These Posts are a bit like life’s experiences. (Revisit Post 10). They are to be read backwards.
Let me remind you how I begin Death of a Nightingale:
Prologue
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Elliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding 1942
My purpose in introducing you to Sir Humphrey Plumbton in the last Post was not to see how long it would take you to realise that he was just another of my fictional characters. It was to try to give you a better understanding of the mind set of his nephew, James Harrington, the mandarin in the play.
Let me also remind you of my first Post. (Revisit Post 1) “But make no mistake; the credit crunch is only one slice of a wormy apple.”
MP’s expenses are, of course, another slice of the same apple.
There is an old story. When you bite into an apple, what is worse than finding a worm? The answer is finding half a worm. When I was actively involved helping parents make a success of their fight to keep their special school open, on the face of it the issue seemed to centre on whether it was or wasn’t a good idea. In fact the parents were not just fighting a bad idea for their school; they were fighting those who were trying to implement a bad idea.
This time I am looking at the very core of the wormy apple, the civil service.
I had plenty of time, years in fact, to study this. Sir Humphrey Plumbton and James Harrington exemplify the conclusions that I have reached. While we rail against politicians, we would do better to look more closely at those they work with, namely civil servants.
Increasingly politicians come across as mindless puppets in a Punch and Judy Show, with no will of their own, or now maybe better described as well oiled little cogs in an old and treasured piece of clockwork. As Sir Humphrey put it in my ventriloquist act in my last Post, “Politicians serve their officials, not the other way round. They provide the first line of defence to attack. They take the blame. They provide the safety valve for the system. Then, ultimately, if the civil service gets it wrong, they lose their seats!” So, let us consider civil servants.
There would be no drama in Death of a Nightingale, if the “Plumbtons” and “Harringtons” of this world did not have a good case.
Act One Scene 3
James Harrington, the mandarin from the DfES, Judy Fotheringham, a regional official within the DfES, David Harding, the Director of Education, and Gerry Thompson, a special needs co-ordinator, meet. James Harrington is looking for action on special school closures.
JAMES HARRINGTON The other, of course, is how you get the show back on the road. We need that. You see I was at the UNESCO conference at Salamanca in ninety four. Nearly a hundred countries all saying that children with special needs had a right to mainstream education. That certainly galvanised us into action. I’ve never seen Parliament move so fast, and so decisively.
Don’t think that the Minister doesn’t realise that change can be a bit painful. He knows that in every good parent there is a Luddite trying to get out. In many cases they like what they have but they have no understanding of the world that we are trying to create for them and their kids. It’s your job Gerry to illuminate them, to show them the way to truth and light.
GERRY THOMPSON I know. I had a really good grounding at my university, under Professor Hopwood. A real visionary.
JAMES HARRINGTON Know him well. He has advised us a number of times.
DAVID HARDING Yes, we’ve used him too for training.
JAMES HARRINGTON Academia has been very supportive. They do know which side of their bread is buttered on. Anyway, the policy of Inclusion could not have a better provenance. Baroness Warnock led the way more than twenty years ago. That’s when it was very enlightened. Now there’s all party consensus. And it has the full support of all the leading disability organisations. Mind has been particularly helpful. Their President Lord Rix pushed hard for it. He and his daughter had a hard time of it, badly discriminated against by the old system. Blunkett, too.
GERRY THOMPSON There’s plenty of other parents that feel the same way. Feel their kids should get an equal chance in a mainstream comp.
DAVID HARDING Of course not all parents agree. That’s the basic problem.
JAMES HARRINGTON People like Gerry will win them over. You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.
DAVID HARDING Between these four walls I don’t think Inclusion is going to be a cheap option.
JAMES HARRINGTON Well leading accountants advised us that we could make some real savings simply by reducing the number of Statements LEAs have to write for children with special needs. Get that down by a third, reduce special school places by the same, and then hey presto you don’t need all those special schools. And writing Statements is a real headache. We’ll have to keep some schools for kids with profound difficulties or very complex behavioural problems, but most can go.
DAVID HARDING Hm. Accountants. Some are just calculating machines on legs. They play with figures and talk about outcomes. They leave us to deal with people and try to meet their needs. They’re just not street wise. They manage us when we should be managing them. The savings won’t be there if we do our job. Mark my words.
JAMES HARRINGTON You may well be right, especially to begin with. The Treasury has agreed to cough up millions to adapt mainstream schools, and we will obviously have to commit ourselves to training. We are currently trying to work out the actual cost now. It’s not easy though. There’s a major study just started.
DAVID HARDING Good luck to it. I look forward to seeing the results. I just hope you haven’t provided them.
JAMES HARRINGTON You’re a cynic. Anyway, just you keep your doubts to yourself. Money is where money needs to be is my motto. We can’t go back now.
***
DAVID HARDING (with a smile) You know, James Harrington is totally, totally without shame.
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM I don’t agree. He’s probably a bit like me. I’m not immune to shame. Very, very occasionally I do take my conscience to bed with me, but when I do, and it isn’t very often, I leave it on the breakfast table the following morning. We’re always going to be upsetting somebody, not meeting their needs. It’s in the nature of our job. We’re interested in outcomes. Fortunately for us, most of those people who don’t like what we’re doing just sound off in the pub. Our life would be impossible if everyone was like the parents in your school.
GERRY THOMPSON I’m absolutely certain his visit won’t give him any sleepless nights at all. Most likely he’ll go back home, and open a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild.
DAVID HARDING Well, Merlot Chateau Sainsbury for me. I’m sure you’re right.
GERRY THOMPSON We couldn’t do without people like Harrington. Nothing would get done. I’m sure that fella will go places.
DAVID HARDING In this world or the next? You know I believe his father was high up in the Indian Civil Service. That’s where he must have got his superiority complex.
Yes, the civil service does have a good case, but is it good enough?
By and large the civil servants have integrity of purpose and, as Gerry Thompson rightly says, “Nothing would get done” without them. However, governments of all political persuasions come and go, but cock-ups continue unabated.
It is not that civil servants are not for the most part extremely courteous and generous with their time. They are. The problem is their underlying arrogance, their insensitivity, their stubbornness and, ruling all, their self interest. This is a real problem when some do not have the know-how to make them good at their job, or when others that have, feel obliged to keep their heads below the parapet.
I quote in Death of a Nightingale a similar malaise in the USA.
Notes & Quotes
From Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani
The New York City school system was never really going to improve until its purpose, its core mission, was made clear. What the system should have been about was educating its million children as well as possible. Instead, it existed to provide jobs for the people who worked in it, and to preserve those jobs regardless of performance. That’s not to say that there weren’t committed professionals at every level within the system. There were, and that’s the shame of it. Those with their hearts in the right place were the ones who suffered most.
Until I could get everyone involved to sit together and agree that the system existed to educate children, fixing little bits of it was symbolic at best. Band-Aid solutions can do more harm than good. The system needed a new philosophy. It needed to say we’re not a job protection system but a system at its core about children’s enrichment. All rewards and risks must flow from the performance of the children.
So here I give you the first and, so far as I am concerned, the last law of good civil administration: Those who serve the public should be fully accountable to the public.
I have already suggested in Post 2 that OFSTED should examine the handling of all formal complaints against LEAs, make this part of their official report, and be obliged to put it into the public domain. I also urged that the TV programme “Watchdog” should expose administrative cock-ups.
We have an Ombudsman positioned to provide the citizen with a check on the abuse of power by the civil service. As matters stand those serving on public bodies such as Boards of Governors have no right of access with a complaint unless they can show personal loss.
Here is another suggestion. Empower the Ombudsman to take all complaints from any UK citizen against State mismanagement or malpractice when all other forms of complaint have been exhausted, and again put the report into the public domain.
MPs are currently being shamed into putting their house in order. It is high time that the civil service was also shamed into put its house in order too in every tier of government.
I invite Helena Kennedy QC, who chaired the “Power Inquiry”, to throw her weight behind this. In fact, I challenge her to do so.
I repeat here what I said in my first post. “Can you think of any other small things that would help to empower people? Remember, a game of chess consists of many small moves, the largest wall many tiny bricks.”
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