Top Department for Education civil servant to leave position
The Department for Education’s top civil servant will leave his post in the wake of the A-level results fiasco and U-turn over wearing face masks in schools.
Boris Johnson and education secretary Gavin Williamson have both tried to pass the blame for the disastrous release of A-level results in recent days.
Williamson blamed Ofqual for the fiasco, while Johnson today said students had been “derailed by a mutant algorithm” that in many cases revised grades downward.
The Financial Times is now reporting that the Department for Education’s permanent secretary Jonathan Slater will also leave his role next month.
The chief education civil servant’s departure comes just one day after Ofqual boss Sally Collier quit her post.
A government spokesperson told the FT: “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.”
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Slater and Collier’s departures will be seen as a way for Williamson and the government to shift blame onto others for the A-level results and for the U-turn on face masks.
Johnson announced today that face masks will be mandatory in communal areas and hallways in schools that are in regions under local lockdown, despite government figures saying yesterday morning this would not happen.
Williamson has been under pressure to resign from his position for the series of mishaps, but it appears he will now hang on.
When asked yesterday if he would be education secretary in a year’s time, Williamson told the BBC: “I love the job, I have one of the best jobs in government.”
General secretary of the FDA, a civil servants union, Dave Penman told Times Radio that Johnson and his government have “demonstrated time and time again, they’re prepared to throw several civil servants under the bus”.
“I think they don’t rate the civil service and I think they are prepared to scapegoat, undermine and blame the civil service in a way that I have not seen in 20 years at the FDA,” he said.
“We’ve seen anonymous briefings against a number of the senior leadership… I think they have come in with suspicion around the civil service: whether that’s because of the Vote Leave element that’s in and around at Number 10.”