From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy


On Monday, Andy Burnham finally set out some of his plans for
government. To the surprise of no one, much of it involves greater
spending, with the likely next PM pledging that a new rCyNo. 10 NorthrCO
will oversee the rCybiggest council house building programme since the post-war period.rCO

Less clear from the speech was how on earth it will be paid for.
Instead, it looks like BurnhamrCOs eventual pick for chancellor will be
forced to stump up the cash, along with creating rCygood growth in every postcode and hope in every heartrCO.

That will be easier said than done. Whoever enters No. 11 will find
themselves dealing with a country that has somehow managed to combine
the highest tax intake since the end of the second world war with
decrepit public services. Additional borrowing to boost growth panics
the bond markets, while decades of Treasury penny-pinching has led to
woeful capital investment.

At times like these, yourCOd hope that Treasury civil servants rCo traditionally made up of the mandarin elite rCo would be on hand to help.
But, The Spectator can reveal, in recent years the department has
decided to sabotage its own talent pipeline rCo all in the interests of diversity. Even more worryingly, it has sacrificed the one thing that is
meant to be the TreasuryrCOs selling point: its numeracy.

For many years now, the Treasury has run its own talent scheme for
highflying graduates. As yourCOd expect, given the departmentrCOs role in managing the nationrCOs finances, the application process has tested for numerical reasoning. While the programme recruits for policy advisers,
rather than economic specialists, you need a least some mathematical
ability to understand the departmentrCOs often complex financial and
economic policies.

But then came 2020, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the subsequent mental breakdown of the British state. The TreasuryrCOs
response to the death of a man in a completely different country, it
appears, was to remove the numerical reasoning test from its graduate
scheme. After The Spectator submitted a freedom of information request
to the department, it explained that following a review of the 2019 scheme:

rCyThe Numerical Reasoning Test (NRT) was removed due to evidence of the
test having adverse impact on candidate diversity. Subsequently, the
levels of adverse impact decreased in the 2020 campaign.rCO

The departmentrCOs board minutes explained specifically that the test was removed because, rCyWe want more diverse ethnicity at assessment centrerCO
and rCyhaving two tests creates an additional rCLhurdlerCY for candidates to jump over and another opportunity for candidates to be sifted out of the process.rCO You would think that the entire point of an application
process is to reduce the number of candidates until you have the most
able people left. The Treasury, it seems, does not agree.

Already in 2019, the department had placed its finger on the hiring
scale by increasing the numbers who passed its situational judgement
test, rCyto maximise the number of diverse candidates in our process.rCO
This may have led, it speculated, to the higher fail rate for ethnic minorities at the numerical test stage and so would be reversed in
subsequent years.

Still, the Treasury would not be deterred. When, in 2023, the programme
had a higher number of applications, the department let more people
through the early assessment stage to avoid any impact on diversity.
This backfired, again, and led to its remarkable observation that,
rCyHaving to set extremely high benchmarks (higher than in a previous
years) typically has an impact on diversity, and this was the case particularly at sift this year.rCO

YourCOd think at this stage the department would have learned that
attempting to socially engineer your recruitment process is a foolrCOs
game, and it should focus on simply trying to hire the best people for
the job. Unfortunately, it appears, standards could be lowered further.

Already following the 2019 application run, the department had noted
that in other years the programmerCOs verbal reasoning test had higher
rates of rCyadverse impact on ethnicityrCO than the numerical test. This was backed up by expert advice from the rCyethnic diversity recruitment specialists RarerCO, who noted that rCytheir candidates tend to struggle
with verbal testing in particular.rCO Lo and behold, in 2024 the
department removed its verbal reasoning test too, to avoid adversely
affecting diversity outcomes. It was replaced by the rCyCivil Service Strengths TestrCO, a hard-hitting assessment which asks candidates if they agree or disagree with statements like rCyI prefer not to have to
concentrate on one thing for too longrCO or rCyIt is important for me to exceed expectations when I am given a task to do.rCO Gruelling stuff.

The TreasuryrCOs defence of this kind of thing is that it represents a
diverse population and so wants to be reflective of the society it
serves. But that aspiration seems pretty hollow if it has to
consistently lower standards to get the kind of diverse intake it wants.

It also does feel like there is a hostility to number-crunching at the department more generally. At the moment, the civil service recruitment
page boasts that the rCyTreasury is no longer the male bastion it once
wasrCa Is the Treasury a rCLbit blokeyrCY and all about numbers? These women leaders say no.rCO

That may be the case. But if Andy Burnham really does want to rCyrewirerCO
the British state and boost growth across the country, having a
department which is rCyall about numbersrCO might not be such a bad thing after all.


John Connolly

(The USA's poorest state, Mississippi, is now, by some measures
richer than the UK.)
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2