Education & children's services - key sectors

Schools

PwC is working with government and local authorities across the range of current priorities to support higher standards and attainment in schools, including:

• Increasing choice and diversity in the provision of school places, including specialist schools, Academies and Trust schools
• The implementation of substantial capital investment in schools infrastructure through Building Schools for the Future
• Remodelling the school workforce, including roles and training for new types of staff, provision of a wider range of services on school sites, and leadership
• Support and challenge for local authorities and schools in the effective management of behaviour and attendance issues and supporting the Every Child Matters agenda
• Achieving a more integrated approach to the use of ICT in schools, and effective collection and management of data by schools, local authorities and government.

Our main clients in the schools sector are the DCSF, QCA, BECTA, TDAS and individual local authorities

Further education / Learning & skills

PwC has worked extensively for the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and its predecessor organisations, as well as with individual colleges, work-based learning providers, sector skills councils and the University for industry (Ufi).

Through its Agenda for Change, the LSC is working to reform the whole of the post-16 education sector to make it more appropriate to the needs of employers and learners. PwC is proud to be associated with a number of initiatives being delivered to make these changes. We have a dedicated team of learning and skills specialists who have worked with (or for) the LSC since its inception to bring about improvements within the sector. We are able to provide a full range of services throughout the UK drawing on the local expertise in our extensive network of offices. We are genuinely passionate about providing services to the sector, and many of our staff have worked within the sector previously.

Higher education

PwC works nationally and internationally in higher education with government, agencies and many individual institutions. We work closely with UUK, and ensure we not only understand the direction in which higher education is heading, but the ways in which we can help make a difference for our clients.

We have a team of higher education specialists who bring together our internal expertise to ensure that we can address specific issues within institutions. Teams can combine skills in general consultancy, tax, human resources, business planning, intellectual property and business process re-engineering. Importantly, we also provide audit services to nearly 50 institutions, and are the only firm to have membership of the BUFDG Accounting Standards Group and the SORP Board.

In a changing higher education marketplace, we are uniquely well-placed to help Universities to achieve and maintain financial stability through providing support in areas such as full economic costing, shared services, forecasting, cost reduction and efficiency savings.

International

As one of the world's leading providers of professional services, the PwC global network of firms has offices in all major cities and countries. In the UK, we have a dedicated education team that can access this global network.

International work carried out by the UK team includes work on structural reform for the World Bank, the European Commission and the UK Department for International Development, as well as governments in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and many of the former Soviet Union States. We have also worked with institutions in many of these countries, often to foster transnational links.