A report today from Ofsted looks at factors which are stopping some Further Education colleges from improving. It says strong leadership, clear vision, challenging aspirations and targets and thorough monitoring of progress all help colleges to raise the bar and move towards outstanding status.
“How colleges improve: a review of effective practice”, shows that the further education sector is improving. More than 60 per cent of colleges are now considered good or better at their inspections. 

Councils are being warned they may need to rethink the way they communicate with their local residents if they want to take advantage of the place shaping agenda. The warning comes from local government PR experts who say the changes are needed to create attractive, prosperous and safe communities.
The communicators are calling for place shaping to be recognised as a key challenge in public sector communications, an industry that, they say, has become increasingly sophisticated and demanding. 

By Graham Baker
Bureaucracy and form filling are characteristics of public services. Police forces are no exception and beat officers have been spending almost half their time at the police station. The problem is being tackled vigorously and officers now spend much more time on the beat and less at the station. Mobile technology has played a part in this transformation.