{"id":2726,"date":"2012-11-16T08:35:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T08:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=2726"},"modified":"2012-11-16T08:35:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T08:35:25","slug":"letting-a-thousand-civil-servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/11\/16\/letting-a-thousand-civil-servants\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting a thousand civil servants ..."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let's face it, Mr Gove's cunning plan to sack 1000 of his Department's <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicservice.co.uk\/news_story.asp?id=21451\">staff<\/a> is probably not Maoist in intent, though it is in terms of zeal. \u00a0 He is unlikely to have thought to himself one morning over his organic, fairly-traded, salt-free porridge ...<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"<em>Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land<\/em>.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... as Mao did in 1957 in an invitation to intellectuals to criticise the political system \u2013 though criticism there has certainly been of Gove's decision. \u00a0It is, of course, consistent in a rough and ready sort of fashion with his desire to roll back the state's role in education by \"freeing up\" schools for local decision-making, especially on the curriculum.\u00a0A DfE spokesperson is quoted as saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"We conducted a review to make sure we have the capability to deliver well-designed policies that have a real, measurable impact on the children and young people who need it most, while minimising costs to the taxpayer. \u00a0The review found that the DfE has committed and hard-working staff producing high quality work, but that the department can and should work more effectively and efficiently. \u00a0Over the coming months we will target our staff time and money on only our top priorities, cutting red tape and concentrating on the work that adds the most value. \u00a0We are reducing the size of our backroom staff and merging offices to reduce the cost of our buildings. \u00a0The DfE had already committed to reducing its administrative budget in real terms by 42 per cent from 2010\/11 to 2014\/15. \u00a0Following the review, our target is a 50 per cent reduction to \u00a3290m by 2015\/16 and we have already achieved over half of these savings.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed. \u00a0However, none of this will ensure a curriculum that takes our existential dilemmas seriously. \u00a0In relation to which, I am told that Mr Gove is reading all the proposals for the revised national curriculum \u2013 word by word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let's face it, Mr Gove's cunning plan to sack 1000 of his Department's staff is probably not Maoist in intent, though it is in terms of zeal. \u00a0 He is unlikely to have thought to himself one morning over his...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}