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A recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO, 2016) has criticised the Department of Education's organisation of Initial Teacher Training programmes in England as not providing value for money. This paper explores recent reports from government agencies, Parliament and the press on this issue. Further to this, leaders of various programmes for teacher training, including those run by a university, a School Centred Teacher Training organisation and a lead school in an Academy consortium, between them providing a wide variety of programmes, were questioned on the recent actions of the Department for Education and the National College for Teaching and Leadership with regard to how their actions have affected providing programmes for prospective teachers. The paper concludes that the NAO's claim that the DfE is not providing value for money is correct and that in order to prevent further wastage a more measured and coherent approach to teacher training in England is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has multicultural education developed differently in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, politically and culturally similar countries? I address this question with a historical and comparative study of how these three nations responded differently to the same global institutional trends. I show how not only did the existing institutional and ideological architecture of each country filter how it adopted the logic of pluralism that spread multiculturalism throughout the Anglo-American world in the 1960s and 1970s but that the resulting institutional settlement in each country was in turn unsettled by the neoliberal market logic that reshaped national education systems in the 1980s and 1990s, in turn altering domestic multicultural policies. Overall, this paper shows that not only do nation-level differences shape institutional change but do so through the accumulation of solutions to particular framings of domestic problems in the context of the global institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of a quality management system known as clinical governance in the National Health Service in England requires the transformation of systems, attitudes, culture, and ways of working in this vast organization. Under this remit, frequent meetings and the production of protocols, policies, and guidelines are viewed as fundamental for the system and professionals in health care are currently engaged in producing the "necessary" documentation intended as a basis for the quality of care for practice. As a result, clinical governance systems have produced an overwhelming proliferation of both external and internally generated organizational paperwork. Over a period of two years, I attended corporate level clinical governance meetings at an English NHS hospital trust as an observer undertaking an ethnographic investigation. This paper, using the 'programmatic statement' advocated by Dingwall and Strong (1997), will analyze the social context of the meeting and some of the documents that arose during a set time period as a result and, by using examples, question the actual function of this committee and consider the degree to which it has actually contributed to quality improvement as opposed to other organizational challenges, particularly the practical accomplishment of legitimacy (Meyer and Rowan 1977). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998 as part of a range of policies to ?make work pay? and reduce child poverty the government of the United Kingdom introduced the Working Families? Tax Credit (WFTC). Occupying a similar role to the Earned Income Tax Credit in the United States, the Labour government believe the improved financial incentives offered by the WFTC will lead to greater employment participation, particularly amongst lone parent families (Taylor, 1998). This policy is broadly based on the assumption that individuals make decisions around employment through a comparison of their potential financial position in and out of paid work. This assumption is itself based on a contentious model of decision making ? that of individuals as rational economic actors. This paper focuses on the decisions lone parent mothers and mothers in couple families make around participation in paid work. It suggests that the decisions made by these women operate within parameters set by the need to alter the balance between caring responsibility and paid work as the perceived demands of parenting change with the age of the child. Rather than prioritising income maximisation, decisions reflect mothers concern to mesh employment and care over the lifecourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers in the United Kingdom, along with those of most other industrialized countries, have been seeking ways to promote employment of older people as part of their efforts to mitigate anticipated labor force shortage due mainly to the aging of the population and the workforce. Japan is a country characterized by more advanced population aging and substantially higher labor force participation rate among older workers than most other industrialized countries including the UK. This paper discusses three main factors which help explain why workers in Japan remain in the labor force longer than those in the UK: (1) narrower pathways to early retirement; (2) greater employment protections for older employees; and (3) more thorough government active labor market programs for older workers. Labor market situations and quality of working lives of Japanese older workers are by no means better than the UK counterpart. Nonetheless, some of these factors might be a source for UK policymakers to take into account in their continuous search for ways to prolong the working lives of the aged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which neo-liberalism is an appropriate and meaningful lens through to which to make sense of contemporary media policies that govern both market and non-market institutions. Neo-liberalism's emphasis on the market as a key mechanism through which to secure individual freedom and encourage personal responsibility has led to a re-conceptualization of the role of the 'public' as subject and object of contemporary media policy. Based on an a series of interviews with leading policymakers in the US and the UK and an analysis of recent policy debates in those two states, the paper aims to articulate the place of the public in the development and implementation of media policy ideas. In doing so, it attempts to highlight some of the tensions and contradictions between the theory of neo-liberalism and the material practices carried out in its name. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many states in the U.S. have incorporated disability into their hate crime statutes, but there are currently no such provisions in Britain. Penalty enhancement at the point of conviction of such crimes is possible but it rests upon the discretion of the courts. Historically this has been problematic because the courts have grossly under-used these discretionary powers of sentencing in hate crime cases. Consequently, in this paper I suggest that hate crime law in the United Kingdom has not full embraced the category of disability. Although it was included in legislation in 2003, I argue that the Criminal Justice System is struggling to deal with it in an appropriate way. Using Valerie Jenness's theory of domain expansion, I suggest that this is because of the way that the disability movement framed the problem of disability hate crime. The use of the term 'bullying' and 'abuse' in their campaigns has combined with the practical problems for police in knowing how to pursue crimes against the disabled. This means that it is seen as low level bullying of vulnerable victims and not in keeping with traditional ideas of what a hate crime is. This paper will examine the role of the disability movement and how the police and criminal justice system have responded. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that neither the protagonists nor the antagonists in the debate about the relations between globalization and states have taken adequate account of the uses to which some states try to put religion for their own purposes. This study takes the example of the New Labor governments that have been in power in Great Britain since 1997 have pursued policies that aim to convert faith into a political resource. The study takes the governments policies on Religious Education in schools as the trace element that indicates most clearly this evolution of government policies.

The article reports on the released made by Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) of its first of a series of energy briefing papers that is designed to inquire practical solutions to the present British energy issues in 2009 in Great Britain. It states that part of the briefing discusses the state of the British energy sector and spotlights the difficult challenges confronting the country. ICE stressed that urgency is needed by the government in reviewing the British energy policy.

The article offers information on the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and its attempt to have a balanced and authoritative policy to be able to assist stakeholders, members, as well as the society in deciding what should be done on the vast and controversial issue on climate change. It is noted that despite the wide range of ideas and options on adjusting to climate change, ICE has learned that sustainability if the right solution. In fact, it has patronized measures like landfill tax and advocated policies such as the "polluter pay" policy.