By Wendy Thomson Reproduced by permission of the Public Management and Policy Association. As the taxpayer’s watchdog and a powerful lever of modernisation for Government, the inspection of public sector organisations seemed set to continue as a growth industry. All that has changed with the recognition that more frequent and more detailed inspections don’t give a good return on investment. The author describes the changes taking place to ensure that inspections in the future are more focused on outcomes, more informative to users, more proportionate, less routine, more joined-up and cost far less.

Schools are being challenged to provide more training and development for all their staff as a way of improving the lives of their pupils. The new Training and Development Agency for Schools, which comes into being this month, is taking over the work of the Teacher Training Agency but also has responsibility for improving the training of the entire school workforce, a total of about a million people.The Chief Executive of the new body, Ralph Tabberer, said its creation showed that every member of staff in a school mattered. The number of support staff, including teaching assistants, librarians and those who supervised pupils at break times, had almost doubled over the last eight years as a result of changes in schools and, he said, it was now time to ensure those changes brought benefits for pupils.

Read more on NEW AGENCY CHALLENGES SCHOOLS ON STAFF DEVELOPMENT…

Poorer people still have more difficulty in accessing important public services in spite of the fact that the Welfare State has been in existence for 60 years, according to new research. A series of studies shows that those with the greatest need for good health care, education, jobs, housing and transport continue to have the worst access to opportunities and services.A series of ten analytical studies conducted for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have made use of data from the millennial Census and uncovered what the Foundation is calling the ‘inverse care law’ under which poor communities have the least access to essential life chances and resources.

Read more on STUDY SHOWS POOR STILL HAVE WORST ACCESS TO PUBLIC SERVICES…