Daily roundup: DfE redundancies, the Work Programme, and funding for rape support services

Department for Education officials have denied that they are planning to make redundancies, despite having announced proposals to cut around 1,000 posts. Lawyers for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union have said they are “totally mystified” by the claim, and have warned the DfE it will face unfair dismissal claims if it does not follow redundancy procedures. “To claim you can cut a quarter of your staff without making redundancies really does defy belief," said PCS’s general secretary Mark Serwotka.

The government's Work Programme to get people back to work is “extremely poor”, according to the public accounts committee of MPs, The Daily Mail reports. “The programme is particularly failing young people and the hardest to help,” said Labour's Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee. During the first 14 months of the programme just 3.6 per cent of benefit claimants on the scheme found lasting work.

Four new rape support centres will open to help victims of sexual assault and rape, the Ministry of Justice has announced. The centres, costing £4m, will open in Reading, Avon and Somerset, Lincolnshire and Central Lancashire. The government has pledged to establish up to 15 new rape support centres in total. The four announced today bring the number of new centres to 13, and the overall total for England and Wales to 78. “I want more victims of rape or sexual assault to come forward and get the specialist help they need to recover from these sickening crimes,” said victims’ minister Helen Grant.

More than 30 per cent of young people say they have received abusive messages over the internet in the past six months. A survey of 2,000 14- to 18-year-olds conducted by vInspired also revealed that almost one in 10 admitted to being “trolls” and sending abusive messages to their peers. The charity has warned of a “digital disconnect” about trolling, after finding nearly half of young people thought it was acceptable to say things online that they would not to someone’s face. In response, vInspired has launched a campaign, Lolz not Trolls, to promote appropriate online behavior.

The education system needs to do more to address why high-achieving pupils are failing to achieve their potential, researchers have claimed. A study published by the Institute of Education found that although the average scores of England’s pupils are similar to those of other countries between age 10 and 16, the highest achieving English children made less progress relative to their peers in all the other countries. Compared to East Asia, GCSE-age students in England were two years behind.