The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

171

Unifying Departments

Certainly a first move in the unification process affecting the world of education was
the merger in 1995 of the 30-year-old Department of Education and Science (DES)
with the huge Department of Employment to form the Department for Education and
Employment (DfEE), an enormous ministry which was based in Sanctuary Buildings
in Great Smith Street, from which it overflowed to many subsidiary offices. The
significance of the merger was made clear by David Blunket, Secretary of State for
this new behemoth, in a speech to the Institute of Economic Affairs on 24 January
2001:

The unique importance of DfEE ^,s role stems from its responsibility for ensuring
that the UK has a well-functioning labour market. It is here that we are
clarifying the economic relationship between the citizen and the government - a
relationship of rights and responsibility, with the goal of ensuring both
economic efficiency and fairness for all.

Since the amalgamation of the Department for Education with the Employment
Department there has been a much clearer national and international
understanding of the synergy between education and employment policies,
which is so vital to the global competitiveness of the British economy.

(Blunkett 2001:2-3)

By clearly placing education as an element in the labour market, Blunkett indicated
both what might in his terms be described as a ‘synergy’ between his government’s
view of education and that of his right-wing audience and the department’s
responsibility for justifying educational investment according to its "social rate of
mwr∕7^,,(Bhmkett 2001: 8). This expression of the ideology of the ''managerial state"
shows how the concept of the link between education and the economy had moved on
since Callaghan’s Ruskin speech in 1976. It offers a rationale for the interventionist
policies which were being implemented across the public sector, and makes the case
for joining previously disparate departments. When after the general election later in
2001 this synergy was deemed no longer to be effective and the two departments were

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