Audit Commission

The Audit Commission for England and Wales promotes proper stewardship of public finances and helps local authorities and the NHS to deliver economic, efficient and effective public services. The Commission also owns District Audit, which it appoints to carry out many of the audits for which the Commission is responsible. District Audit operates as an arm s-length agency. 

The development of specialist community teams is occurring against a background of increasing concern about the entire concept of community care which has been criticised by both the Commons Social Services Committee in f 9851 and the Audit Commission in... 

Audit Commission for Local Authorities in England and Wales (1986) Making a Reality of Community Care, London HMSO. 

Allsop, S. 22, 23 Asberg, M. 63 Ashton, H. Ill Audit Commission for Local... 

Audit Commission, A prescription for improvement Towards more rational prescribing in general practice, HMSO, London, 1994. 

The Report described training for teachers as inadequate and reiterated the serious flaws in the SEN system (p. 40), identified by the Audit Commission (2002) and Ofsted (2004) reports, relating to standards and consistency of provision, the statutory assessment process, fair access to schools and outcomes for children. The Committee declared that it found it both surprising and highly concerning (p. 40) that these problems had still not been addressed. 

See the Audit Commission survey of 900 public and private sector organizations at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/ac2/lSrR/LocalA/prgitm.htm. 

The Law Commission defined computer fraud as conduct which involves the manipulation of a computer, by whatever method, in order dishonestly to obtain money, property, or some other advantage of value, or to cause loss. Computer fraud had previously been studied by the Audit Commission in their attempt to assess the extent of crime involving computers. They had sub-divided computer fraud into three categories which they called input frauds, output frauds, and program frauds. 

An input fraud occurs where a person dishonestly enters false data into a computer, or dishonestly suppresses or amends data as it is keyed in. This was found by the Audit Commission to be by far the most common type of fraud identified by respondents to their survey. This type of activity is not very sophisticated and is merely a variant on the type of false accounting which occurs regularly outside the field of computing and should... 

Audit Commission (2002) Special Educational Needs A Mainstream Issue. London HMSO. 

Given that it is so difficult to redirect these substantial resources, the Audit Commission/ HMI (1992b) have produced helpful guidelines on the kind of structure which will support a move to inclusion. An abbreviated version of these guidelines is given in Table 1.3. 

There is no indication that this separation is seen by the authors as a temporary state of affairs, since they have started to admit children who have never been in special education directly into these classes and they record their concern that Bishopswood School should continue to retain its identity as a discrete institution. Another special school for students with aU kinds of disabilities has been relocated to Eastlea Community School and is now known, perhaps inevitably, as the school s Resource Area . However, this relocation has enabled eleven of the ex-special school pupils to move straight into mainstream, by-passing the separate base altogether (see Sebba and Ainscow, 1995). This kind of rationalisation of physical resources is recommended by the Audit Commission/HMI in their management handbook Getting the Act Together. 

This is especially so as recent evidence still attests to the interdependency of supposed factors such as race and special needs. Lipsky and Gartner (1996) cite research showing that black students are far more likely to be labelled retarded in the US (equivalent to the British moderate learning difficulties ) than are white students who are more likely to be categorised as learning disabled . The Audit Commission/HMI (1992a) found that 39 per cent of parents of children in special schools wanted a change of school for their children, as compared with 11 per cent whose children were in the mainstream. 

Audit Commission/HMI (1992a) Getting in on the Act Provision for Pupils with Special Educational Needs The National Picture, London HMSO. 

We are grateful to the Audit Commission for permission to reproduce part of their Checkhst for Action , to the Council for Exceptional Children for permission to reproduce part of their 12 Principles for Inclusion , and to David Skidmore for his kind permission to repubhsh the World Wide Web inclusion hst. 

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