I OBITUARY '

THE REV SIR HERBERT

ANDREW .

First permanent head of DES

The Rev Sir Herbert Andrew KCMG, CB, died on August 18 at his home at Edenbridge, Kent, where he was assistant curate. He was 75. He took Anglican orders after a distinguished career in the Civil 'Service from which he had retired in 1970 as permanent under secretary of state at the Department of Education and Science.

George Herbert Andrew. was born on March 19. 1910 and grew up in modest circumstances outside Manchester. He was educated at Godley School, Manchester Grammar School and Cor Chrisi College, Oxford, where he read mathematics. After a few years in the Patent Office. he joined the Board of Trade and ascended through the hierarchy of that department.

He was made a CB in 1956 and in 1961 he started to commute to and from Brussels as the Board of Trade member of the team assembled under Sir Eric Roll (as he then was) to support Mr Edward Heath in the abortive negotiations for Britain's entry into the European Economic Community.

His firm grasp of the issues made him a tough negotiator, respected alike by the members of his own team as a defender of the Board of Trade position. and also by the Europeans. He was not quite the European's typical English mandarin - a small man with a slightly shaggy moustache, sucking on his pipe and mixing a profound scepticism (which extended, it may be. to the Common Market) with a remarkable memory for detaii and understanding of the essentials.

On his return to London in 1963 he was made a KCMG and promoted to succeed Dame Mary Smieton as permanent secretwv at the Ministry of Education. and when tie department was expanded to take in higher education following the Robbins Report. he became the first permanent under secretary of state at the Department of Education and Science.

He had had no previous governmern experience of education. and he remained throughout his six-year sojourn a somewhat detached figure,

whio saw his role more as the manager, keeping the department on an even keel, than one called upon to make any strong personal contribution to policy. What he did bring to the Ministry was an acute political awareness of changes taking place elsewhere in Whitehall and Westminster and how this would affect what had, till then, been a relatively cosy and nonpolitical world of education.

His period at the head of the Department coincided almost exactlv with the first two Harold Wilson governments. The Labour Government's comprehensive school policy. set out by Anthony Crosland as Secretary of State in 1965, marked the end of the post-war co,nsensus which successive Ministers. Labour and Conservative, had built on the 1944 Education Act. Herbert Andrew remained sceptical about the comprehensive school. as about most educational nostrums.

The education svstem. he was once...