1 It’s the Family, Stupid

I want to mention 3 new departments that may be of interest to the work of The Brightside Trust. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills (DIUS) and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBER).

In my opinion, the press and TV coverage of the recent changes to the UK government has been overly dominated by the story of the prime-ministers. Even this narrative, not helped by the release of Alistair Campbell’s diaries, has been largely focused on the personalities and styles of Blair versus Brown. In so far as the cabinet reshuffle was noticed it was seen in terms of who is Blairite and who are Brown supporters. Little or no interest has been shown in the changes to departmental structures that have taken place.

In my opinion, this is a mistake, as important reconfigurations of policies and strategy lie behind the restructuring of Whitehall departments. I think this will become apparent over the next weeks and months, if only because Ed Balls the new secretary of state for education will be making speeches that are not primarily about education; they will be dominated by discussion of families and poverty.

The background to this is twofold. First, the government’s improvement programs for UK society, seemed, to many, to have stalled. In particular, the Brown team have been stung by the way in which social mobility does not seem to have improved after10 years of Labour government. There still seems to be an underclass, which is both socially disadvantaged and socially disruptive. Also, the government is failing to get close to its target of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020. In particular, they are worried by research which has shown that socially disadvantaged children are already a year behind educationally, by the age of 3, and as other studies have shown, lower educational achievers are not socially mobile: Labour wasn’t working! Secondly, the Conservatives are making ‘fixing our broken society’ the central theme of their campaigning.

Ed Balls should not be seen as another secretary of state for education, his brief isn’t just to ‘run and improve education’. This new department is Brown’s main instrument to bump start social change. The key mechanism to this is education, however, this department is more than that, it is recognition that unless the basis for fully taking advantage of educational opportunities is in place, then the offer is only partly taken up by the disadvantaged. Consequently, the new department should be seen as facilitating maximum educational consumption, as well as ensuring the best possible products are on offer. Gaze upon the departmental structure and responsibilities http://www.dfes.gov.uk/aboutus/whoswho/ministers.shtml

It is worth noting that higher education (HE) is not part of the remit; it is in the new Department of Innovation Universities and Skills (DIUS). I don't like this split: I recognise there has to be limits to the size and scope of Whitehall departments, but I think this division will be problematic, especially when it comes to the widening participation agenda. I think DIUS will be drawn away from the less exciting widening of opportunities and skills agenda and will focus on world beating innovation through, for example, scientific invention in elite institutions of higher education. I see a real danger of these two icebergs drifting apart and this drift will be pulled by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBER).

If one looks at the ministerial structure of DIUS

http://www.dius.gov.uk/pressreleases/press.htm you will see our old supporter Bill Rammell is listed. It was widely reported that Bill Rammell ‘keeps the job he had …since 2005 at the new DIUS.’ (Times higher july 6^th 2007). I think this is to underplay his new role. I think that he is the person on whom this strain of balancing widening participation in HE with promoting world class institutions will fall. I know that asserting that there can be contradictions between egalitarian and meritcratic objectives is hardly a revelation, but as the different emphases cause the different departments to bump and conflict over the detail of policy, it will fall to Bill to sort out. His problem is that resolution of these contradictions isn’t just a matter of cleverly balancing ideas; these contradictions are real and will be played out in nearly every resource and/or policy question that he has to decide. To complicate his position even further, I don’t see this as a zero sum game. There will be win-win options in the multiplicity of options out there, but Bill and his people are going to have to work hard to find them. They are really going to need to understand the nature of the things they are dealing with, situation by situation. We, and others with genuine expertise, can help in this, if given the chance.

Compare Bill’s brief to that of his colleague Ian Pearson: Minister of State for Science and Innovation, who has a much clearer, almost Wilsonian brief, excitement of the white hot heat of the technological revolution, kind of stuff. I think it likely that the Brightside Trust’s work will bring us into contact with this minister, as well. However, he is dealing with an entity that in terms of its ideology, interests and outlook is a fairly homogenous body; in short, if he keeps doing what’s been done in the past, albeit with a few added flourishes, then things will almost certainly work out and nobody will get too excited. He will be able to showboat around: the worst that could happen is that he spends the equivalent of a couple of hours stuck on a mud bank; Bill, on the other hand, if he just goes with the flow, will almost certainly hit the rocks!

In my opinion, if the egalitarian momentum of the social mobility strategies of the work of the Department of Children, Schools and Families is to be carried forward into higher education then it needs to be married in detail and practice to the meritocratic ethos of the global market and innovation, and that is hard to do.

More specifically, in this organisational split, I see the danger that the WP social mobility agenda will derail at 14+, when children start to leave the nurturing environment of the DCSF and enter the ‘adult’ world of FE and HE. I do not like the way that responsibility for the new 14-19 diplomas is with the DCSF while responsibility for the running of FE colleges is now split between DIUS and local authorities. I am worried that this new structure makes disadvantaged lower achieving students marginal at age 14: this is too early for them to left to their own resources and devices. I would argue that we know the processes of disadvantage continue even beyond university entry and that without a sustained program of widening participation and support, then there will not be any increase in numbers of disadvantaged students entering and succeeding in higher education. The danger is that the gains of the DCSF years will unravel for many students at aged 14. This organisational split is yet another problem for the new 14-19 diploma rollout. Unless Bill Rammell really gets his act together, then the whole Brown project will be in trouble!

Finally, the third new department, http://www.berr.gov.uk Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBER). DBER’s brief is to work closely with DIUS, especially in areas of scientific research and innovation, this could be relevant for some Brightside Trust projects. However, for me, in the short term, its significance was to show how the British civil service is still world class. Within hours of the announcement of this new ministry, they had resolved the major question of the reorganisation - what name should the ministry to be known by? They are calling it Chris. This proves there have been real efficiency gains by Whitehall in recent years, I can remember when Iraq invaded Kuwait, it took 2 days of pondering in the foreign office to define the important question - will the new country be called Kuaq or Irate. Makes you proud to be British, well it does Gordon.