Luke Sibieta

An important part of the UK policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been to try to help ensure key workers with children have access to sufficient childcare. Children of key workers are allowed to continue attending school and childcare settings, and both schools and early years providers are working to ensure wraparound care outside of school hours. Non-working partners, or those working from home, are also expected to provide childcare for key workers in some families.

In this observation, we set out some of the most important facts about key workers to help inform the evolving policy response to COVID-19.

What are the main parties’ spending proposals for young people in further education and sixth forms, and for adult education? To what extent will they reverse the cuts we’ve seen to date?

Here we outline an initial response from IFS researchers on the Conservative party manifesto. We take policy areas by turn but this is not a full assessment.

Below we outline an initial response from IFS researchers on the Labour manifesto. We take policy areas by turn but this is not a full assessment.

Below we outline an initial response from IFS researchers on the Liberal Democrat manifesto. We take a number of policy areas by turn but this is not a full assessment.

IFS researchers presented the key findings from their second annual report on education spending in England, supported by the Nuffield Foundation, providing consistent measures of day-to-day spending per pupil in England across the four main stages of education stretching back to the early 1990s.

Education spending is the second-largest element of public service spending in the UK behind health, representing about £91 billion in 2018–19 in today’s prices or about 4.2% of national income.

Almost all the candidates in the Conservative leadership election have promised higher levels of spending on education. With a Spending Review of some form due this year, we analyse the cost of potential commitments on schools and education spending.

It's a fact that spending on schools in England is much higher than it was 20 years ago. But that's not the full picture in a country which has seen a population boom coincide with a squeeze on public spending. Spending per pupil is actually lower than it was in 2010 in today's prices - as is the case across the rest of the UK.

Presentation at the launch event for our annual Education Spending in England report, held at One Great George Street.