5 Civil Service Learning and the delivery
of training
The creation
of Civil Service Learning
58. The National School of Government (previously
known as the Civil Service College and the Centre for Management
and Policy Studies) was formerly part of the Cabinet Office. It
was responsible for running training courses for civil servants
and had a dedicated training facility at Sunningdale Park, near
Ascot, in addition to centres in Edinburgh and London. The NSG
was closed on 31 March 2012. In outlining its approach to training
under the current Capabilities Plan the Cabinet Office states
that "the Civil Service has moved away from residential and
classroom learning, to a modern offer which combines face-to-face
courses with online training, coaching and other materials to
support workplace learning. This shift has been driven by the
creation of Civil Service Learning (CSL) in 2012." According
to the Cabinet Office, CSL is responsible for directly delivering
30 per cent of the learning which is "generic" to the
vast majority of civil servants.[92]
This includes subjects such as "customer service or people
management". The remaining 70 per cent of "learning
spend" is "devoted to technical and business-specific
training", which "remains the responsibility of departments
and/or professions to meet their business needs, supported by
Civil Service Learning".[93]
However, departments or professions wishing to procure any such
non-generic training, at a value greater than £10,000, must
do so via CSL. The Cabinet Office states that this "offers
value for money and minimises duplication."[94]
59. As a result of "a combination of outsourcing
provision, competitive pricing and reducing internal fixed costs"
the Cabinet Office reports that an annual saving of "over
£100 million on total learning and development spend"
is now being achieved when compared with 2009/10.[95]
The Cabinet Office states that to ensure that quality is maintained
under such reduced spending, regular evaluation and benchmarking
has been carried out of the service provided by CSL since 2012.
The results of this apparently indicate "strong, positive
support for both the quality and cost of the Civil Service Learning
offer." In particular:
On quality, as at June 2014, drawing on over 1.3
million pieces of feedback from learners and line managers:
· 97 per cent reported that the learning
met its objectives;
· 97 per cent agreed that skills had been
acquired as a result of the learning; and
· 85 per cent of line managers confirmed
that their team member's behaviour or skills had improved as a
result of the training they had done.[96]
The Cabinet Office also highlights that while CSL
is available to all Civil Servants, the NSG previously had a reputation
for being "accessible only to senior staff, specialists and
those who could afford the high costs".[97]
As a result NSG training was only accessed by "around 30,000
civil servants a year".[98]
The current delivery of training
60. Significant reductions in spending, greater accessibility
of training and overwhelmingly positive feedback should be cause
for celebration. However, this evaluation of the service provided
by CSL is in contrast to a number of views we heard. Prospect
told us that overall satisfaction with CSL is in fact much lower
than that reported by the Cabinet Office:
Civil Service People Survey recorded a significant
drop in satisfaction with learning and development from 2010 onwards
before a slight recovery this year, but still below the level
of satisfaction in 2009. This echoes the finding of a survey on
training, for Civil Service World in 2013, which found that satisfaction
with training had slumped over the last three years; just 31 per
cent of respondents felt that training had improved in their organisation,
with 52 per cent believing that it had deteriorated.[99]
61. Such views are also more in keeping with those
held by the leadership of the Cabinet Office itself. The Cabinet
Sectary told us that he is "sceptical" about what he
describes as such "North-Korean-style" feedback.[100]
Francis Maude told us that he rated the performance of CSL as
only "six-ish" out of ten.[101]
62. We heard a number of specific criticisms relating
to this low level of overall satisfaction. One concern was an
over-reliance upon, and inappropriate use of, e-learning. Hilary
Spencer (Director of CSL) told us that e-learning made up around
half of all training undertaken by civil servants "over the
last year".[102]
CSL has a particular responsibility for the provision of training
relating to the four priorities of the Capabilities Plan. However,
the applicability of e-learning to key leadership skill areas
such as project delivery and change leadership has been questioned
by a number of witnesses. The Civil Service College (a private
sector provider of training) tells us that "while e-learning
may be a cost-effective method", this approach tends to be
more suitable for "imparting uncontentious knowledge and
basic training" of simple tasks.[103]
They commented that it is "much less effective at developing
the skills, expertise and culture required to lead and manage
change in the complex situations, full of uncertainty, which are
more typical of where civil servants, especially those in senior
positions, find themselves operating."[104]
63. Dominic Cummings strongly agreed with this position:
To actually practice leadership, to practice
taking decisions in risky situations with massive complexity,
you cannot do that, certainly with current technology, on some
kind of e-learning course that a civil servant over there logs
onto during lunch break, and does for half an hour […] These
people have to be immersed, in my opinion, in real problems, real
case studies, success and failure.[105]
64. Hilary Spencer acknowledged that there are some
skill areas "particularly in the leadership space" which
"do not lend themselves to our standard understanding of
e-learning". However, access to CSL is currently password
protected, meaning that external parties, including academics,
are unable to assess how this point of view translates into the
split between e-learning and other forms of learning.
65. On the use of extended residential training courses
and engagement in conceptual and reflective learning, Ms Spencer
told us that "there is quite a lot of evidence that says
our capacity to retain a certain amount of information and then
put it into practice is reasonably limited".[106]
As a result "the amount of information that you would get
in an eight?day period does not lend itself to that sort of practice
and reflection."[107]
Hilary Spencer also reported that the information being imparted
on such courses is "often perceived by participants to be
quite abstract" meaning that they "find it hard to understand
how it would apply to their role."[108]
66. Any over-reliance on e-learning may be symptomatic
of a lack of dedicated space in which other forms of training
can be carried out. The Cabinet Office reports that vacating permanent
training locations has allowed the Civil Service to reduce its
training spending.[109]
However, in a meeting with us, representatives of the Canada School
of Public Service referred to the importance they placed on having
a separate and neutral space, away from the work place, for training.
In particular they stressed the positive effect of this protected
environment on the willingness of Canadian civil servants to share
ideas and speak freely about the experiences they had gained in
their roles. Since the closure of the NSG the Civil Service no
longer has such a dedicated training facility. As Paul Grant (a
former employee of the NSG and now provider of training services
to CSL, via Capita) told us, this means that many civil servants
are now required to train in an environment that may well not
be conducive to learning:
Where are they doing the e-learning? They are
probably doing it in the office, where there are all sorts of
distractions. I know from my experience of running these courses
that where there is pre-course work, whether it is e-learning
or whether it is doing pre-course reading, when they turn up on
the course it is absolutely evident that they have learnt almost
nothing from that pre-course work.[110]
67. CSL does make use of hired venues for the face-to-face
training courses it runs. However, most are hired rooms in London,
within close reach of trainees' departments. Paul Grant tells
us this often fails to provide sufficient isolation from the work
environment meaning that participants are "at the beck and
call of their line managers, who regularly demand that the participant
return to the office to work on some urgent, though not always
important, business."[111]
| Box 3: European Union related training
Adam Steinhouse (formerly Head of Training on the European Union at the NSG) told us that the current EU training offered to civil servants is an example of how the scope and delivery of generic training has changed under CSL.
Adam Steinhouse reported that training on the European Union was previously managed by a dedicated team made up of six lecturers: two university lecturers in addition to four secondees from government departments. This full-time team was then supplemented by a wide range of experienced EU practitioners and academics.[112] Around 1,000 officials attended programmes each year and the school offered training products for those wishing to build on working knowledge of the institutions in additions to those seeking to gain a more general understanding of EU Institutions.[113] Mr Steinhouse reported that courses run by the NSG also focused on the behaviours required to influence EU institutions, making use of face-to-face training and specific case-studies.[114]
Adam Steinhouse reported that "since the closure of the NSG, as far as I am able to ascertain, the training offer to UK civil servants has consisted of only one short course about the EU once per quarter, as well as a limited e-learning programme on the institutions and history of the EU."[115]
|
Procuring training
68. In addition to concerns about how training is
delivered, we heard concerns that the CSL procurement processes
are unnecessarily disincentivising the creation of new training
courses. Peter Thomas of the Institute for Government told us
that one of the greatest contributing factors to the reduction
in training spending via CSL was that the procurement process
it manages is "a complete pain in the neck to go through".[116]
He told us that good Civil Service managers, who want to get good
developmental support, will always be happy to present the required
business case. However the current CSL process is such that "after
six or seven months, they think, 'I cannot do it anymore.'"[117]
Mr Thomas commented that the centralisation of control under CSL
has resulted in the setting of a "very high bar for making
anything happen".[118]
He told us that "such an approach will reduce spend, but
you are not improving the quality of training and development".[119]
69. The Royal Statistical Society provided an example
of this "high bar" in action. They tell us that the
Civil Service "currently lacks a centralised offer of statistics
modules or courses which could be made available across all professions
through Civil Service Learning."[120]
However, despite recognising this need, they tell us that "it
is currently overly complex for the RSS and other external providers
to list and offer these courses through Civil Service online and
Capita."[121]
70. The establishment
of CSL marks a significant shift in the training approach of the
Civil Service. This shift has allowed training budgets to be reduced
significantly and has provided a greater number of civil servants
with access to generic training. However, we have also learned
that it has resulted in a lighter and narrower training provision,
and the loss of a dedicated training facility. For many skills,
particularly those requiring interpersonal skills, the introduction
of a strong, and potentially misplaced, dependence on e-learning
is no substitute for the face-to-face residential learning and
mentoring they replaced. The Cabinet Office describe this reduction
in spending as a "saving". However, it is not clear
how the impact of these changes has been assessed. Given some
of the concerns that we have heard during this inquiry, and the
key role now played by CSL, it is important that the true costs
and benefits of this new approach are properly assessed.
71. We recommend that the National Audit Office
carry out a value for money study of Civil Service Learning, with
particular emphasis on the way it meets the unique demands made
on public service leaders. This will provide an impartial view
on the quality of the service it provides and its impact on Civil
Service skills. In particular this should examine the consequences
of the loss of dedicated training spaces, the current use of e-learning
and the effectiveness of its procurement procedures.
92 Minister for the Cabinet Office [CSS26] Back
93
As above Back
94
As above Back
95
As above Back
96
As above Back
97
As above Back
98
As above Back
99
Prospect [CSS14] Back
100
Oral evidence: Whitehall: capacity to address future challenges,
HC 669, Q388 Back
101
Q 327 Back
102
Q 265 ("Over the last year, 1.2 million hours of face-to-face
learning were undertaken by civil servants and 1 million hours
of e-learning were done by civil servants, in terms of the balance
of face-to-face and e?learning.") Back
103
Civil Service College [CSS12] Back
104
As above Back
105
Q 215 Back
106
Q 267 Back
107
As above Back
108
As above Back
109
Minister for the Cabinet Office [CSS26] Back
110
Q 214 Back
111
Paul Grant [CSS19] Back
112
Dr Adam Steinhouse [CSS24] Back
113
As above Back
114
As above Back
115
As above Back
116
Q 88 Back
117
As above Back
118
As above Back
119
As above Back
120
Royal Statistical Society [CSS8] Back
121
As above Back
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