Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

In praise of examinations

15 March 2002

We all enjoy Yes Minister, even the re-runs, but it could be argued that it has helped to undermine the important tradition of an independent civil service. More likely, as with all good light entertainment, it accurately reflects a contemporary trend.

Recently there have been rumblings in Australia that public servants are no longer prized for their dispassionate advice and are developing a habit of producing politically palatable pre-censored information to their ministers. We are moving, it is often claimed, from the apolitical British model to the frankly politicised American model, without adopting the checks and balances which have been developed to moderate the latter.

Be that as it may, the British version is itself under a cloud. The extraordinary events surrounding the departure of Martin Sixsmith are testament to that. Robert Armstrong, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, former Cabinet Secretary and head of the home Civil Service, took the unprecedented step of writing an article in The Spectator severely critical of the current political ethos in Whitehall.

Until the late 1800s church, military and civil service were regarded as providing occupational opportunity for the well-connected and under-talented. Armstrong quotes with approbation G.M. Trevelyan's Shortened History of England:

"The complicated and constantly shifting relationship between central and local government, between private enterprise and State undertaking, was rendered possible by the evolution of the permanent non-political Civil Service of Great Britain, with its accumulated stores of knowledge, experience and sound tradition. In the third quarter of the [19th] century, the Civil Service was removed from the field of political jobbery by the adoption of open competitive examination as the method of entrance, a device that seemed as strange as it was successful."

Armstrong goes on to attack the practice of employing on public funds "relatively junior people who are appointed because they share the political preconceptions of the party in power; young men and women who often see a term as a useful stage in what is intended to be a political career." Jim Hacker's Weisel rules O.K.

By way of contrast, Armstrong praises the old ideal of a service "open to the talents" attracting "men and women of the highest intellectual ability and integrity". These are words which might adorn the strategic plan of the modern university. Are we kidding ourselves?

A glance at the ancient Chinese mandarins shows that the entrance examination, Trevelyan's strange device, is neither original nor perfect. Note moreover that the great reforms at Oxford took place also in the latter part of the 19th century. A cyclical view of history might suggest that the pure civil service and the ideal university are fading sesquicentennial memories. If so, I am with Armstrong in seeking to bring the best of them back.