Changes in the provision of support for adult learners and for schools come into force today with the Basic Skills Agency merging with the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the expanded NIACE starting work in alliance with Tribal in the fields of literacy, language and numeracy to form what will be the country’s leading concentration of expertise in those areas. Meanwhile in Wales, the BSA’s work will be taken over by the Assembly Government.

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Progress in tackling poverty and social exclusion in Wales has stalled according to new research which shows both the rate of child poverty and the numbers of people who want to work but cannot get jobs unchanged compared with two years ago. The study, ‘Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales 2007’, is a comprehensive update of the New Policy Institute analysis produced two years ago for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

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This report from the Society of IT Management describes how some councils are achieving a high take-up of a range of ‘e-services’. Examples include getting 85% of job applications online, 58% of parents applying electronically for school places and 55% of applicants for new recycling bins ordering online.The report demonstrates the potential for web-delivered services to save councils substantial sums of money, not just from efficiency gains, but also from reducing the cost of advertising. Despite this potential many councils have only made modest progress with take up of council e-services. There is little evidence that councils generally are making a corporate commitment to developing online services, or encouraging customers to switch from the more expensive channels to phone and web.

Read more on BETTER MARKETED: ACHIEVING SUCCESS WITH ONLINE SERVICES…