The sacking of the Department for Education permanent secretary yesterday in the wake of the exams grading controversy has been condemned as “extraordinary” “scapegoating” by a union.
Jonathan Slater will step down on Tuesday after prime minister Boris Johnson “concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership at the Department for Education”.
Critics are concerned that officials are being sacrificed to protect ministers. On Tuesday, Ofqual chief regulator Sally Collier became the first senior civil servant to lose her job following the summer grading U-turn. But no education minister has resigned.
Background: Top DfE official Jonathan Slater standing down
WATCH: PM blames grading crisis on ‘mutant algorithm’
Exclusive: Ofqual chief Sally Collier standing down
WATCH: I won’t step down over results fiasco, says Gibb
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA - the union that represents senior civil servants - said: “This is simply scapegoating. This is simply the prime minister determining that civil service heads will roll to save a minister and that is as clear as day to the rest of the civil service as well.
“So I think not only is this not good for government, I think it will have very long term implications for the civil service.”
He told the BBC’s current affairs programme Newsnight: “I think taken together with the other departures, it is quite clear that this government is treating the civil service in a different way to previous governments.
“It started when Johnson came in - the briefing against individuals and the briefing against the civil service as an organisation, there was the list that was put out in the Sunday Telegraph earlier in the year of a hit list of permanent secretaries that they want gone.
“And as each one goes and each one is sacrificed then the trust that should be there between civil servants and ministers, because ministers know civil servants can’t defend themselves, can’t speak out publicly, they’re not allowed to speak publicly to defend themselves - that trust that is required for effective government just simply gets eroded every time.”
