DFE top civil servant sacked - AIBU to feel sad and frustrated?

[Gromitt]

Just came on here for a bit of a rant and to ask if anyone else feels the same way (whether you work in the Civil Service or otherwise).

I work in the Department for Education, and heard today that the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education was sacked by Boris Johnson earlier. I just feel so frustrated and sad at this.

I absolutely love working as a civil servant (there can be lots of opportunities for positive change both in the jobs people do and in other initiatives encouraged in departments), and the work that departments have done over the last few months (and in general) has been fantastic.

I also am hugely grateful I have a job, as I realise this is a very difficult for lots of people in the U.K. and around the world, and realise I am very lucky to have a job that gives me an income and is relatively stable.

However, I still feel really demoralised at what’s happened to the Civil Service over the last few months.

I think how I’ve felt today has been the build-up of several months of feeling demoralised and uncertain at what this government is doing.

1. Over the last few months, the entire Civil Service has worked so, so hard to achieve what the government wants (I realise this is what we are paid to do). Our jobs have been made more stressful and hectic because of Covid, the lockdown and the mountain of policy or operational challenges brought about by Covid. The sacking of the DFE Permanent Secretary only adds to this negativity and loss of morale.

1. Boris Johnson and his government have now sacked at least 3 top civil servants (the Home Office Permanent Secretary, the Cabinet Secretary and the DFE Permanent Secretary). This absolutely isn’t the way things were or should be done! (This is at least my view - I may be alone in thinking this though!)

I do feel incredibly grateful that we her support systems like unions and we can of course talk to each other, but it just feels like this government has been hindering the Civil Service rather than helping it over the last few months in particular. And it just makes me feel so frustrated and hopeless.

The Tories have been a cruel, cruel party for years now.

On the FWR board they are happy to see the back of him. And rightly so.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4006387-Senior-DFE-civil-servant-is-fallen-on-his-sword

Gavin Williamson should absolutely have been sacked too, but it’s completely right that someone at the top of the DfE should lose their job for the mess they allowed to be created.

[quote Apollo440]On the FWR board they are happy to see the back of him. And rightly so.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4006387-Senior-DFE-civil-servant-is-fallen-on-his-sword[/quote]
That's because they're one-issue fanatics in a way that's frankly alarming and quite sad (given how many of them are really passionate, intelligent women who could do a lot beyond their current obsession)

@StaffAssociationRepresentative

A serious question. What do you all do at the DfE? Aside from mutant algorithms (that was a rubbish comment from BoJo)

I'm not a teacher (but I am, full disclosure, married to one) but I absolutely hate it when I see people start to criticise teachers from their own imagining of what the job is with no actual knowledge. I can't imagine you like it either. So maybe don't do it to other jobs?

No I am just one of the poor sods that has to implement all these guidelines that come out, that has many spent hours sorting out the school census (which is spiraling into a business sector in its own right), waiting for the next set of never-ending curriculum changes.

And I genuinely would like to know what they all do? Are they focusing on particular schools, students, training whatever? It is a big department.

YANBU

I deal with the CS and most could double or triple their pay if they enter private business in their niche field. Yet they stay because they believe in serving.

Then they get treated badly by Pritti Patel, Johnson, Williamson etc. No wonder they're leaving in droves.

I'm also civil service (not DfE) and I guess it was only a matter of time the PUSS went as the results day did not go well!

It's the chance you take being a Perm Sec, I am surprised anyone wants to put themselves forward!

I think regardless of him going, Williamson also needs to be sacked. He is incompetent and, I suspect, quite the dickhead. How you can fuck up the results of so many students and blithely carry on with your job as Secretary of State for Education is beyond me. It's like a Carry On film but instead of massive tits it's massive arseholes.

Yanbu

All we can do is hope people aren't so stupid as to vote for boris again

Caring about women's rights doesn't make me a one-issue fanatic @Hardbackwriter.

People like Slater, who is supposed to be politically neutral, deserve to lose their jobs.

YANBU but please be careful with posts like this if you're a civil servant (same goes to other civil servants on the thread). You could be identified, especially if you have given information about yourself on other threads and not name changed.

No civil servant should be allowing their personal situation and beliefs to influence their department.

^^ This.

Who is replacing him?

Oh, found it.

The Prime Minister has concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership at the Department for Education. Jonathan Slater has therefore agreed that he will stand down on 1 September, in advance of the end of his tenure in Spring 2021.
Susan Acland-Hood, currently interim second permanent secretary, will take over as Acting Permanent Secretary. A permanent successor to replace Jonathan Slater will be appointed in the coming weeks.
The Cabinet Secretary would like to put on record his thanks to Jonathan for 35 years of public service, culminating in over four years as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education.

Biography
Susan Acland-Hood took up post as HMCTS Chief Executive on 21 November 2016.
Susan was previously the Director of Enterprise and Growth at HM Treasury where she was responsible for policies on productivity, growth, business, infrastructure, exports, competition and markets, and for energy and transport spending. Prior to that, she spent two years as Director of Education Funding at the Department for Education, overseeing the comprehensive reform of the capital programme. Susan has also worked extensively on home affairs and justice policy, both at Number 10 and in the Home Office. She has also had senior roles in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and in the Social Exclusion Unit

YABU - he breached the Nolan Principals of standards in public life by pushing Stonewall’s agenda at every turn. He should have been sack years ago for his complete lack of impartiality and opening up our schools to ideologues, kinksters and groups with interests in undermining child safeguarding.

YANBU and it is a worrying sign of things to come - complete lack of accountability on the part of the Government. They know they can do what they like and we have no recourse of any kind and its ages until the next election.

I’m sad but not surprised (CS in another department that lost its perm sec recently). The Tories have just broken cover on their planned reforms. One way or another these career guys are going and a new set of more ideologically appropriate appointments who can carry out the gutting of the service the Torys want will take over. They no longer even have to pretend to adhere to the way things work. Prepare for big changes.

I’m very concerned about the sustained attack on the checks and balances that underpin how the State functions. But they clearly showed us who they were before the election and people voted for them in record numbers...

YANBU in the slightest.

I'm not a Civil Servant and don't think I know any, but what frightens me is the fact the Government has crossed a line.

My understanding was always that the CS were there to provide (very transient) Gvmnt ministers with detailed knowledge about their specialist areas. The Government then make the choices, given the facts. The CSs provide consistency (knowledge of often complex situations and impartial advice and opinions steeped in having been involved for some ears, and having concentrated on that work). But it is still the Ministers that have taken the decision, so how can they make any kind of honest case for making the CSs the scapegoats ?

That's because they're one-issue fanatics in a way that's frankly alarming and quite sad (given how many of them are really passionate, intelligent women who could do a lot beyond their current obsession)

You mean by following Slater’s direction and sticking to their gender: baking cakes, taking care of children and dressing in a sexually provocative manner instead of being leaders, professors, lawyers, engineers, etc?

I’m not a CS but think it’s a truly awful situation.

I don’t understand why Williamson is still there?

YABU - he breached the Nolan Principals of standards in public life by pushing Stonewall’s agenda at every turn

For info, the list of Nolan Principles are noted in this recent piece on the A-level algorithms from Jane Ramsey's office (Slater's wife)

https://cspl.blog.gov.uk/2020/08/19/decision-making-by-algorithm-must-meet-nolans-tests/

Nobody voted for the Cummings creature. How come he has so much sway?

Cummings has been running the show since the Brexit referendum was announced.
He is running the country. Boris is just a figurehead.