Schools in England should be set a target of 80% of pupils achieving five good GCSEs by 2020 to improve social mobility rates, a minister claimed this week.
The number of pupils suspended from school rose by 4% in 2006 while the numbers of special needs children educated outside of mainstream education increased by 3%, government statistics show.
The new prime minister is an intellectual heavyweight, with strong views of his own on public policy. So where does this leave Britain's burgeoning think-tank industry? Peter Wilby reports on the...
Combating climate change is a colossal global challenge. But you have got to start somewhere. The LGIU's carbon trading scheme for councils points a way forward, as David Janner-Klausner explains
Migrant workers contribute more to the British economy than the costs of the public services they receive, according to a study by the Trades Union Congress.
The Cabinet Office is preparing a submission to the Comprehensive Spending Review that would require Whitehall departments to work together to tackle social exclusion, ministers revealed this week.
An independent body should be given responsibility for determining whether pupil performance is really getting better, leading educationalists said this week.
Town hall leaders have urged ministers to reject a key proposal from David Freud's welfare review, claiming that regional 'mega-contractors' could fail to combat deep-rooted local unemployment...
'Grotesque failure' and 'total farce' were the more polite terms anti-poverty activist Bob Geldof used earlier this month to signal his disenchantment with the aid record of the world's richest...
Public sector regulators should promote a 'culture of curiosity' among service providers, the Audit Commission's chair, Michael O'Higgins, told delegates.
Computer glitches have been blamed for a substantial drop in council tax collection in 23 local authorities, leading to a loss of more than £26m from town hall budgets last year, Public Finance has...
Consumer satisfaction is one vital area of public services that is not getting the attention it deserves. The solution is to measure improvements against criteria that put users right at the heart of...
The Private Finance Initiative has had more than a decade to prove its worth for public services. Dave Prentis explains why it has been tested and found wanting by numerous official bodies
The minority Scottish National Party administration at Holyrood could be forced to revise its budget under proposed reforms backed by opposition parties.
The public sector faces a back-to-the-future scenario under this year's Comprehensive Spending Review, according to Robert Chote, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Proposals to restructure equality legislation need to be seen as an opportunity to tackle entrenched social inequalities, according to the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.
Pupils in faith primary schools do no better than children in secular state primaries once covert selection has been eliminated, research from the London School of Economics has found.
Senior MPs have demanded that ministers redouble efforts to address the 'serious crisis' of the over-representation of black people in the criminal justice system.
Public sector trade unions' opposition to the government's reform agenda led to a massive increase in the number of working days lost to strikes last year, according to figures published by the...
Alex Salmond's government might be 'in office, not in power'. But that is not holding the Scottish National Party back from launching a radical public sector shake-up. Iain Macwhirter reports from...
The public sector's experience of reorganisation is that it is never-ending and often unsuccessful. But it doesn't have to be that way, provided its leaders are willing to learn lessons from the...
Four out of nine Private Finance Initiative schemes fail to achieve good value for taxpayers with their facility services, the National Audit Office has found.
'It'll never last,' tends to be the not-so-cynical reaction when we read of apparently loved-up celebrities jealously guarding their wealth and status by drawing up complex pre-nuptial agreements....
