Within the Roman Church, St Francis’ feast day falls on October 4th and is marked by ceremonies to honour and bless animals. When a Catholic church in London’s Kentish Town sought to display in a local public library a poster advertising a forthcoming ‘pet blessing’ there, it was refused permission on the grounds the event… [Read More]
The Financial Times is claiming health secretary Andy Burnham’s recent statements advocating NHS organisations over independent bodies as providers of state-funded health care backpeddle on current policy.
Surely Andy Burnham made a bit of a howler today in a speech to the King’s Fund. NHS mangers, he said, must not conduct their own ‘mini spending reviews’ in advance of political decisions about NHS funding. But surely this is what any responsible manager would be doing?
José Barroso exclaimed ‘Je ne regrette rien’ at the end of a statement to the European Parliament on Tuesday with which he secured his re-election for a second five-year term as the European Commission’s president, writes Ariane Poulain.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham is preparing to announce plans to reward hospitals for high patient satisfaction, according to The Guardian. Potential ratings under consideration include those on the bedside manner of doctors, cleanliness of lavatories, quality of food, and helpfulness of receptionists.
Last week it was reported that evidence had found the impact of teaching assistants in schools to be questionable. This week, research from London Metropolitan University is reported to have found that in eight in 10 schools teaching assistants are taking classes alone.
On Tuesday, the European Commission held a hearing to discuss the impact of the ‘Google Books Settlement’ on the EU, writes Ariane Poulain.
Embedded deep within the sub-bullet points of the General Medical Council’s updated version of Tomorrow’s Doctors—the publication outlining the skills, abilities and values UK medical schools must instil in students before graduation—is something especially significant.
Areport for the Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project, presented at this week’s annual British Educational Research Association conference, shows that teaching assistants ‘do not help’ pupils. The research, based on the views of 20,000 teachers and the experiences of 8,000 pupils, whilst kindly keen to emphasise that TAs have ‘huge potential’, places a large question mark over their current impact.
£20bn cash savings necessary in the NHS by 2014, David Nicholson, the NHS Chief Exec, announced some months ago now. Only now is one grand-plan ‘leaked’: a report from back in March by the management consultants McKinsey commissioned by the DH. It paints a stark picture of type of cuts that will be necessary.