New education bodies should lift officials' administrative burdens

Government departments are normally reluctant to cede power

Government departments are normally reluctant to cede power. Several ministers over the decades have come unstuck after trying to prise functions from their senior civil servants whose motto has been "what we have, we hold".

Senior officials in Dr Woods's Department in Marlborough Street, however, will be relieved to hear he has ordered exams, special education and minor operational matters to be handed over to a new set of bodies.

These same officials have been weighed down for years by relatively trivial administrative tasks such as heating systems or individual grant applications. Meant to be drafting policy, they have had to pursue these matters until all parties are at least partially satisfied.

Retired civil servant Mr Sean Cromien outlined this excessive clientilism in his report on the Department released earlier this year. Dr Woods's reforms are designed to end this administrative malaise.

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Exams, which take up a huge amount of the Department's energies, will be handed over to a new exams commission. This decision will please the overburdened officials and no doubt Dr Woods and future ministers for education. If something goes wrong with this sensitive process involving pupils and their parents, the head of the new commission will have to face the flak.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland, however, independent exams bodies have experienced problems in recent years and the initial period of the new commission could be rocky.

Another measure designed to ensure that senior officials are no longer preoccupied with trivial tasks is the new regional offices. The Department already has operations in Athlone and Tullamore, but they are essentially branches of the headquarters in Marlborough Street.

Some years ago another minister for education, Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, tried to set up regional boards of education, but political opposition killed off the idea.

Dr Woods wants regional offices rather than statutory bofards and his plan is more modest in scale and thus less likely to be shot down.

The offices will be the first point of contact for teachers, parents, schools and other education interests, rather than ringing an official in Dublin. Schools will be able to make their case to a local office which may be more attuned to their needs.

The exact details of how these offices work will now be worked out between Dr Woods and the unions in his Department. Teacher unions are also likely to have strong views on the changes.

The third change announced yesterday by Dr Woods involves handing over the area of special needs to a new organisation called the National Council for Special Education.

While policy on special needs will still come from Marlborough Street, parents of autistic or dyslexic children will hopefully have a better chance of obtaining educational services for their children via new body.

Because of the high-profile cases in which the Department has become embroiled - for example the case of autistic man Mr Jamie Sinnott - the workload in this area has increased enormously.

The officials in this section of the Department are some of the most overworked in the Civil Service and they will be happy - if it proves effective - to see a new structure to assist them.