Education

Strategic Defence and Security Review sets out aim of reducing MoD civilian staff numbers to 41,000 – with unions warning that the scale of cuts could have frontline ramifications

Tim Loughton says DfE officials questioned making a “special case” of the Kids Company charity – while Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin is quizzed on where the “buck stops” for its final round of public funding

The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills may be facing a tough Spending Review settlement, but permanent secretary Martin Donnelly tells Matt Foster that the “honest and open” culture at BIS will endure – whatever the chancellor decides

National Cyber Centre to open in Cheltenham, George Osborne announces, amid flurry of security spending announcements in the wake of the Paris terror attacks

The Official View: Fiona Mactaggart – a Home Office minister in Tony Blair's government – tells us about gossiping perm secs and why she believes politicians should have a greater say in choosing their officials

Additional intelligence officers to be announced in Strategic Defence and Security Review 

Stinging report by the Public Accounts Committee says government funding to the collapsed charity was “never seriously questioned, let alone stopped”

As departments go digital, civil service leaders will have to grapple with the physical disconnection that more flexible ways of working can bring

With science and research spending already below the OECD average, new report by the Science and Technology Committee calls on the Treasury to "safeguard both the quality and the productivity of our science base"

New "Office for Students" and Teaching Excellence Framework among measures in business department's Green Paper

Garry Graham – taking over from Leslie Manasseh at the union for specialists and managers – calls for "cool appraisal" of performance management by ministers

Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock sets up a new group to help departments to become "intelligent consumers of their own data" – and promises lunchtime coding groups for civil servants. Audience members at the Open Data Institute meanwhile quiz him on the privatisation of the Postcode Address File