It is surprising to learn that Sir David Bell is still only 52. He has been chief education officer of Newcastle, chief executive of Bedfordshire county council, head of Ofsted and, most recently, permanent secretary at the Department for Education. Now he is vice-chancellor of the University of Reading and can, as he puts it, "call 'house!' on the bingo card of educational jobs", which isn't bad for a man who started as a primary school teacher in his native Glasgow. He got most of his jobs at ridiculously early ages: a deputy headship at 26, a headship at 29, chief executive at 36. He doesn't think he's Reading's youngest vice-chancellor, but he must be the first who trained as a primary teacher.
If you ask how he got these jobs, people will say it's because he's good at running things. They can quote, for example, from a "capability review" on the education department carried out by the Cabinet Office during Bell's tenure: he was "visible, decisive, engaging and inspiring". Or Ofsted's verdict on Newcastle in 1999: that a "remarkable improvement" in its performance "to a large extent results from" Bell's appointment four years previously. He did so well as permanent secretary that he was at one stage tipped for cabinet secretary.
But other people are good at running things, and even Bell has mishaps. At the education department, for example, he accepted a measure of responsibility when Michael Gove, the secretary of state, left himself open to legal challenge over axeing school building projects and, on his watch at Ofsted, the inspectorate was berated for issuing a number of flawed reports.
So perhaps it is Bell's authoritative manner that has taken him so far. Everything he says sounds balanced and measured – "I am extreme in my moderation," he explains – and the certainty and confidence probably derive (though he is no longer a churchgoer himself) from his Scottish Protestant background. Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary, describes him as "one of the calmest men I've ever met".
The manners are impeccable. In his office at Reading, with its panoramic views over the university's Whiteknights Park, he greets me with the firmest of handshakes, warmly recalls our previous encounters, introduces me to his personal assistants, and regularly drops my Christian name into his answers. You admire the smooth functioning as you might admire a Rolls-Royce. I learn from the university's communications officer that, while undergraduate applications for next autumn are down 7% generally, Reading's are up 10%. This cannot have anything to do with Bell, who has been in post just four weeks, but you can't help feeling that, when he appears on the scene, things inevitably go well.
At Ofsted, he was often sharply outspoken, criticising the Labour government for turning down the Tomlinson report's recommendation to scrap A-levels and GCSEs and lamenting the effects of "the target culture" on schools. Permanent secretaries, however, aren't allowed to express controversial opinions in public, even after they've left the job. So reports of tensions between him and Gove have never been publicly confirmed. Bell has always been described as "close to New Labour", though nobody would ever be rude enough to call him a crony. When he left the education department at Christmas, newspapers reported "a difficult relationship" with Gove. "Here's a knighthood, good references, off you go," was one account of his departure.
Bell is having none of it. "I never had a difficult relationship. I told the secretary of state in the summer of 2010 that I didn't expect to do a full parliament, and expected to be away around the end of 2011. That's exactly what happened."
He has no quarrel with either free schools or Gove's rapid expansion of academies. "I have always believed that if you maximise the independence of schools you have a better chance of securing progress. Academies are not a huge step from local management of schools. They are a logical continuation of policies to increase levels of school autonomy." Pushing the Academies Act through parliament as soon as he came to office was "a brilliant decision" by Gove. Free schools are "a good addition to the system" that "will have a galvanising effect". As for suggestions that the creation of these schools, outside the local authority system and wholly dependent on Whitehall, amounts to a power-grab, "that's a caricature – the secretary of state won't be taking every micro-decision about schools from Cornwall to Cumbria". Gove's reforms haven't caused the same "brouhaha" as the health reforms, Bell points out. "That's because they haven't been imposed systemwide. It's not been a top-down reform in which every school has to become an academy."Education's ex-top civil servant 'never had a difficult relationship' with Michael Gove, he says. And in fact, when he speaks, his phraseology sounds eerily similar to that of the secretary of state, says Peter Wilby
NEWS BY:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/david-bell-interview
If you ask how he got these jobs, people will say it's because he's good at running things. They can quote, for example, from a "capability review" on the education department carried out by the Cabinet Office during Bell's tenure: he was "visible, decisive, engaging and inspiring". Or Ofsted's verdict on Newcastle in 1999: that a "remarkable improvement" in its performance "to a large extent results from" Bell's appointment four years previously. He did so well as permanent secretary that he was at one stage tipped for cabinet secretary.
But other people are good at running things, and even Bell has mishaps. At the education department, for example, he accepted a measure of responsibility when Michael Gove, the secretary of state, left himself open to legal challenge over axeing school building projects and, on his watch at Ofsted, the inspectorate was berated for issuing a number of flawed reports.
So perhaps it is Bell's authoritative manner that has taken him so far. Everything he says sounds balanced and measured – "I am extreme in my moderation," he explains – and the certainty and confidence probably derive (though he is no longer a churchgoer himself) from his Scottish Protestant background. Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary, describes him as "one of the calmest men I've ever met".
The manners are impeccable. In his office at Reading, with its panoramic views over the university's Whiteknights Park, he greets me with the firmest of handshakes, warmly recalls our previous encounters, introduces me to his personal assistants, and regularly drops my Christian name into his answers. You admire the smooth functioning as you might admire a Rolls-Royce. I learn from the university's communications officer that, while undergraduate applications for next autumn are down 7% generally, Reading's are up 10%. This cannot have anything to do with Bell, who has been in post just four weeks, but you can't help feeling that, when he appears on the scene, things inevitably go well.
At Ofsted, he was often sharply outspoken, criticising the Labour government for turning down the Tomlinson report's recommendation to scrap A-levels and GCSEs and lamenting the effects of "the target culture" on schools. Permanent secretaries, however, aren't allowed to express controversial opinions in public, even after they've left the job. So reports of tensions between him and Gove have never been publicly confirmed. Bell has always been described as "close to New Labour", though nobody would ever be rude enough to call him a crony. When he left the education department at Christmas, newspapers reported "a difficult relationship" with Gove. "Here's a knighthood, good references, off you go," was one account of his departure.
Bell is having none of it. "I never had a difficult relationship. I told the secretary of state in the summer of 2010 that I didn't expect to do a full parliament, and expected to be away around the end of 2011. That's exactly what happened."
He has no quarrel with either free schools or Gove's rapid expansion of academies. "I have always believed that if you maximise the independence of schools you have a better chance of securing progress. Academies are not a huge step from local management of schools. They are a logical continuation of policies to increase levels of school autonomy." Pushing the Academies Act through parliament as soon as he came to office was "a brilliant decision" by Gove. Free schools are "a good addition to the system" that "will have a galvanising effect". As for suggestions that the creation of these schools, outside the local authority system and wholly dependent on Whitehall, amounts to a power-grab, "that's a caricature – the secretary of state won't be taking every micro-decision about schools from Cornwall to Cumbria". Gove's reforms haven't caused the same "brouhaha" as the health reforms, Bell points out. "That's because they haven't been imposed systemwide. It's not been a top-down reform in which every school has to become an academy."Education's ex-top civil servant 'never had a difficult relationship' with Michael Gove, he says. And in fact, when he speaks, his phraseology sounds eerily similar to that of the secretary of state, says Peter Wilby
NEWS BY:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/david-bell-interview
