One of the less well publicised consequences of Brexit is the additional pressure it has put on the civil service to deal with the many aspects of the follow-up to the vote. Two new government departments have been created - the Department for Exiting the European Union and the Department for International Trade. Heading the departments are, respectively, David Davis and Liam Fox, both well-known for their anti-EU views, but with little or no experience of international trade agreements.

Like all ministers, they will only be successful in negotiating a good deal on behalf of the British people if they have the support of a talented and hard-working group of civil servants behind them. So other government departments have been raided and many of the best officials transferred into the two new departments. Among this group, Shona Dunn, the talented director-general of schools in the Department for Education (DfE), is now working on the terms of our departure from the EU.

It therefore becomes even more important that the DfE gets good advice on its education policies from outside sources, so that the secretary of state, Justine Greening, and her team of ministers can fully understand the implications of the policies they are considering.

Up to 1992, policy discussions in the department were informed by senior Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMIs), who were based within the department but had professional independence to give advice on the basis of the evidence they had seen in schools, irrespective of whether it was supportive of proposed government policies or not. The loss of this professional voice in the department was the biggest downside to the creation in 1992 of Ofsted, located outside the department.

During the 1990s, nothing fully replaced the knowledgeable HMI, but there are several ways in which the department now tests out its ideas. These include:

• Formal consultations, such as the recent exercises on the English Baccalaureate and grammar schools, to which the government response is still to be published. Tim Leunig, the chief scientific adviser to the DfE, has stressed on twitter how important it is for people to respond in large numbers to formal consultations. However, politics too often triumphs over evidence when the responses are considered;
• Headteacher reference groups - committees of primary and secondary heads consulted on a wide range of issues. The membership is on the DfE website, where it states that these groups “act as a confidential sounding board, advising on the potential impact of policies on primary and secondary education, including any barriers to implementation”;
• Teacher associations which, as representative bodies, have a particularly important role to play in ensuring that the professional views of their large memberships are heard in the corridors of power. As the Association of School and College Leaders’ general secretary, my personal experience was that the association was consulted on a very frequent basis;
• Task-specific groups, such as those focused on workload and bureaucracy, which have involved teachers in their work;
• The Teaching Schools Council, comprising regional representatives of teaching school leaders, which is regularly consulted by the DfE and the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL);
• Other groups, such as the Headteachers’ Roundtable and Whole Education, whose conferences have taken place in the past week and which have been looking at how they can best influence government policy. The ministerial waiting room on the 7th floor of Sanctuary Buildings hosts a constant stream of such groups seeking to exercise influence over government decisions.

Heads in high places

One of the most welcome recent developments is that the government now routinely appoints headteachers to key national roles and committees. Sir Michael Wilshaw as chief inspector, and Sir David Carter, as national schools commissioner, are two prominent examples of successful heads moving into major national jobs. Government reviews are now often chaired by heads, such as Sir Andrew Carter and Stephen Munday, who looked at initial teacher training; Dame Dana Ross-Wawrzynski, on headteacher standards; Dame Sally Coates, on prison education; Dame Reena Keeble, on effective practice in primary schools; and Ian Bauckham, on the teaching of modern foreign languages. Regional schools commissioners are almost all former successful headteachers.

This surely represents a sign of confidence in school leaders and a recognition of the value they bring to policy-making. Too often, however, this level of early consultation with school leaders does not happen. Consultation occurs after a policy has been announced - and it can be difficult for a minister to announce a U-turn later. The professional voice needs to be heard at the early formation stage of policy-making.

If the government is serious about creating a school-led system, it needs to step up a gear in the depth and extent of its consultation and work with the profession on future developments.

There are three ways in which the Department could improve its knowledge of what happens in schools and how its policies are implemented:

1. As in high-performing education jurisdictions, such as Ontario and Singapore, school leaders and administrators could work on both sides of the government/schools divide. Civil servants who are trained teachers could spend two-year periods working in schools. Senior and middle leaders could move between school leadership and periods as Ofsted inspectors or Ofqual officials, and policy-making civil servants. Sir Michael Wilshaw increased the number of school leaders on secondment as inspectors; the civil service should take a leaf out of his book and replicate this in the separtment;
2. The scheme under which civil servants spend several days in a school (with their mobiles switched off) and the same school’s head spends an equivalent amount of time in the DfE - a scheme which I started around 2000 during my time at ASCL - could be extended. (I recall one official saying to the head at the end of his three-day visit, “Thank you so much for hosting me. I had no idea we did this to you.”)
3. Joint conferences for school leaders and government ministers and officials could be held, with “speed-dating” sessions during which DfE staff go round tables of headteachers explaining the issues - good and bad - they face in implementing government policy.

Teachers feel there is a big wall between policy-makers and practitioners. Like many such structures, this needs to come down, so that both feel that they are on the same side, fully understanding each other and working for the good of the pupils in the system.

John Dunford is chair of Whole Education and a former secondary head, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and national pupil premium champion. His book, The School Leadership Journey, was published in November 2016. He tweets as @johndunford

For more TES columns by John, visit his back-catalogue.

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