Alongside the trials and policy advice that are our bread and butter, we’ve also been working with a group of Cabinet Office colleagues to design and run a totally new kind of training programme that incorporates insights from the behavioural sciences. Competing teams are set the goal of coming up with innovative policy solutions to complex problems – aided by a series of front line visits and expert sessions from policy makers. The catch is that participants only have four days to generate their proposals, and have to present their ideas to the Cabinet Secretary or the Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office who chairs the final panel. It’s a tough challenge, but one that focuses the mind in a way that more traditional courses do not. At the last Cabinet Office Policy School, Oliver Wright, Whitehall Editor of the Independent, led a session on policymaking and the media. Read his account of Policy School.