Officials moving between government departments has “eroded” capacity in the civil service, the head of England’s largest academy trust has warned.
Sir Jon Coles, the chief executive of United Learning, told the Schools and Academies Show that senior civil servants at the DfE “just don’t know very much about education”.
Coles, a former director-general for schools at the department, said: “There’s an issue with DfE capability, which is not political [but] about the civil service”.
He said he remembered a time when “the school people…spent their entire lives working on something about education – they built a career around that and they had real depths of expertise”.
But a new trend of “moving around between departments” had become “valued in the civil service”.
“So you’ve got a lot of very senior people in the department who are just as bright, just as capable, just as well-motivated as anybody ever has been…[but] just don’t know very much about education.
“The civil service’s ability to identify serious problems, work out what the policy solutions are, propose them, and be proactive has disappeared.”
The cause is simple.
Pay freeze.
Paltry pay rise when it came.
To get a decent pay rise in the CS, you have to move. I’ve had to do this 3 times. Did I want to? No but I have ever increasing bills to pay.
The automatic salary scale progression has been removed.
There is no career progression, you have to compete for jobs in your own team just to get a temporary step up.
This is a mess, all of the previous Governments making and it doesn’t look as if much will change with the current lot.