Education and training services

Tender description

The FCO has a requirement to develop our trade capacity-building programmes for civil servants in the UK and overseas in order to meet the needs of future trade policy officers and negotiators. Background. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Trade Policy and Negotiations Faculty currently offers foundation, practitioner and expert level training to civil servants across all government departments Practitioner. The practitioner programme is available across all UK government departments, including overseas, and is designed for officials to apply knowledge gained in support and delivery of the UK’s international trade policy priorities, and its trade negotiating agenda in different fora. The practitioner programme currently comprises 11 units of online training (approximately 45 minutes per unit) and this is complemented with face to face learning. The content is available to all staff working for HM Government in the UK or overseas. The practitioner programme covers: (i) characteristics of modern trade; (ii) political economy of trade policy; (iii) the WTO framework and principles; (iv) free trade agreements; (v) trade dispute settlement; (vi) trade policy tools for goods, services and investment; (vii) tariffs and quotas; (viii) trade in services; (ix) foreign investment; (x) non-tariff measures; (xi) trade negotiation processes. The face to face workshops are delivered through cohorts for UK learners and by region, overseas. Learners are free to access the digital material on their own, independently of workshop availability expert. In the summer of 2017 4 expert level programmes were developed (covering: rules of origin, customs / trade facilitation, TBT and financial services). These units are being delivered through the government’s Civil Service Learning framework with HM Treasury delivering the financial services component of the pilot programme, working with other government departments. There are currently nearly 60 participants (from different UK government departments) participating in these intensive ‘deep dive’ programmes over a 6 month period.