The short and pointless life of DIUS

Amongst the results of yesterday's reshuffle was the abolition of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). The functions of the department, created a mere 23 months ago, have been merged into Peter Mandelson's burgeoning empire, and may be the better for it. But the rapid demise of a department created merely to allow Ed Balls to absorb a host of other departments' children's issues into his Department for Children, Schools and Families illustrates the sheer pointlessness of departmental restructuring.

The truth is that the Department for Education and Skills - which covered schools, nurseries, colleges, universities and training - was a perfectly coherent department, and one of the most successful in Whitehall, before the decision was made to split its functions into two departments and add a lot of non-educational functions to the new DCSF. Splitting the two made little sense - even if it brought science and innovation alongside further and higher education, as this blog made clear at the time, not least because further education faced dealing with two masters, but also because it made a nonsense of a vision for lifelong learning that had hitherto been a mainstay of government policy.

To be fair to John Denham, he has been a good secretary of state, and his promotion to communities secretary is deserved, even if his department has with the help of the Learning and Skills Council, presided over some very messy college funding crises. But by splitting the departments, Gordon Brown actually weakened the voice of universities and colleges in government. At least that weakness should be remedied with Lord Mandelson in charge. But wouldn't it have been a lot easier to have recreated, dare one say it, a Department for Education?

Doing the Splits in the Education Ministry

Few government departments can have had quite so many changes as the English education ministry. For twenty years it was merely the Ministry of Education, until its 1964 rebirth as the Department of Education and Science. Then, it lost science, forcing universities to court two masters for their research budgets. In 1995, it merged with the old Department of Employment to create the Department for Education and Employment. This meant, for example, that childcare and nursery education were under the same roof (though it took rather longer for the responsible civil servants to work together). In 2001, much of the employment brief was diverted to the new Department of Work and Pensions, but childcare and skills survived in the Department for Education and Skills. At least there was no further name change when children's services were added to the DfES's responsibilities in 2003.

Now one of Gordon Brown's first acts is to split the department in two: creating the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills . But, to what purpose? There are in Ed Balls and John Denham, two able cabinet ministers. Ian Watmore will be an excellent permanent secretary at DIUS. And science is back at one of the new ministries. But, as Mike Baker points out here: "With one parent giving each its undivided attention, there may be some gains. But where does that leave the middle child, known as Further Education? The answer seems to be: caught in the middle of a complicated custody battle, spending some time in each parent's home."

Surely Mike is not right to suggest also that it is merely a ploy to concentrate more control of education at no. 10?