The Professional Skills for Government (PSG) initiative has set new shared standards for all career civil servants, and aims to improve career mobility by tackling the limitations which have traditionally confronted specialists looking to move into top managerial or policy posts.
One very visible way in which the National School of Government (and its predecessor organisations) has done this has been through the Senior Professional Administrative Training Scheme (SPATS).

SPATS has long been acknowledged as the best way of introducing high-flying specialists to the disciplines and functions of senior management within the civil service. Its purpose is to develop people from professional backgrounds for senior posts within or beyond their specialisms. And today those aims, and the SPATS programme, have proved wholly compatible with the aims of PSG.

Participants, nominated by their organisations and typically in the grade 6 range, join the SPATS programme for two years. An initial Gateway course introduces them to the political and policy environments of the domestic and EU governments, with particular attention paid to learning and practising policy skills. Soon afterwards a two-day development centre helps each participant to explore their development needs, at the end of which they are in a position to finalise a development action plan for the two years. This may include training, study visits, work shadowing, mentoring, an academic qualification or a secondment or placement. Secondments are often especially successful and have been of great help to two recent SPATS participants, Karen Clayton and Fiona Hamill.

For Clayton, whose career began in the explosives industry, SPATS has helped a relatively recent migration into more mainstream business responsibilities. She joined the Health and Safety Executive in 1993, following 16 years with MOD Royal Ordnance Factories (and subsequently British Aerospace) in a variety of roles including laboratory analysis, production, manufacture, quality assurance, project-management and change-management.

At first, she continued to pursue her specialism, but after four years she decided that she wanted to use her managerial, rather than technical experience, and so moved into a more central part of the HSE operations set-up. It was around this time that she first became aware of SPATS, which was held in high regard within the organisation. “It was seen as a good thing to have under your belt – it couldn’t guarantee you promotion, but it promised some different experiences,” she says.

Clayton was then awarded a temporary promotion to a grade 7 contract-management role, establishing an external contact centre – a post to which she was subsequently appointed. “I was able to draw on existing change-management experience, but I needed new skills as well,” she recalls. “This period coincided with my beginning SPATS, and I used the development centre to devise a development action plan for myself.” In short, Clayton resolved to learn more about how government works, develop her coaching and creative thinking skills, improve her personal presence and confidence, and to get involved with work associated with marketing and communications.

During her time on SPATS, Clayton visited UK devolved administrations and EU institutions, shadowed an MP, and attended National School training programmes. She also developed her skills in facilitation. “There was the prospect of great change at HSE, and I wanted to use creative techniques to encourage people to talk about it,” she explains.

To raise her personal presence and confidence, she undertook voice training and shadowed SCS colleagues to see how they behaved, and to better understand the kinds of work they were involved in and the decisions they had to make. Keen to get involved in communications and marketing, Clayton considered an external placement, but made it known that she was interested in an internal move. As a result, she soon found herself involved in the delivery of communication services including management of the HSE internet and intranet provision, and the production of publications. A year-long attachment saw her carry out a business review and change-implementation programme.

As a result of the placement, Clayton secured promotion to Grade 6 as head of process safety although, she says, “Without SPATS, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to ask for the placement. SPATS has helped open doors for me, and its value is ongoing. Our group still keeps in touch – it’s a very supportive environment.”

Membership of the SPATS community was also a major benefit for Fiona Hamill, now head of a supply (Treasury) team at the Northern Ireland Assembly. “You’re all professionals, you’re not in competition, and you’re all going through the same experience,” she says. “Of course, your problems are your own, but it helps to have people around you who you can trust. Several years after completing the programme, we still use each other as points of reference for advice and information.”

An accountant by profession, Hamill found the civil service something of a shock when she first joined from the private sector. “I regarded myself first and foremost as a professional, but it seemed to me that career progression in the civil service would require me to go mainstream,” she says. To this end, she chose SPATS, with the specific intention of pursuing a grade 5 job. For Hamill, the course represented an opportunity to see what her deficits were, and how she needed to compete for jobs as a specialist. “SPATS helped me to understand my mindset. 360° feedback from people I worked with was enlightening and saw me change my approach to developing others, and psychometric profiling gave me logical and evidenced evaluation of my strengths and weaknesses.”

Having moved on from a spell as director of finance at the Northern Ireland Assembly – a result of joining SPATS – Hamill is now in the grade 5 job she was after. Ironically, perhaps, she has remained a specialist. “Over the last 10 years we have seen the emergence of a cohort of professional grade 5 posts, perhaps reflecting the professionalisation of the civil service assisted by PSG,” she says.

It is a view shared by Anne-Marie Lawlor, the chief executive of Government Skills, the sector skills council for central government. “SPATS has a long record of helping specialists broaden their horizons, learn new skills, and improve their adaptability and career prospects,” says Lawlor. “By enabling professionals to learn and apply the skills traditionally associated with ‘generalist’ civil servants, SPATS closely reflects the principles of PSG. I’ve greatly enjoyed meeting SPATS graduates on the last day of each programme, and hearing how they have tried new things, and greatly improved their confidence and competence as civil servants.”