The Cabinet Office announced on 21 October 2026 that Simon Ridley will become Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education in November, succeeding Susan Acland-Hood, who is leaving for a role outside government. The notice says the appointment was made by the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, with the approval of the Prime Minister, and identifies Ridley as the current Second Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. (gov.uk)
For readers outside Whitehall, this is the appointment of the department’s most senior civil servant rather than a ministerial reshuffle. According to the Department for Education’s own role description, the permanent secretary runs the department day to day, leads the senior leadership team, acts as chief policy adviser to the Secretary of State and is personally accountable to Parliament as Principal Accounting Officer for stewardship of the budget and value for money. (gov.uk)
That matters because the Department for Education’s brief is unusually wide. GOV.UK says the Secretary of State’s portfolio covers early years and childcare, children’s social care, teacher quality, the curriculum, school improvement, academies, further education, apprenticeships and skills, and higher education. In the department’s latest published annual report, the DfE group recorded £134.8 billion of spending in 2024-25 and an average workforce of 13,329 full-time equivalent staff, which gives a sense of the scale of the organisation Ridley is about to inherit. (gov.uk)
Ridley’s published biography points to a career built around cross-government delivery rather than a single education brief. At the Home Office he leads the Migration and Borders System as Second Permanent Secretary, and he twice served as acting Permanent Secretary there, in spring 2025 and again between February and April 2026. Earlier roles included heading the Cabinet Office COVID-19 Taskforce and senior posts in housing, EU exit work and HM Treasury. On the published record, the case for his move appears to rest on Whitehall operating experience and delivery management; that is an inference from the roles highlighted in the official announcement and biography. (gov.uk)
The change also closes Susan Acland-Hood’s period at the top of the department. Her GOV.UK biography says she has been DfE Permanent Secretary since September 2020, while the appointment notice credits her with leading the department through pandemic recovery work, childcare expansion and skills reform and notes 27 years of public service. On the published evidence, the move points to continuity rather than structural change, with the department’s board and leadership arrangements staying in place as the postholder changes. (gov.uk)
The process is also worth noting. The announcement describes Ridley’s move as a managed move approved by the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary, in consultation with the First Civil Service Commissioner. Civil Service Commission material says permanent secretary appointments sit within a regulated senior appointments process, with commissioner oversight and ministerial involvement at the top level. Read together, that indicates this was handled as an internal transfer within the senior Civil Service rather than a fresh external competition. (gov.uk)
The immediate significance lies less in personality than in control of a large delivery system. The DfE leadership team supports the permanent secretary on organisational strategy, business plans, performance, risk and investment decisions, while ministers depend on the department to translate political priorities into workable programmes. With Lucy Powell in post as Education Secretary since 20 July 2026 and Ridley due to start in November, the handover will matter for how quickly the department can turn ministerial direction into operational decisions across schools, childcare, skills and children’s services. (gov.uk)