Neil recently attended the launch of Wild Search’s Leading Education: Celebrating Politicians Who Led the Department 1925–2025 — a book charting a full century of educational leadership in this country. Edward Wild and the team of authors have produced something genuinely worth reading, and the launch brought together a room full of authors, education leaders, and stakeholders who care deeply about education’s place in public life.
Neil’s own contribution to the book focuses on Tony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education between 1965 and 1967. Crosland is a fascinating figure — intellectually bold, politically astute, and willing to take a position. His tenure coincided with a period of sweeping change, and researching the chapter only deepened Neil’s conviction that the story of education policy is, at its heart, a story about power: who holds it, and what they choose to do with it.
Looking across the full sweep of the book, one detail stands out. In the period covered alone, the department went through at least six different incarnations — renamed, restructured, merged, and reorganised as political priorities shifted. That is not the record of a department treated as a cornerstone of government. It is the record of one that has too often been an afterthought.
Neil has long argued that this needs to change. During his time as Chair of the Education Select Committee, he made the case for education to sit far higher on the political ladder — specifically, through the creation of a properly resourced super-department: one that brings together every part of the sector, from early years through to higher and further education, skills, and lifelong learning, and that reflects the enormous economic contribution education makes to this country.
“Fabulous launch of Wild Search’s ‘Leading Education: Celebrating Politicians Who Led the Department 1925–2025’ with Edward Wild, most of the other authors and many interested stakeholders and education leaders. My contribution was on Tony Crosland, Secretary of State, 1965–1967. The period covered saw at least six incarnations of the Department. I believe education should be further up the political ladder through a form of a super-department to include all parts of the sector and its massive part in the economy. I promoted this approach while Chair of the Education Select Committee.”
— Neil Carmichael, UCEC
Education is not a niche portfolio. It shapes every person who passes through it, every business that depends on a skilled workforce, and every community that relies on its institutions. The fact that it has been shuffled around Whitehall for a century, rather than given a permanent, commanding presence at the centre of government, is something the sector should continue to push back against.
Books like this one matter precisely because they make that argument through evidence and biography rather than rhetoric. A century of secretaries of state — their decisions, their legacies, their failures — is a powerful reminder of what political will can achieve in education, and what its absence costs.
Leading Education: Celebrating Politicians Who Led the Department 1925–2025 is published by Wild Search.
