PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Staff (9 December 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on (a) consultants, (b) temporary staff and (c) contingent labour in each of the last five years; how many people have been so employed; what the length of contract of each such person was; and what equivalent civil service salary band each was on.

Asked by:
Lucy Powell (Labour)

The Department for Education’s consultant and contingent labour information is collected and published on a monthly basis and is available at the following link:

http://data.gov.uk/dataset/workforce-management-information-department-for-education

The Department does not hold this information on an annual basis, and compiling this information in the form requested would not be possible in the time available. The link provides management information on staff numbers and payroll costs in the Department, its agencies, Non-Ministerial Departments and Executive Non-Departmental Public Body for the period 31 March 2011 to 27 November 2014. It includes workforce numbers, covering both payroll and non-payroll (contingent labour, including consultants) staff, split between full-time equivalents (FTE) and headcount. Payroll staff numbers are mapped to standard Civil Service grades.

We do not hold information on the length of individual contracts of consultants and contingent labour in a readily available form and it would not be possible in the time available to complete an analysis of the data.

Temporary employees are those that have a fixed term contract of 12 months or less or are employed on a casual basis. The total number of temporary staff employed in the Department in each of last five years is shown in Table 1 with the grade band breakdown in Table 2.

Table 1: Temporary staff employed in the Department

12 months to	Temporary staff (headcount)
November 2010	39
November 2011	7
November 2012	11
November 2013	12
November 2014	20
Total	89

Table 2: Temporary staff by grade band

12 months to	Grade Band	Number of Temporary staff
November 2010	EA	2
	EA AO	12
	EO	21
	GRADE 7	2
	HEO	2
	Total	39
November 2011	EA AO	6
	EO	1
	Total	7
November 2012	EA AO	6
	EO	4
	GRADE 7	1
	Total	11
November 2013	EO	12
	Total	12
November 2014	EO	19
	SEO	1
	Total	20
Total		89

Answered by:
Nick Gibb (Conservative)
16 December 2014