Department For Education And Skills Departmental Report 2007

Dated May 2007. With correction slip dated May 2007

Dated May 2007. On cover: Departmental report. The health and personal social services programmes

Dated May 2007

Dated May 2007. On cover: Integrating and growing stronger. Spring 2007

This report considers the work and expenditure plans of the Law Officers' Departments, covering the Attorney General's Office, Crown Prosecution Service, the Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office (formerly the Customs and Excise Prosecutions Office), the Serious Fraud Office, the Treasury Solicitor's Department and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.

In its report examining the work and performance of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), set up 18 months ago, the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee finds that the department has not yet found its feet and it is too early to say if it will achieve the Prime Minister's ambitious targets. The DIUS annual report is 'impenetrable' and 'peppered with jargon', and the Committee fears that the jargon may be a substitute for having a clear idea about where DIUS is going and how it will achieve the Prime Minister's goals to make Britain one of the best places in the world for science, research and innovation. Examples of innovation in DIUS's own operations were disappointing, and the Committee also has doubts about the way DIUS presents figures and calls for the statistics in future annual reports to be reviewed independently. The Committee also expresses concern about the approach of the Government's new Chief Scientific Adviser to his role as a champion of evidence-based science, and draws attention to Professor Beddington's evidence on homeopathy in which he did not take the opportunity to restate the importance of scientific process and to emphasise the need for balance of scientific evidence. The customary, strong public voice from the Government Chief Scientific Adviser advocating policy based on evidence-based science must not become muted. The Committee also recommends that DIUS: develops a consistent method for ensuring policy is soundly based on evidence; faces up to and addresses the criticisms it received in the Capability Review; shows clearly how £1.5 billion in efficiency savings it has promised will be generated.

Dated May 2007

Student Attainment in Higher Education: Issues, controversies and debates is a timely exploration of student attainment in a rapidly changing higher education context and a rapidly changing world. The effects of neoliberalism and the commercialization of everyday life on education have been well documented, but with a focus on pedagogy, whilst student success is measured through grades, statistics and metrics. By exploring attainment in a broader context, this book provides a unique contribution to the critical literature on contemporary higher education. Within the themes of understanding attainment and challenging practice, the book sets out to explore student attainment as complex and multifaceted. It achieves this by looking at different conceptualizations of what attainment means and to whom; how attainment is shaped by different and often competing agendas and vested interests. The book highlights these wider issues, controversies and debates that underpin student attainment, whilst at the same time engaging with strategic and local interventions, which set out to improve aspects of the higher education system and increase individual and social agency within it. Sharing a range of pedagogical approaches and interventions, some of the key topics include: addressing attainment gaps engaging mature learners nurturing the intellectual identity the impact of activity choices. Creating a dialogue amongst different audiences about national and international controversies and debates around the topic of student attainment, this contribution will be beneficial to teaching professionals, policymakers and strategists. As an edited collection with contextualisation in the wider research arena, the book has both national and international applicability and transferability.