Project Selborne: modernising Royal Navy training

Beginning in April 2021, this 12-year contract with an industry and academic consortium aims to transform traditional naval training into a modern, flexible and technology-enabled system that better equips sailors and marines for the operational challenges of the 2020s and beyond.

Rewiring naval training

Selborne is delivered through a partnership between the RN and a private sector consortium trading as Team Fisher, led by Capita. Other core partners include Raytheon UK, which provides training systems and engineering expertise, and Fujitsu UK, responsible for much of the digital backbone supporting learning management and data integration. Academic accreditation is provided by the University of Lincoln, embedding degree-level education into parts of the naval training pipeline. Selborne replaced a complex set of 27 individual contracts with a unified framework and has mostly succeeded in streamlining and enhancing efficiency.

The programme is named after the naval reformers of the early 20th Century, Lord Selborne and Admiral Sir John Fisher. The historical framing is deliberate as Selborne is not simply a training contract but an attempt to change how the RN approaches skills, careers and professional development over an entire career.

The contract has been reported in public sources as worth around £1.2bn to £1.3bn over its life, with Capita’s own share exceeding £1bn in value. An expansion announced in 2025 added a marine engineering training component worth roughly £97m, bringing the total under the Selborne umbrella to about £1.3bn. While public-private partnerships in the MoD and across government are controversial and have a mixed record, Selbone is an example of how external providers can effectively meet requirements that are not available in-house.

From entry to expertise

At its core, Project Selborne covers the design, delivery and management of about 80% of the RN’s shore-based individual training, spanning initial entry through to advanced specialist instruction. Around 1,500 uniformed and civilian educators work in a cohesive team and have delivered several thousand separate courses. This includes Phase 1 training for ratings and officers, Phase 2 trade training across multiple branches, and a wide range of short courses that support promotion, re-specialisation and currency.

The programme encompasses several hundred distinct training pathways delivered across 14 sites, including HMS Raleigh, Britannia Royal Naval College, HMS Collingwood, HMS Sultan and submarine training facilities at HMNB Clyde. Tens of thousands of learners pass through Selborne-supported training each year, making scale and consistency central to the programme’s success.

A key objective has been the replacement of static, instructor-centric teaching with more flexible models. Digital learning environments, simulation and blended delivery allow training to be paced more closely to individual progress, while also reducing time away from the frontline, and reducing the demand to travel to establishments a long way from their home. Centralised data systems are intended to give the RN better visibility of training outcomes, pinch points and skill gaps, something that was difficult to achieve under fragmented legacy contracts.

Signs of progress

Several years into delivery, there is evidence that Selborne is beginning to produce tangible benefits. Ofsted inspections have rated RN training establishments within scope as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, an important endorsement given long-standing concerns about accommodation, learner welfare and instructional quality in parts of the training system.

Apprenticeship participation has increased markedly, with the majority of new entrants now enrolled on recognised frameworks linked to civilian qualifications. Completion rates reported by the programme exceed national averages, supporting the RN’s wider retention agenda by improving both professional confidence and long-term employability.

From an operational perspective, the growing use of simulation and synthetic environments allows trainees to experience complex scenarios that would be costly, disruptive or unsafe to replicate at sea. This is particularly relevant for submarine and engineering branches, where access to platforms is limited and time alongside is increasingly precious. Better-prepared personnel arriving at units reduces the training burden on already stretched ships’ companies and shore staffs.

Apprenticeship pass rates have risen to around 70%, exceeding national benchmarks by a significant margin, while more than 90% of recruits are now enrolled on formal apprenticeship pathways. New support mechanisms for neurodiverse learners and those with specific learning needs have been introduced. Novel virtual environments, such as submarine walkthroughs and virtual operations rooms, have been integrated into training to allow more immersive, scalable and context-rich preparation than traditional methods permit.

For individuals in the training pipeline, these improvements mean not only better preparation for frontline roles but also enhanced personal development and a more engaging training experience. Instructors report that modern teaching methods encourage deeper understanding and retention, while learners benefit from clearer pathways into specialist roles.

Operational dividends

One of the clearest examples of how the partnership operates in practice is the introduction of the new bridge navigation trainers, now in place for nearly two years, primarily at HMS Collingwood. By bringing in an off-the-shelf Kongsberg solution and accepting development risk within the consortium rather than passing it to the customer, the programme was delivered quickly and efficiently. Small and medium-sized enterprises were drawn in to support the solution, including the provision of a test and reference kit and a bridge navigation training capability based at Portsdown Hill. The project was delivered ahead of schedule, funded using in-year underspend, with some of that underspend ultimately returned to the customer, demonstrating delivery to both time and cost.

The impact has been a tangible change in how warfare officers are trained and qualified. Systems at Britannia Royal Naval College have also been updated, allowing officers on the initial warfare foundation course early exposure to the new trainers, while the high-fidelity simulators are now used to support formative and final assessments for officer cadets before they pass out. This has reduced pressure on the front line by shifting more training into a realistic, demanding shore-based environment, while still maintaining quality and rigour. The approach mirrors long-established practices in the flying training pipeline, where extensive simulation is used before individuals reach the front line, easing the burden on operational units while improving overall training effectiveness.

A new area now moving into a pilot phase is the use of AI-enabled scheduling software, known as a Scheduling Optimisation Engine. This tool brings together around 3,000 to 3,500 courses that were previously managed through multiple Excel spreadsheets and automates the process. It allows the RN to test different training scenarios, such as increasing course numbers or trainee throughput, and to plan and re-plan training far more efficiently. A second phase has been brought forward to allow modular courses to be sequenced in a smarter way, particularly for trainees with prior learning or experience, helping them complete training faster and return to the front line sooner.

Alongside this, an AI-based adaptive learning system is being introduced to tailor training to individual learners. The system assesses both knowledge and confidence at the start of a course and then creates a personalised learning pathway, while still ensuring mandatory content is completed. This allows trainees to move through material at their own pace and, in many cases, finish courses days or weeks earlier than before. When combined with remote and distributed access to learning, it reduces the need for travel to central training locations, cuts costs, and eases pressure on training infrastructure, while still maintaining standards and effectiveness.

Enduring pressures

Despite progress, Selborne has faced inevitable friction. Integrating multiple partners, legacy systems and long-established naval training cultures into a single coherent framework has proved complex. Some early disruption was unavoidable as courses were redesigned and instructors adapted to new methods of delivery. There have also been political and strategic sensitivities around industrial participation. Changes to the involvement of overseas-owned suppliers, driven by evolving sovereignty and security requirements, underline the need for contractual flexibility and robust governance over such a long programme.

More broadly, Selborne cannot be insulated from the RN’s wider manpower challenges. Training reform can improve throughput and quality, but it cannot fully offset shortages driven by retention pressures, branch pinch-points, platform availability or operational tempo. The risk remains that efficiency gains in training are absorbed by demands elsewhere in the system rather than translating directly into increased resilience.

As the Navy shifts to a more hybrid model and uncrewed platforms are increasingly embedded in operations, the training system needs to quickly evolve to match. Feedback and new requirements are being passed back from the front line in time scales measured in days and weeks, rather than weeks and months as before.

Selborne is best understood not as a finished solution, but as an ongoing reform programme. Its success will ultimately be judged on whether it continues to adapt as the RN introduces new platforms, embraces greater automation and rebalances its force structure. By consolidating responsibility, investing at scale and embedding modern educational practice, the RN has placed training reform on a footing comparable in ambition to its major equipment programmes. Whether that ambition is sustained over the full life of the contract will be critical to the service’s ability to generate and retain the skilled people it depends upon.

This article first appeared in Navy Lookout.

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