General Reports and Other Publications
ESRC: Teachers & pupils agree that active participation and talking about their ideas in the classroom helps children learn more effectively than using ICT ‘just because it’s there’, according to an Economic and Social Research Council funded study.
Children said they liked using ICT because it was ‘fun’ and everyone could join in games and quizzes. They associated ‘fun’ with unpredictability, risk-taking, rapid feedback & competition and disliked passive learning, such as copying from a blackboard or watching simulated science experiments.
Press release ~ Technology plus pupil participation equals interactive learning ~ Interactive Teaching and ICT ~ ESRC Society Today
IPCC: Twice as many people are detained in unsuitable police custody for assessment under the Mental Health Act as those taken by the police to hospital for this purpose, according to research recently published by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The IPCC's report, 'Police Custody as a "Place of Safety": a National Study Examining the Use of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983', examines the nature & extent of the use of police custody as a place of safety across England & Wales and makes a number of recommendations for the police & health services to improve practice and the experiences of the many thousands of people detained by the police under this power.
Under section 136, police officers can detain people, believed to have a mental disorder, who are in a public place and take them to a place of safety, such as a hospital or police station for assessment.
Press release ~ Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) ~ 'Police Custody as a "Place of Safety": Examining the Use of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983' ~ Code of Practice: Mental Health Act 1983 - revised 2008 ~ Mental Health Act 1983: the law currently in force, and guidance on its application ~ Mental Health Act 2007
HC: A Healthcare Commission survey of people using community mental health services claims continued improvements in ‘care’. A larger percentage of service users say that they have confidence in mental health professionals, receive copies of their care plan and have a number to contact out-of-hours when in a crisis situation.
Overall, most respondents continued to rate their care highly (with 78% describing it as "excellent", "very good" or "good", 13% as "fair" and 9% as "poor" or "very poor), but the survey also shows there is still some way to go before community mental health services are accessible to all people who need them and include all service users in decisions about their care.
Press release ~ Survey of users of mental health services 2008 ~ National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) ~ Care Programme Approach Association ~ DH – Care Programme Approach ~ Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Implementation Plan: National guidelines for regional delivery ~ New Savoy Declaration ~ Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health ~ 'We Need to Talk' coalition of mental health charities ~ DH – Mental Health ~ Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) ~ British Psychological Society ~ DH - Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Guidance) ~ Choices in Mental Health: Psychological therapies ~ London School of Economics Depression Report ~ Unite/Mental Health Nurses Association ~ World Federation for Mental Health ~ UK Inquiry into Mental Health and Well-being ~ Mind ~ National review of adult specialist community mental health services in England ~ National Service Framework for mental health ~ Reviewing the Care Programme Approach 2006 – Closed Consultation
Ofsted: Good… Better… Best: The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) has reported how colleges can improve and why some don’t. Strong leadership & clear vision, challenging aspirations & targets and a thorough process of progress monitoring & self-assessment, are just a number of ways colleges can raise the bar and work towards achieving outstanding status.
The report - How colleges improve: a review of effective practice - finds that the further education sector is improving. Over 60% of colleges are now considered good or better at inspection, up from just under 50% in 2001-2005, the first round of Ofsted inspections.
No single strategy for improvement is expected to hit the mark for all colleges. However the report identifies a number of featuresthat are common to those who successfully lifted their standards between first and second Ofsted inspections, from inadequate to good, or from satisfactory or good to outstanding. It also identifiesseveral factorswhich appeared to hold back progress in those colleges which did not improve their performance over the two cycles of inspection.
Press release ~ How colleges improve: a review of effective practice ~
BERR: A review has concluded that the UK's competitive telecoms market can deliver the next generation access (NGA) in broadband and maintain the country's position as a leading online economy, but the Government & Ofcom need to be vigilant and play an active leadership role.
The review, jointly commissioned in February 2008 by the Department for Business and HM Treasury examined barriers to investment in NGA. Mr Caio has reported promising signs of investment by major players such as Virgin Media and BT, and, at a more local level, by communities experimenting with new deployment methods.
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