TL;DR

Mark Ferguson, the Cabinet Office minister, has formally opened the new “National School of Government and Public Services”, Global Government Forum reported on 29 October, with AI named as one of its top training priorities. The school’s residential base is The Hawkhills in Easingwold, North Yorkshire, with regional hubs and online courses to follow. It revives an institution closed in 2012 and is meant to bring more civil service training in-house.

What the school will teach

Ferguson called the opening “a unique opportunity to upskill civil servants in the areas that matter most”, adding that AI was “among the top priorities”. AI courses will run from practical uses that cut paperwork through to specialist cloud engineering. The curriculum, to be built up over three years, groups universal skills into six areas, one of which bundles AI with digital, data and innovation; the others cover leadership, how government works, personal effectiveness, communication and strategic thinking.

The school will also run an enhanced induction for senior civil servants, oversee the Fast Stream and apprenticeship schemes, and work with One Big Thing, the annual civil service learning push whose theme this year is AI in Action. A National School Evidence Centre will assess whether its training changes anything in practice.

A school, again

Its predecessor shut in 2012, after which the Berkshire site at Sunningdale Park was sold off. Ministers now present a central school as a way to save money: designing and delivering more training internally should reduce spending on outside providers over time. The government ties it to broader goals: consultancy spending cut by half, and a 16% reduction in departments’ running costs within five years, with annual savings above £2bn targeted by 2030.

Looking Forward

The harder test, in our view, is whether training changes how departments work. A Global Government Forum study led by former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell, based on interviews with 13 permanent secretaries and AI leads, argued that AI’s next stage in government means redesigning tasks, roles and career paths, not only teaching tools. The in-house ambition also sits awkwardly with the big-four consultancy contract we covered in August, and how much training the school delivers itself will show whether the savings case holds.