Hours after the general election result in July, something strange happened. The Department for Education posted an advert for half a dozen strategy jobs. It went viral, as far as DfE job adverts go. I saw it all over social media and had friends texting me about it: “I’m guessing Bridget has six mates at a loose end.”
But it was still very early in the honeymoon period and it was seen as a sign of hope. Bringing fresh blood into the department’s strategic thinking was surely a good idea, right?
Then in August, the same concerning detail emerged with every advert from junior policy posts to Skills England leadership recruitment: the jobs were open to London-based applicants.
Many may have missed the significance of that, but as part of its ‘levelling up’ agenda, the previous government had all but banned London recruitment, pushing civil service jobs into the regions.
I personally benefited. A provincial FE teacher would never have made it into a meaningful policy role before Covid and the great leveller of Microsoft Teams. Not without leaving the place he was doing it for.
To explain: meeting the bar for advertising a London DfE role externally required months of proving that no other option, whether internal managed move or transfer from another government department, would yield a suitable candidate.
For those first six shiny new posts to go live the day after the election, either someone senior within DfE went out on a limb or a new minister directly intervened.
I live in the south west, and our DfE regional office is in the most north-easterly bit of the map they could credibly push a pin into.
Now is not the time to retreat within the M25
My teaching career was defined by the wan, malnourished challenge among the green and golden beauty of rural and coastal communities. I learned so much from DfE colleagues in London, but I hope what I brought to the table was the experience of classrooms from Torquay to Taunton and of the working-class poverty we saw whipped into groundless hate and violence on frightening summer news clips.
Interviews with those committing bewildering acts showed something more terrifying than mindless thuggery. They had been too-easily manipulated.
Listening to clips, trying to understand, it was hard to escape the tragic ignorance on display. While it was heartening to see counter protests disavowing the notion that this racism and xenophobia represented their communities, it is an uncomfortable truth that our well-intentioned educational policies are not reaching all corners of England equally.
I worry that this is a reflection of a metropolitan-centric mindset that assumes what is working for poor children in the capital is the right approach for the Sunderlands, Lancasters and Weymouths of our nation.
“Poorer children in the south west have the worst educational outcomes in the country,” according to the South West Social Mobility Commission, with “pupils across the peninsula missing lessons at a higher rate than pupils anywhere else in the country.”
Having said that, the north east beats us for the grim prize of “the highest numbers of children from long-term disadvantaged backgrounds” and the starkest disadvantage gap.
I was lucky enough to be awarded funding from the brilliant charity SHINE in the years before I joined the DfE, supporting an intervention for students in my college as well as other colleges nationally.
When SHINE moved from London to Leeds to focus on the north of England, I admit I felt a little left behind at the opposite end of the country. But damn, I admired them having the courage of their convictions.
It’s time for the department to show the same courage.
Let’s take those precious taxpayer pounds and bulletproof government jobs, and let’s move them to Plymouth, Hartlepool, and Blackpool. Let’s give their heroic frontline educators a direct line to shaping the intelligent and lived-experience policymaking we so badly need.
Now is not the time to retreat within the M25. There’s a whole country out here. Our diverse and difficult and delightful contexts need to be understood by those making decisions for our young people.
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