Why is this person in charge

Why politicians shouldn’t run the country

I’m not really into politics and this article may just highlight that fact but there is one thing that I have never understood about the government and that it is why we put people in charge of sectors/departments that have absolutely no idea of or experience in that area whatsoever.

Take Michael Gove, he’s the Secretary of State for Education. This is the man in charge of the educational system for all British children up to the age of 19.

Taking a quick look at his career so far, he earned himself an English degree (2:1) whilst studying at Oxford. Following his graduation he then became a trainee reporter for the Press & Journal in Aberdeen and then went on to occupy numerous positions for The Times newspaper. He’s worked on a number TV programmes and written some books.

What I don’t see in his career to date is any experience working in education. He’s never held a single position within the educational ecosystem, so how can this man be qualified to run the entire country’s education system?

Now I’m sure people will point to the fact that he has a team of people, including advisers, private consultants etc. that aid him in running the department but I still find it amazing that you can have someone in charge of such an important department that has no experience. Plus if he has all these people essentially doing the work for him then why employee him in that role at all.

The thing is, this isn’t an isolated instance, it’s probably the same for every other governmental department. Then we have the cabinet reshuffle which basically moves all the department heads who were under-performing onto a different role usually into another field that they know nothing about.

Compare this to the private sector, I could never imagine this situation being allowed to happen. Take what I do, I’m a software engineer and in my department everyone comes from a software background, including our MD. The person responsible for the running of my department is also a developer, this enables him to have a solid understanding of how the software is built, how long the process takes and more importantly what risks and pitfalls are involved. If you were to put someone with no software experience whatsoever in this role you would have a recipe for disaster.