Eight private treatment centres have been signed up by the NHS to carry out over 19,000 operations annually, starting in March 2005. They will perform a mixture of general surgery, trauma and orthopaedics operations. Most of the staff employed in the centers will come from outside the NHS.There are currently 26 NHS-run Treatment Centres and 2 Treatment Centres run by the private sector. By the end of 2005, the Department of Heath expects that there will be a total of 46 NHS-run Treatment Centres and 34 run by the private sector.

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Schools are failing to deliver the potential improvements in learning despite the unprecedented funding for information and communications technology that has been pumped in since 1997. Ofsted, the schools watchdog, reviewed the impact of ICT in schools during the last five years and found that although e-learning was adopted almost universally the emphasis was on the ‘e’ and few schools successfully applied the technology to the whole process of learning. Inspectors found that many in education continue to see a sharp distinction between ICT as a set of skills and knowledge on the one hand and as a tool for learning on the other.The inspectors found a gap between the best and worst ICT provision and there is concern that the gap is increasing. In the most outstanding examples, ICT is starting to have a pervasive impact on the way teachers teach and children learn. But the quality, diversity and extent of pupils’ ICT experiences vary widely between schools. The quality of use of ICT in any one subject varies enormously from school to school, and the typical picture in a secondary school is for a handful of departments to be working well with ICT. It is not always the same handful. In schools that are furthest forward, ICT is starting to have beneficial effects in teaching and learning in all subjects.

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A Development Toolkit dealing with governance and participation within community-based organizations has been designed by Co-operativesUK for the use of development workers. The Toolkit supports the Governance and Participation project which is seeking ways to develop methods in which organizations across the social economy sector are able to actively involve members on governance. The CD-Rom Toolkit uses case studies of best practice within the social economy sector and interactive exercises to help development workers to establish the most suitable legal structure for groups and methods to improve participation in governance by members, users and other stakeholders. The project is funded by the Active Communities Directorate of the Home Office and the Toolkit is available to professional development workers who attend a seminar.To register for a free Development Toolkit seminar call the Project Team on 0161 246 2920, or go to http://www.gandp.org.uk

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