1 Children should be allowed to miss up to ten days of school a year to travel, according to the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers, which said children would learn more on holiday than at school.
2 Up to £6.2 billion in means-tested benefits is going unclaimed despite efforts to increase take-up, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
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3 A points system will be introduced to cut immigration from the EU and Western Europe, the Home Office announced. The two-tier system will mean low-skilled workers are able to stay only for short periods of time.
4 Universities are getting better at making money from links with business and industry, but the Higher Education Funding Council for England found that only 7 per cent of research funding was given by industry, commerce and public institutions.
5 The Audit Commission announced that about 50 employees would lose their jobs under plans to cut its inspection costs by 50 per cent. Inspection in local government will cost almost £26 million next year.
6 The scientist who created Dolly the sheep was awarded a licence to clone human embryos by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, will use it to study motor-neurone disease.
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7 Breast cancer sufferers will be able to compare treatments and waiting times at different hospitals in a new guide published by the charity Breast Cancer Care. It reveals that waiting times for radiotherapy in some hospitals exceeds 100 days.
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8 Thousands of police officers have been told by their leaders not to join the Serious Organised Crime Agency unless changes are made to the way it is run. There are concerns that the agency, which will target drugs and people-trafficking, will be divorced from normal policing.
9 The Samaritans may have to close branches after the Big Lottery Fund turned down an application for £300,000 because it was not helping disadvantaged groups, such as asylum-seekers.
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10 The £6.2 billion program for an integrated IT system for the NHS is in danger of failure, according to a poll. It revealed that confidence in the project has collapsed among the doctors who should use it.
11 The Conservatives will use private finance initiative deals to build prisons to hold 20,000 more offenders. A Tory official said the new prisons will be built by PFI contractors because there was “no provision in the expenditure for that capital outlay” from the public purse.
[NIB2]12 The MoD is creating a unit to assess the use of PFI projects to fund procurement projects. Nick Prior will lead a 30-strong team to review proposals.
13 Plans to improve school meals were criticised for not providing additional funds to wean children off junk food. Neil Porter, chairman of the Local Authority Caterers Association, said: “The real improvements to food standards will not be achievable without a major injection of hard cash.”
14 The Government has set out six election pledges, including more parental leave for fathers and a maximum of 18 weeks’ wait for hospital treatment. The opposition parties dismissed the pledges as “all talk” and said voters had lost trust in Labour.
15 The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority called on the Government to abolish GCSEs and A levels and replace them with a diploma for 14 to 19-year-olds.
16 Heart disease is costing the country £7.5 billion in care and lost earnings, more than any other European country, the British Heart Foundation said.