“Extra resources have gone into Sites of Special Scientific Interest – a key part of the natural environment in England – and results are starting to show. But many will take time to regenerate fully, so a sustained management effort and clear conservation objectives will be needed for long-term success.”
“Helping children to master basic mathematics is a central part of their primary education and in 2007 pupils in their final year achieved the best set of results so far in the national tests. In recent years, however, the rate of improvement in primary mathematics has slowed and almost a quarter of pupils are still not equipped with the understanding of mathematics they need to study the subject further, or to tackle subjects such as science once they start secondary school. The Department needs to improve how teachers assess pupils’ progress throughout the primary years, so that they can support every child to do their best in mathematics.”
“The capital programme for further education is enabling colleges and the Learning and Skills Council to achieve together what neither could have achieved on their own, and is delivering high quality buildings. The sector has taken on a higher level of debt, and therefore of risk, but the cost should be manageable. If the second half of the programme can maintain the success achieved in the first, further education will be well placed to offer enhanced value for money.”
“It was always going to be a demanding task for the Ministry of Defence to replace its diverse information technology with a single, high quality system. The MoD started with a clear vision of what it wanted to achieve and acted to address known risks. But the Programme has run into difficulties and further concerted action will be needed to increase the rate of roll out of terminals and to deliver the remaining software.”
“Not enough is known about the extent to which disadvantaged groups are under-represented in higher education, or what measures to widen participation are most effective. The Department and the Funding Council need to secure better data on participation, for example by social class or disability. They could tailor provision more closely to people’s circumstances, such as where they live and when they can study.”
“The British Council’s work is valued by its customers and stakeholders. It faces a difficult challenge in delivering a wide range of products and services in 110 countries worldwide. High performance in some areas such as performance measurement and customer satisfaction needs to expand across every strand of activity. Project and programme management need to be strengthened and customer relationship systems and service standards enhanced.”
“The Skills for Life strategy is making good progress in improving the skill levels of adults with poor literacy, language and numeracy skills. Building on this progress, the Department needs to reduce regional variations in participation and in achievement levels for people with literacy or numeracy needs. It could also work more closely with other parts of government to encourage people to take up Skills for Life courses.”
“The scale of the challenge involved in delivering the National Programme for IT has proved to be far greater than envisaged at the start, with serious delays in delivering the new care records systems. Progress is being made, however, and financial savings and other benefits are beginning to emerge. The priority now is to finish developing and deploying care records systems that will help NHS Trusts to achieve the Programme’s intended benefits of improved services and better patient care.”
“The Highways Agency’s procurement identified the risks to the National Roads Telecommunications Services project and successfully transferred them to the private sector, conducting negotiations with the preferred bidder well. It did however take a lot longer than planned and only two bidders remained through to the end of the competition. There are good practice lessons both for the Agency and for other major public procurements”
“The Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service has made less progress than it might have done in helping offenders to get back into work after they are released, one of the most important factors in reducing reoffending. Some of the fundamentals, which departments have known about for years, are still not in place – matters like identifying which courses most help offenders to get a job, identifying which offenders need which skills, and helping more of them to finish a course they start. The Departments’ action plan, to be issued shortly, must make it crystal clear how these problems will be addressed effectively.”
