Education

Most central government departments will have to cut spending by two per cent over the next two years in order to fund a £2.5bn investment in infrastructure, it has been reported.

The PCS union has called a three-month programme of industrial action, starting with a one-day strike on Budget day: 20 March.

Ministers & officials must also put those lessons into practice.

On February 21, a seminar was held in the Foreign Office to mark the publication of a book by the head of the FCO Historical Section, Gill Bennett, called ‘Six Moments of Crisis’. The book discusses six major foreign policy decisions taken since the Second World War. These were the decision to send British troops to Korea in 1950; the Suez invasion; the first application to join the European Economic Community; the withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez; the expulsion of 109 Soviet diplomats; and the sending of the Task Force to recover the Falklands.

The business department’s permanent secretary Martin Donnelly tells Suzannah Brecknell how his department is working to bring businesses and government together, creating strategies designed to kick start Britain's economic growth

A university official charged with recruiting students tells Will Hazell of his fears that higher fees are cutting student numbers and reducing efficiency.

A council’s education expert explains to Philip Bevan the impact of recent reforms to the schools system.

Chris Wormald

Permanent Secretary, Department for Education

A primary school teacher laments the loss of centralised standards.

The Department for Education (DfE) should not make the National Pupil Database (NPD) available to the public, according to the Open Data Institute – a publicly-funded organisation dedicated to helping departments publish information and the private sector benefit from public data.

Pruned hard, the civil service will be lost without new skills.

Failure to properly communicate the increase in university tuition fees to £9,000 a year has already caused a large drop in student numbers and may also affect applications this year, Professor Les Ebdon, director of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has told Civil Service World.

To encourage poorer and ethnic minority youngsters to consider a career in the civil service, the government has introduced new internships. Tim Fish reports on efforts to ensure Whitehall’s high-flyers are less uniformly white.

A special educational needs teacher considers realistic ambitions, unfair criticisms, and how the EBacc might affect non-academic children.

A leaked review of the Department for Education (DfE) sets out plans to cut about 1000 jobs, introduce a project team-based structure, focus work on “ministerial priorities” and radically reduce office space.

Never mind the NAO; ministers too hate a risk gone wrong

The MOD must store institutional knowledge in its armoury

As the Parliament’s halfway point looms, Tim Fish and Ben Willis examine the Cabinet Office’s progress against the tasks it was set in May 2010 as part of the Coalition’s Programme for Government.

A plea for sensible policy-making – and more cash

Legal Services Commission chief Matthew Coats has a reputation for carrying problematic services through political storms. Matt Ross asks him about organisational reform, service quality – and the looming cuts to legal aid

CBI director-general John Cridland writes (CSW p4, 12 April 2012) that the government has made little progress with its public service reforms over the past nine months. Those working in health and education witnessing major changes being pushed through might beg to differ, as might the civil servants trying to make sense of proposals from ministers for the ‘right to challenge’, ‘right to provide’ and now the ‘right to choose’.