Further education has been a 'forgotten middle child'. But now Sir Andrew Foster's wide-ranging review could give the £5bn sector a new mission to get the nation ready for work. Joseph McHugh asks...
Choosing spending priorities involves some tough, painful and invariably unpopular decisions. Harrow decided to put its residents in the hot seat and invigorate democracy in the process. Maria McHale...
Rhodri Morgan is every bit as evangelical as Tony Blair when it comes to improving public services. But Wales is taking a very different route from Westminster. Steve Davies reports on public sector...
Local government leaders have welcomed their new responsibility to ensure there is sufficient childcare to meet the needs of working families - but warned that it needs to be backed up with adequate...
Primary schools are using covert selection methods to weed out the most disadvantaged pupils, according to the director of the Confederation of Education and Children's Services Managers.
MPs have condemned as 'entirely unacceptable' the failure by ministers to ensure that the costs of future outbreaks of animal diseases such as foot and mouth are borne by industry instead of...
No single measure of public sector productivity will ever capture the complex relationship between investment in services and the results achieved, the Office for National Statistics has admitted.
Scottish Conservative deputy leader Annabel Goldie looked set to inherit the top job this week after the sudden resignation of David McLetchie, who has been at the centre of a long-running row over...
Councils will be able to track more accurately their success at reviving their local economies after a new set of performance indicators were launched this week.
No agreement emerged from the first meeting aimed at resolving the dispute between employers, unions and the government over the Local Government Pension Scheme.
Permanent secretaries' pay will be linked to their success in meeting civil service diversity targets, Cabinet Office minister John Hutton announced this week.
The proposed integration of CIPFA and the ICAEW fell by the tiniest of margins last week. Steve Freer examines what we can all learn from the experience
The London Borough of Merton was dreading the new-look CPA, which appeared to threaten all the improvements it had made. But it was pleasantly surprised when the final changes were revealed
Water companies' services are almost perfect, says the regulator. But with almost 4,000 million litres of water wasted through burst pipes and leakages every day, David Meilton begs to differ
Councils could be forced to delve into billions of pounds of vital cash reserves following a tough 2006/07 finance settlement, ministers have warned town hall officials.
Sixty-six MPs have signed a parliamentary motion urging Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to extend last week's surprise deal on unfunded public sector pensions to local government.
The civil service should be replaced by a new organisation embracing all those involved in the management of the public sector, former top civil servant Sir Michael Bichard has suggested.
Ofsted, the education watchdog, was this week accused of a puritanical attitude towards its staff after it emerged that managers could cut costs by docking employees' pay if they take emergency leave...
