Leading Change in the Department for Education : First Report on Progress

In 2012, the DfE conducted an internal review that considered how it could continue to meet the government’s priorities in the context of tightening financial conditions and implementing a high-profile series of policy reforms. Produced with the assistance of Bain & Company, the Department for Education Review was published in November 2012, with the implementation of its recommendations beginning shortly afterward. In July 2013, the department invited the Institute for Government to independently evaluate the department’s progress in meeting its review objectives. The work was undertaken at no cost to the department.

Our report finds that DfE has many of the successful building blocks of change in place. Progress has been made in certain areas of transformation, particularly in establishing a positive, credible vision for the future of the department and building ownership of change down to deputy director grade.

However, important challenges remain, particularly in engaging functions and ranks below the Senior Civil Service. We identify five areas for focus that will be crucial to the department’s future progress in meeting its transformation objectives.

As an independent institute, our work aims to support leaders to strategically reflect on how well placed their departments are to achieve their aims. We do not offer views on what the aims, size, structure or the role of departments should be.

The Institute for Government has supported leaders across Whitehall with their transformation efforts since 2009, when we were invited to support the Ministry of Justice with its major change initiative ’Transforming Justice’. We have subsequently provided support to three other departments through private evaluations of their transformation efforts. The collected insights from this work were published in Transforming Whitehall and will be updated in our forthcoming publication Leading Change in the Civil Service.