Luke is a Research Fellow attached to the Education, Employment and Evaluation sector. His general research interests include education policy, political economy and poverty and inequality. In the recent past, he has conducted research into the following specific areas: school funding; the impact of the home learning environment on child outcomes; trends in top incomes; trends in child poverty and income inequality; and the politics of tax policy.
Education
MSc (Distinction) Economics, University College London, 2008
BSc (First Class) Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2005
Our first annual report on education spending in England provides measures of spending per student in the early years, schools, further education and higher education back to the early 1990s.
A presentation by Luke Sibieta, IFS Research Fellow, to the Wales Public Services 2025 conference, ‘Sustaining Wales public services: austerity and beyond’, 12 July 2018.
This report provides new estimates of total spending by the government on children in England, including benefits, education spending,services for vulnerable children and healthcare. In the most recent year of data (2017–18), total spending was over £120 billion or over £10,000 per child under 18.
It is well known that the average graduate earns more than non graduates, and that university graduates from certain subjects and from certain universities earn considerably more than others. For example, five years after graduation, men from the highest earnings universities earn almost 50% more than graduates from other Russell Group universities (30% for women), while male Russell Group graduates earn over 40% more than those who attended the average post-1992 institution (35% for women).
There are longstanding concerns about the recruitment and retention of teachers in the UK . In recent years there has also been much debate about the extent to which changes to the initial teacher education system have affected the recruitment and retention problem. These concerns are most acute in so called “shortage” subject areas, such as physics .
From May this year, all large employers have had to pay the apprenticeship levy, which equates to 0.5% of payroll bills in excess of £3m. This is estimated to raise £2.8bn a year by 2019-20. In recompense, expenditure on the costs of off-the-job training for apprentices is now effectively free (up to certain limits set by government), which applies to levy- and non-levy-paying employers in a broadly similar way. These changes have led to an increase in the expected government subsidy for apprenticeships in England from £1.8bn in 2016-17 to £2.5bn in 2019-20.
Last week, the Secretary of State for Education announced arrangements for school funding in England in 2018–19 and 2019–20. This confirmed additional annual funding of around £900m by 2019–20 (as compared with pre-election plans) and announced the amended plans for the national funding formula. Under these new proposals, the funding local authorities receive for schools will be linked to local area characteristics; however, a new national school-level formula will now not be in place until at least 2020–21. This is a smaller step than planned prior to the election – although still one in the right direction. The slower pace of reform and additional money also mean that schools losing out under previous plans will probably see their funding situation improve slightly. This observation describes the current system, why reform is needed and the likely effects of the latest proposals.
In this observation, we examine the main parties’ proposals for spending on 16-18 education in England, which includes students in School Sixth Forms, Sixth Form Colleges and Further Education Colleges. This area of education receives considerably less attention in public debate than other areas and seems not to have been a major spending priority for policymakers over recent decades.
In this observation, we detail what the commitments outlined in the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos on education spending would mean for the path of overall school spending in England and the prospects for continued reform of the school funding system.
The Labour party is due to publish its June 2017 election manifesto later today. Below you will find detail on recent IFS analysis, which may help to contextualise and assess some of their policies.
Luke Sibieta write for the ESRC's blog about a collaboration between Lambeth Council and researchers from the IFS which proved informative for policymakers and of value to researchers.