Marc Kidson

Test-and-learn teams – iterating towards a new operating model for government Alongside the government's recent launch of its Plan for Change, which focused on what they want to achieve in the direction of their missions, there is a growing focus on the how. The Prime Minister ...

Going from 'disruptor' to the new normal might be a common story in the tech world, but it faces an uphill battle in government, as past reforms have shown. I posted a few practical suggestions over on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pulse/test-a... #testandlearn #government #civilservicereform

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🧵Really promising speech from @patmcfaddenmp this morning on how the Government wants to reform Whitehall. If the PMs speech on Thursday was the ambition, this is our first proper glimpse of the 'how'. Some quick thoughts on what Labour's vision looks like.

Great 🧵 summary. McFadden refreshingly clear and precise about both diagnosis and suggested course of treatment for the patient! Wonder if Starmer’s blunt rhetoric was intentionally teeing-up interest in what is otherwise quite a niche topic

Yes, didn’t feel right to personalise it like that. We’ve all met brilliant cogs in the Whitehall machine - far harder to unstick the mechanism itself.

Keir Starmer’s Plan for Change puts pressure on Whitehall to deliver | Institute for Government The Plan for Change's shift towards targets raises questions about the government's mission-led approach.

Our @instituteforgov.bsky.social reaction to today’s Plan for Change

A positive development, but challenges ahead on targets/milestones, including about the money

And a shot across the bows for the civil service

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/keir...

…rather than acknowledge politicians’ complicity in creating an overweening central government addicted to the illusion of control and constantly “chasing the dragon” by adding new people and programmes. I’m afraid targets & deliverology risk accelerating that.

“Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”

Only surprise in PM’s speech today was the shade he threw at the civil service. Agree w/ those who felt tone was off. I didn’t like how he personalised institutional inertia as a moral failing of civil servants…

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You can read this one here: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/defaul... with h/t to authors @emmanorris.bsky.social & @petrbouchal.bsky.social

Revisiting the Sure Start example in DfE, or even for the reimagining of our JobCentres as hubs for skills and employment in communities, could yet show the way for ministers to drive a big bold agenda from the centre in ways that are sensitive to place and build broad based support.

And having that personal attachment from actors across the system makes it even more critical to be able to listen & act when people are telling you in good faith it’s falling short. In the rapid scale-up too strong a filter would have killed the signal that the delivery model needed strengthening.

And then outside Whitehall to embody an essential intent about the policy itself. For Sure Start, Tessa Jowell’s warmth and non-judgemental care helped bring to life the promise of Sure Start for local leaders and practitioners that carried through to how they engaged families.

It was an adaptive rather than a fragile solution. But one, as with the London Challenge, where visible and personal leadership really made a difference. First, to champion and protect the policy at its vulnerable formative stage.

Reform lessons are not just about the policy itself but the politics & practicality of making it reality. Sure Start’s brilliance was its simple clarity of purpose as a national policy that allowed room for all of the complexity and messiness of real lives and communities to be addressed in context.

As @torstenbell.bsky.social points to, anyone interested in preventative public services has to take theSure Start example seriously. As it happens, this was another ‘policy success’ case study that I was involved in with @instituteforgov.bsky.social 10 years ago that bears revisiting.

From Sure Start to youth centres, cutting children’s services is a false economy | Torsten Bell Research reveals that Tessa Jowell’s programme not only helped early years children but went on to reduce youth crime On 22 February 2019, I spoke at a conference in memory of a good friend, Tessa Jowell. The event was about her legacy, marking 20 years…

From Sure Start to youth centres, cutting children’s services is a false economy | Torsten Bell

Reminds me of an old boss (head of an Education department) invoking Oliver Wendell Holmes to caution leaders to accept only the simplicity that lies on the *other side* of complexity. Feels like we’ve been living that lesson the hard way over a few years of politicians mistaking slogan for vision.

Metrics for learning and course correction by system stewards in DfE will be necessary, but that’s not the same as reducing a vision for such a complex system to deciding if we want exam results *or* attendance *or* behaviour to be the North Star.

In that context though, jumping into a reductive vision hooked onto some KPIs is as likely to have unintended consequences as rushing to get some policy runs on the board before direction is fully set.

What this kind of response from the sector indicates - as with the initial feedback on Ofsted proposals - is the quite reasonable fear that rather than being gripped at the centre, all the ambiguities and unintended consequences could once again be left for practitioners to resolve in the field.

That’s not exactly ducking “the vision thing” IMO, even if crystallising what policy levers they are or aren’t willing to use to pursue these shifts across the system should come in a white paper.

3) focusing on the ways that all children achieving educationally will be underpinned by them belonging and thriving.

Directionally, the Labour mission has quite a clear vision of a system based around 1) building capacity for inclusion across mainstream schools, in part via 2) more collaborative local and regional systems covering MATs and maintained schools (plus other providers like AP), and…

Calls for clarity and coherence from DfE are completely understandable - they’re moving quickly on multiple fronts. But sitting behind the ‘bitty’ announcements it’s not that hard to make out the Darzi-style “big shifts” that tie things together and DfE could be using to articulate reform direction.

Directionally, the Labour mission is moving us to a system based around 1) more inclusive mainstream schools embedded in… 2) more collaborative local and regional systems covering MATs and maintained schools, enabling pupils’ success by…

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Fourthly, we would worry a lot less about exclusion if we funded and researched good practice in AP better. Especially developing routes back into mainstream. Parents and teachers really support this 7/10

The stale exclusions debate must give way to real solutions We need to worry less about exclusions and worry more about alternative provision, concludes a new report

And my brilliant co-author, @petewhitehead.bsky.social
has written about the report for @schoolsweek.bsky.social 10/10

schoolsweek.co.uk/lets-get-bey...