Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2023 to Question 3734 on Ministry of Defence: Employment Schemes, what steps he is taking to evaluate the effectiveness of the (a) Rise and (b) Elevate schemes.

Both the Rise and Elevate schemes are in their pilot years and monitoring is primarily through qualitative assessment. Interviews, feedback sessions and surveys are conducted with participants, their managers and alumni and are combined with existing promotion information. This data is used by team members experienced in running development programmes to monitor progress, ensure consistent quality and make scheme improvements.

The effectiveness of the programmes will be evaluated using the time taken to gain promotion relative to peers not on the schemes. So far multiple Rise alumni have been promoted and of those some have been promoted two grades. Since starting the pilot Elevate scheme (ongoing until June 2024) six participants have been promoted to Grade 7. We consider this data provides a strong and positive early sign that the scheme is achieving its goals.

The Ministry of Defence is able to comprehensively track the careers of scheme alumni. Over the next few years this will enable the accurate measurement of the effectiveness of both the Rise and Elevate schemes.