The department plans to cut its administrative budget by 50% (£290m) by the end of this parliament Around 1,000 jobs at the Department for Education (DfE) - a quarter of its total workforce - are being cut in an efficiency drive. Civil servants losing their jobs will be made redundant within two years, as the DfE focuses on priority work.
The news, announced to staff on Tuesday, follows a review of the department launched in June 2012.
The cuts are part of a plan to reduce its administrative budget by 50% - £290m - by the end of this parliament.
The review report says decision-making at the DfE is often "slow and laborious", with "unclear roles and processes".
It says new ways of working will remove "the barriers which sap energy and prevent people being as effective as they can be so that less time is wasted on activities which add little value".
It adds: "Too often at present new work ends up on the desk of somebody based on their job title rather than the skills they have, and existing work is not de-prioritised to free up resources to deal with a new pressure."
The department's work must match ministers' priorities more closely in future, it says.
EfficiencyA spokesman for the DfE said: "We conducted a review to make sure we have the capability to deliver well-designed policies that have a real, measurable impact on the children and young people who need it most, while minimising costs to the taxpayer.
"The review found that the DfE has committed and hard-working staff producing high quality work, but that the department can and should work more effectively and efficiently.
"Over the coming months we will target our staff time and money on only our top priorities, cutting red tape and concentrating on the work that adds the most value. We are reducing the size of our backroom staff (eg HR [human resources], finance and IT [information technology]) and merging offices to reduce the cost of our buildings.
"The DfE had already committed to reducing its administrative budget in real terms by 42% from 2010-11 to 2014-15. Following the review, our target is a 50% reduction to £290m by 2015-16 and we have already achieved over half of these savings."
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