Initiatives to improve the delivery of services across the public and voluntary sectors are to receive a total of 25 million pounds under the Invest to Save Budget. The successful schemes, announced by Paul Boateng, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, include helping refugees with health qualifications to re-qualify in this country and measures to pilot joined up ways of preventing ex-prisoners from offending again.In all 47 innovative projects will be rewarded. Others highlighted by the Treasury include a scheme to detect and deter illegal working by reducing passport fraud and an initiative for the rapid detection of the hospital infection, MRSA.

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A government scheme designed to widen the range of subjects studied by sixth-form and college students has failed to make any real impact. Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools says it has delivered “at best modest” results for students.The Office for Standards in Education has been looking into the implementation of the flagship project, Curriculum 2000, which aimed to broaden post-16 study and found it has had only marginal impact on the curriculum of individual students. The Chief Inspector, David Bell, said there was still too rigid a division between the academic world and the world of work.

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By Mark Bevir, R. A. W. Rhodes and Patrick WellerThis article has three aims. It provides a brief review of the existing literature on public sector reform to show that our approach is distinctive. It argues that the existing literature does not explore the ways in which governmental traditions shape reform. Second, it outlines an interpretive approach to the analysis of public sector reform built on the notions of beliefs, traditions, dilemmas and narratives. It also provides brief illustrations of these ideas drawn from the individual country articles.

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