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Higher educationMore from IFS
Understand this issue

Spending Review 2025: What it means and why it matters
We take a closer look at the Spending Review and what the policies mean for public services, investment and the wider economy.
12 June 2025

Sure Start’s wide-ranging and long-lasting benefits highlight the impact of integrated early years services
Over the long run, Sure Start’s financial benefits could be twice as high as its costs
22 May 2025

Rethinking the Education Maintenance Allowance: Lessons from a long-term analysis
This evidence should prompt us to look beyond simple financial incentives for classroom attendance.
10 March 2025
Policy analysis

What does the Spending Review really mean for FE?
The chancellor has pledged an extra £1.2 billion annually for FE by 2028-29. But will this be enough to reverse a decade of cuts?
12 June 2025

Council tax hikes will do the heavy lifting
IFS Senior Research Economist Kate Ogden writes in Municipal Journal about what the 2025 Spending Review will mean for public services and councils.
17 June 2025

Benefits - and costs - of expanding access to free school meals will grow over time
Expanded access to free school meals will benefit 1.7 million children in the long run, but existing transitional protections limit effects next year.
4 June 2025
Academic research

The short- and long-run effects of paying disadvantaged teenagers to go to school
This working paper studies the long-run effect of a cash transfer to disadvantaged students on educational attainment, earnings and crime.
26 February 2025

Vog: using volcanic eruptions to estimate the impact of air pollution on student test scores
We demonstrate that poor air quality disproportionately impacts the human capital accumulation of economically disadvantaged children.
20 February 2025

Changes in marital sorting: theory and evidence from the US
Measuring how assortative matching differs between two economies is difficult, we show how the use of different measures can create different outcomes
27 November 2024