The Department did well to establish the College but there is scope to improve further the management and evaluation of training (Part 1)

5  In response to the need for joint command and staff training, the Department set itself realistic objectives. The three Service colleges had aligned their training to the specific needs and traditions of their parent Service and, despite a commitment to joint training, there was considerable scope for disagreement about the design of joint courses. In response to this the College adopted an incremental approach to delivering joint training and concentrated on the design and delivery of the main joint course - the Advanced course.

6  The Advanced course was designed to prepare students for the next ten years of their careers, during which time they would go on to occupy senior and higher command and staff posts within the three Services, Joint Commands and the Department. In September 1997 the Department launched its first Advanced course which reflected the required level of 'jointery'. Launching this course on time was a considerable achievement. Following the March 2001 Defence Training Review, the College is planning to extend joint training.

7  Since its opening the College has generally delivered the planned level of training. It has consistently operated within budget and met its targets for annual efficiency savings. For example the College has reduced the number of military staff it uses to deliver the main Advanced course from 62 in designing and delivering the first course in 1997 to 52 in 2001. The College has identified the total costs to the Department of each individual course, including its payments to Defence Management. The structure of the charging regime under the PFI contract does not enable the College to identify readily the actual costs incurred by Defence Management for each course. The College has sought this information from Defence Management to assist in its planning of future courses.

8  The College employs 115 military teaching staff but has limited say over who these staff are or over the length of their postings, as these are the responsibility of the individual Services. Staff turnover has been high and in June 2001 65 per cent of the military teaching staff on the Advanced course had been in post for less than 15 months. The College considers that 15 months is the minimum length of posting necessary for it to see a benefit from its investment in training such staff. It also recognises that a balance has to be struck as higher quality staff will move on more quickly but will also bring a better understanding of current views and practices within the Department.

9  The College has some say on the quality of the students attending its courses and on the students' subsequent postings at the end of their course but both these aspects are the prime responsibility of the single Services. The College seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of its training, especially its Advanced course. It surveys students during and at the end of the course, as well as its graduates and their line managers (both military officers and civil servants) some time after a course's end, and it assesses a student's performance during the course. Feedback is obtained from the College's other stakeholders through its governance structure, and from various external training accreditation bodies. The College is also taking the lead in the international benchmarking of command and staff training.

10  The College's evaluation of its training compares well with good practice at civilian colleges and training provided by the private sector, and feedback has been largely positive. The College is planning to extend its evaluation of the Advanced course to ensure that it can identify some of the long-term benefits of its training. It intends to monitor the performance of a sample of Advanced course graduates over ten years, as well as the performance of graduates in certain key posts. We welcome the College's plans and we have identified a number of other ways in which this evaluation could be improved still further. For example, greater use could be made of the performance information generated by the single Services' personnel systems to identify trends in more objective measures of training effectiveness, such as the length of service of graduates and the speed of their promotion. There is also scope to collect more qualitative data on students' perceptions and motivation.