It’s supposed to be lighter touch but it is certainly tougher. The Audit Commission’s first area assessments were revealed this week – and put up on the Oneplace website for everyone to see. David...
An extra £100m has been made available to pay for an urgent expansion in primary school places across England, raising the total funding allocated to £300m
Ofsted has defended itself following a barrage of attacks from councils, civil servants and MPs, claiming its inspection regime represents the best interests of children
Councils in London are preparing a new round of lobbying to secure more government funding for primary schools after data showed capacity problems were worse than first thought
The spending squeeze will hit new graduates hard, a think-tank has claimed, as figures show that more than half of UK graduates start their careers in the public sector
The head of the agency responsible for the government’s major
school-building projects has said assets should be owned by private companies because public bodies are ‘useless’ at managing them
Forget the bonfire of the quangos, it’s managers and back-office staff who are in politicians’
line of fire now. But can layers of ‘bureaucrats’ really be taken out without harming services
on the...
Schools and local authorities have been accused of disregarding safety after a report found that fewer than 500 of the UK’s 32,000 schools have sprinkler systems to combat fires
Public bodies run costly risks when they use the Private Finance Initiative, argues Matthew Dillon. Managing special purpose companies is one of the most obvious
Whatever happened to that brave new political dawn? Things really did get better but, as New Labour gathers for its last conference before the election, the public couldn’t be less grateful. Demos’s...
money by scrapping almost all central government regulation and devolving power to frontline services have provoked anger in the Audit Commission and been dismissed by experts
Building firms that have been fined for rigging bids for public sector contracts should apologise to the public and hand back some of their profits, the Local Government Association has said
Current public spending on higher education is ‘unsustainable’, business leaders have said, recommending that university tuition fees should be raised to plug the funding gap
A growing student population, increased demand for courses and a new government processing agency ill-equipped to cope are to blame for the student loans fiasco, according to the National Union of...
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has challenged governments to invest in education to ensure an effective recovery from the global recession
The reorganisation of the troubled Learning and Skills Council into two successor bodies could throw its work and internal control systems deeper into crisis, the quango’s chief executive has warned
