Last week Reform published its 2011 scorecard of the coalition government’s public service reform programme. Following on from articles on the health and welfare reforms, Dale Bassett, Research Director at Reform, explains why the coalition’s school reforms are not as radical as they appear. The government is pursuing a dual agenda in education reform,
“Now, with the best teaching force and the best school leadership ever, we are poised to become world class if we have the courage and vision to reform and invest further and put the parent and pupil at the centre of the system. Our reforms must build on the freedoms that schools have increasingly received,
This is the second of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first, on health, can be found here. What is the budget? Education is the biggest area of government spending after welfare and health, totalling £89 billion in 2010-11. This budget increased by 64 percent in real terms between 1999-00
This afternoon I had the privilege to speak in a panel discussion at the National Policing Conference in Manchester, held jointly by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and the APA (Association of Police Authorities). The subject was the future of policing – a particularly important one given the potential 25 per cent cut in
In a speech to Reform this afternoon, David Cameron argued that the growth of the so-called quango state represents “a serious accountability problem with our political system”. Quangos – the non-Whitehall but taxpayer-funded bodies responsible for much day-to-day government – are unaccountable, expensive and do not deliver what they promise. Last year, their funding increased
