Reflections on the policy making process from nine Secretaries of State for Education 1986-2019

This publication is the lightly edited transcripts of conversations with nine former Secretaries of State.

The aim of the interviews was to explore how they carried out their time in office, and reflections on it. It makes the case that education is too important to be purely within the gift of Ministers, and that the right type of environment – people, research, programmes, insight and intelligence – needs to be around them in order to support effective policymaking and address some of the most challenging problems within the system.