Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff were directly employed by his Department to work on contingency planning guidance for educational institutions in (a) November 2019, (b) February 2020, (c) May 2020 and (d) August 2020.
Work on contingency planning guidance for educational institutions is undertaken by teams across the department with responsibility for various policy areas.
The information on staff working on these areas is not centrally held as the department’s HR system does not record the specific tasks that staff are employed on. Seeking the information across the department’s six main business areas could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.