print. There is always a fluid, dynamic relationship between the civil servants and ministers – even my short experience as a permanent secretary tells me that the working arrangements between the two change with each [ministerial] reshuffle.'

But the most important element of his improvement plan, Bell says, is to ensure that the DfES consults more effectively with people on the front line: pupils, parents, teachers and employers.

While the education sector has long toyed with user 'choice' and stakeholder feedback, the DfES review made it clear that there has been a systematic failure to incorporate what is happening on the ground into policy.

'We need to get quicker feedback from the front line… to ensure that the advice that we're giving to ministers is based on what's happening out there,' Bell acknowledges.

Consequently, he has proposed a structured system of surveying parents, pupils and employers to glean up-to-the-minute information. This will then feed into a strict policy-making model to be rolled out across the department.

'It is a disciplined approach, heavily informed by user insight, and will require officials to think through all delivery implications, – financial or otherwise – and who in the delivery chain is responsible for what,' he explains.

But it requires a highly motivated and skilled workforce. 'The review didn't pull any punches in terms of our people management,' he says. 'It raised some pointed criticisms about the way that we manage performance and… professional development.'

So he has taken personal responsibility for a new 'people plan' – and it is here that his steely Glaswegian results-oriented character emerges.

Out has gone 'flimsy' human resources management; systems that allowed staff to 'drift'. Now, everyone has an allocated role, is provided with training opportunities and given clear, strict lines of management. Those for whom there is no permanent task will 'be helped to leave'.

A rigorous performance management system that draws partially on employee feedback, but about which staff 'have not been universally approving', has also been introduced.

'I've been very robust with staff… we're intolerant of poor performance, so I'm not going to be open to the charge that we're not hard on ourselves,' Bell says.

Whitehall is often vilified for not addressing its shortcomings. But determination and self-critical analysis pervade Bell's post-DCR action plan. Which is why few people envisage a case of 'same old story' when the inspectors call at Marsham Street again.

PFdec2006

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