Locations: London, Sheffield, Darlington
Homepage: dcsf.gov.uk

Departments

• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• Department for Education
• Department for Transport
• Department for Work and Pensions
• Department of Health
• Export Credits Guarantee Department
• Food Standards Agency
• HM Revenue & Customs
• Home Office
• Ministry of Justice
• Office for National Statistics

Department for Children, Schools and Families

The DCSF building on Great Smith Street, London.

Our aim is to make England the best place in the world for our children and young people to grow up. This means: that they grow up happy and healthy; that we properly safeguard the young and vulnerable; that we achieve world class standards and close the gap in educational achievement for disadvantaged groups; that young people stay on in learning to achieve their potential to 18 and beyond; and that we keep young people on the right track by encouraging positive behaviours.

Operational Research at the DCSF

OR analysts work in all the main policy areas of the Department. The nature of our work is varied and fast moving, and we provide a wide range of broad analytical support, advice and scrutiny, in addition to some well-defined areas of more technical input. Typical examples of recent work include:

Allocating resources:

• Providing equitable allocations of funding to schools by working out how to divide the pot of money between Local Authorities and different types of schools.
• Determining how much money to give to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to fund different routes of learning beyond age 16. This includes school sixth forms, sixth form colleges, FE colleges, apprenticeships and other work-based learning. In 2008, this is about £9bn per year.
• Schools workforce planning to ensure sufficient teaching staff available now and in the future.
• Modelling the investment in schools capital (i.e. new buildings).
• Providing a quality assurance and risk management framework to underpin all analytical work.
• Forecasting take-up of Educational Maintenance Allowance and other funds to support learners.

Modelling future scenarios:

• Projections of the current achievements of children and young people to inform the demand for different learning routes into the future as they get older. E.g. How many of today's 7-year olds will be doing A-levels in 10 years' time?

Planning take up:

• The Government makes many announcements for its aspirations - for example, it wants more young people to do apprenticeships and the new Diploma qualifications. We model where those learners will come from and how they are made up.

Monitoring targets:

• We have many formal Government targets. We produce trajectories to monitor whether we are on track to meet those targets and, if not, explore what changes might be needed to get progress 'on trajectory'.

Understanding national and local performance:

• We have a wealth of performance data at individual, institution (e.g. school) and Local Authority level. We are involved in the process of producing and acting on this information throughout. Some of the OR staff are involved in the production and quality assurance of performance data; others are involved in the analysis of that data.
• One of our more visible products is the extensive set of tools and data that enables teachers, parents and pupils to monitor and understand performance in their school.

Presenting analysis to the public and within Government:

• We provide much of the analysis used to present Government policy and thinking. Recent examples include The Children's Plan - which sets out the agenda for the Department - and the Schools White Paper: Higher Standards, Better Schools for All and the 10 Year Youth Strategy.
• Internally, we provide much of the evidence to consultations within Government in dialogues between HM Treasury, No. 10 and the Cabinet Office about proposals for new policies and evidence of policy effectiveness on our existing interventions.

OR also contributes to infrastructure issues within DCSF including modelling pay and sick absence to ensure the efficient and effective use of all its resources.

What to Expect

The majority of OR analysts are based in London although the department also has analysts working in Sheffield (where the Head of Profession is based) and Darlington. We're a friendly group working alongside economists, statisticians, social researchers, data collection and administrative staff and we work very closely with our policy partners. For the more experienced analysts, there is the possibility of working within a policy team.

As a new OR recruit you will be assigned a mentor to guide you through the first months of your career. In addition, we are committed to developing both your OR and consultancy skills, plus providing training in our wide range of IT facilities. Career development is also a high priority, so you will be encouraged to change project responsibilities about every 18 months to 2 years.

We have all grades represented within the OR group: from Deputy Director (the Head of Profession) through to SO (GORS level 1). Promotion up to and including GORS level 3 can occur within post and is based on displayed competencies and how individuals perform in work, through a process of bi-annual promotion rounds to assess suitability for progression. Thereafter, promotion happens by successfully applying for vacant posts.