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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Joyce Quin: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what progress his Department has made towards the goal set out in the White Paper, "Your Region, Your Choice", of (a) ensuring that regional awareness and devolution feature strongly in civil service training and development, (b) increasing the mobility of civil servants between headquarters offices, regional offices and the Government offices and (c) encouraging interchange between the civil service and organisations in the regions. [108578] Mr. Stephen Twigg: The Minister of State, Cabinet Office will be answering this question giving an overall civil service perspective. Since the publication of the White Paper in May 2002, there has not been any specific development of this Department's training and development programmes to raise awareness of devolution and regional awareness, but the recent launch of "Delivering Through People: A Human Resource Strategy for DfES" commits the Department to developing HR action plans to maximise the contribution of each of our four sites in delivering the Department's business. Interchange is the exchange of staff between the civil service and other public and private sector organisation in the regions for periods of a few weeks up to five years. Interchange promotes better understanding between organisations and is a practical and effective form of personal development as it gives staff first hand experience of a different work environment and the issue and challenges which the people working in it face. Secondees have an opportunity to learn new skills, new ways of working, and new ways of dealing with problems. The DfES is actively committed to making interchange available to peoples at all levels as it can be a real benefit to the individual and to the Department as a whole. From 1 April 2002 to 31 March 2003 interchange between HQ an organisations in the regions was 368, an increase of 9 per cent. on the previous year.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

108578; 404 c416W

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Civil servants Government departments Location Training Regional government Department for Education and Skills

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk