Speaking to CSW at an event yesterday held to welcome 100 apprentices to the civil service, Sir Bob Kerslake said that managers should take time to ask apprentices for their experiences of working in the department, as they might have ideas and spot issues “that won’t be obvious to a senior manager”.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude told the apprentices that they must challenge existing ideas. “It is people like you – high-potential, high-octane people coming in – who have the ability to be the agents of change, and that’s what we need,” he said.
Kerslake also encouraged this attitude, saying that one of the important things apprentices will bring to the civil service is “an appetite for doing things differently.”
He said that he hopes the scheme, which currently lasts for two years with apprentices employed as EOs while they train, will become as “highly regarded as the Fast Stream”, and that it will eventually grow from 100 to 500 places per year.