You could forgive senior civil servants for lying down in a darkened room after Jo Johnson finally left the building following two years of hyperactive reform – but the work of government never stops. So Mian has a full in-tray, when he steps up next month from Director of Strategy at DfE to acting Director General for HE & FE until the end of 2018.
The former Director of the Social Market Foundation will be overseeing major reforms to technical education, with the roll out of T levels and meeting the target of three million apprenticeship starts by 2020. DfE is leading the full post-18 review, which the department spent last autumn surreptitiously trying to water down. And Mian’s directorate is implementing the HE & Research Act.
DfE’s big tasks over the next year, however, will be securing a good departmental settlement in the Comprehensive Spending Review. The ONS decisions on national accounting rules will complicate this massively, if HE spending has to be channelled through DfE budgets. Early years, schools and colleges have had almost a decade of cuts so will be first in line for extra cash. DfE has been privately concerned by ministers’ habit of playing to the gallery in kicking vice chancellors – because it knows, sooner rather than later, it will have to deal with the reality of an institution heading over a cliff.
A change of government, of course, would mean all bets are off at DfE – implementing Labour’s flagship policy of abolishing tuition fees, while securing the sector’s financial sustainability and stability will be quite the conjuring trick but the sort that would probably appeal to the wonk’s wonk Mian.
Paul Kett, the current DfE Director-General for Education Standards, takes over the job permanently in January 2019.