Department overview | |
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Formed | 2007 |
Preceding Department | |
Dissolved | 2010 |
Superseding Department | |
Jurisdiction | England |
Headquarters | London, England, UK |
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Politics of the United Kingdom |
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Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) was a department of the UK government, between 2007 and 2010, responsible for issues affecting people in England up to the age of 19, including child protection and education. DCSF was replaced by the Department for Education after the change of government following the 2010 General Election.
The department was led by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
The expenditure, administration and policy of the department was scrutinised by the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee. [1]
DCSF was created on 28 June 2007 following the demerger of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). [2] [3] The department was led by Ed Balls. [4] The Permanent Secretary was David Bell.
Other education functions of the former DCSF were taken over by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (originally the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, since merged with Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform).
DCSF was directly responsible for state schools in England. The Minister of State for Schools and Learning was the minister in charge.
The Department employed over 2,500 staff. [5]
In May 2010, DCSF had four main sites:
Charlie Brooker, writing in The Guardian, expressed incredulity that the department was supportive of Brain Gym, despite its broad condemnation by scientific organisations, and despite it being apparently nonsense. [7]
Upon learning that the programme was used at hundreds of UK state schools, Dr Ben Goldacre of The Guardian's Bad Science pages called it a "vast empire of pseudoscience" and went on to dissect parts of their teaching materials, refuting, for instance, claims that rubbing the chest would stimulate the carotid arteries, that "processed foods do not contain water", or that liquids other than water "are processed in the body as food, and do not serve the body's water needs." [8]
The department adopted a "child friendly" visual identity, known as "Building the Rainbow" shortly after it was established. The main features of the brand identity were a rainbow logo and images of cartoonised children carrying blocks to build the rainbow logo. [9] The lettering on the logo was all in lower case despite being a proper noun. It was reported in The Daily Telegraph that several thousand pounds were spent on adopting and implementing this visual identity. [10] The Conservatives, then in opposition, nicknamed the department the "Department for Curtains and Soft Furnishings", [11] a nickname often used by the media. [9] [12]
The Department also came under criticism during the 2010 General Election, after it was revealed that the Department's offices had a refit. [13] Other features include a grand glass and steel staircase and imported Italian designer furniture. The total cost of the refit was estimated to be three million pounds, at a time when the department needed to make two billion pounds of savings. [9]
The secretary of state for education, also referred to as the education secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department for Education. The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), previously known as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), was a charity, and an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) of the Department for Education. In England and Northern Ireland, the QCDA maintained and developed the National Curriculum and associated assessments, tests and examinations, advising the minister formerly known as the Secretary of State for Education on these matters.
The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) was a United Kingdom government department between 2001 and 2007, responsible for the education system as well as children's services in England.
The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) was a non-departmental public body jointly sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) in England. It closed on 31 March 2010 and was replaced by the Skills Funding Agency and the Young People's Learning Agency.
Ben Michael Goldacre is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials, aiming to require open science practices in clinical trials.
The specialist schools programme (SSP), first launched as the Technology Colleges programme and also known as the specialist schools initiative, specialist schools policy and specialist schools scheme, was a government programme in the United Kingdom which encouraged state schools in England and Northern Ireland to raise private sponsorship in order to become specialist schools – schools that specialise in certain areas of the curriculum – to boost achievement, cooperation and diversity in the school system. First introduced in 1993 to England as a policy of John Major's Conservative government, it was relaunched in 1997 as a flagship policy of the New Labour governments, expanding significantly under Prime Minister Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown. The programme was introduced to Northern Ireland in 2006, lasting until April 2011 in England and August 2011 in Northern Ireland. By this time, it had established a near-universal specialist system of secondary education in England, with almost every state-funded secondary school in England having specialised. This system replaced the comprehensive system which had been in place since the 1970s.
An academy school in England is a state-funded school which is directly funded by the Department for Education and independent of local authority control. The terms of the arrangements are set out in individual Academy Funding Agreements. 80% of secondary schools, 40% of primary schools and 44% of special schools are academies.
Patrick Holford is a British author and entrepreneur who endorses a range of vitamin tablets. As an advocate of alternative nutrition and diet methods, he appears regularly on television and radio in the UK and abroad. He has 36 books in print in 29 languages. His business career promotes a wide variety of alternative medical approaches such as orthomolecular medicine, many of which are considered pseudoscientific by mainstream science and medicine.
Brain Gym is a proprietary brain training and body movement programme.
Highfields School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Matlock, Derbyshire, England. At the time of its September 2012 Ofsted inspection, the school had 1175 pupils on roll aged 11–18, with 215 in the sixth form. It is split across two sites in the town 1.8 miles apart.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) was the name given to the British government's investment programme in secondary school buildings in England in the 2000s. Around half of the work was procured under the private finance initiative. The delivery of the programme was overseen by Partnerships for Schools (PfS), a non-departmental public body formed through a joint venture between the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Partnerships UK and private sector partners. The programme was cancelled in 2010.
The Arthur Terry School is a secondary school and sixth form with academy status in the Four Oaks area of Sutton Coldfield, England. It is Ofsted Good and was an Arts College before the Specialist Schools initiative was made defunct. The school's headteacher is Samantha Kibble. It is part of the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership.
The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families was a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Wey Valley Academy was a coeducational secondary school with academy status in Broadwey, Weymouth, in the county of Dorset, in southern England.
The Centre for the Economics of Education (CEE) was a think tank in London, England, established in March 2000, with an extensive range of publications and reports on the economics of education. It ceased to operate in 2010.
Bad Science is a book written by Ben Goldacre which criticises certain physicians and the media for a lack of critical thinking and misunderstanding of evidence and statistics which is detrimental to the public understanding of science. In Bad Science, Goldacre explains basic scientific principles to demonstrate the importance of robust research methods, experimental design, and analysis to make informed judgements and conclusions of evidence-based medicine. Bad Science is described as an engaging and inspirational book, written in simple language and occasional humour, to effectively explain academic concepts to the reader.
The Department for Education (DfE) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for child protection, child services, education, apprenticeships, and wider skills in England.
A free school in England is a type of academy established since 2010 under the Cameron–Clegg government's free school policy initiative. From May 2015, usage of the term was formally extended to include new academies set up via a local authority competition. Like other academies, free schools are non-profit-making, state-funded schools which are free to attend but which are mostly independent of the local authority.
The Maharishi School, is a non-academically selective free school in Skelmersdale and Lathom, Lancashire, UK. The school was founded in 1986 and uses "consciousness-based education" methods including Transcendental Meditation.
British Conservative Party politician Michael Gove served as Secretary of State for Education from 2010 to 2014.
The Children, Schools and Families Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Children, Schools and Families and its associated public bodies.
All of which sounds like hooey to me. And also to the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and the charity Sense About Science, who have written to every local education authority in the land to complain about Brain Gym's misrepresentation of, um, reality.
I've accidentally stumbled upon a vast empire of pseudoscience being peddled in hundreds of state schools up and down the country.
In the first prime ministerial debate, the Tory leader attacked the DCSF for spending £3m on a refurbishment which, he claimed, had included "a contemplation suite and a massage room".