Education and skills

New IFS research finds that providing school breakfasts free to all children in disadvantaged English primary schools helps pupils to make two months’ additional progress over the course of a year. These gains seem to be driven by better behaviour and concentration in the classroom, meaning that even students who don’t eat breakfast at school can benefit from the improved learning environment. These benefits come at a low cost relative to other programmes with a similar impact on attainment.

This article examines the long-term impacts on health and healthy behaviour of two of the oldest and most widely cited US early childhood interventions evaluated by the method of randomisation with long-term follow-up.

This briefing note is the first output in a programme of work seeking to understand the gender wage gap and its relationship to poverty. Section 1 sets out what we mean by the gender wage gap, how it differs according to education level and how it has evolved over time and across generations. Section 2 provides some descriptive evidence on how the gender wage gap relates to the presence of dependent children and the employment outcomes associated with that.

In low- and middle-income countries (LIMCs), measuring early childhood development (ECD) with standard tests in large scale surveys and evaluations of interventions is difficult and expensive. Multi-dimensional screeners and single-domain tests (‘short tests’) are frequently used as alternatives. However, their validity in these circumstances is unknown. We examined the feasibility, reliability, and concurrent validity of three multi-dimensional screeners (Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3), Denver Developmental Screening Test (Denver-II), Battelle Developmental Inventory screener (BDI-2)) and two single-domain tests (MacArthur-Bates Short-Forms (SFI and SFII), WHO Motor Milestones (WHO-Motor)) in 1,311 children 6–42 months in Bogota, Colombia.

We study students’ motives for educational attainment in a unique survey of 885 secondary school students in the UK. As expected, students who perceive the monetary returns to education to be higher are more likely to intend to continue in full-time education. However, the main driver is the perceived consumption value, which alone explains around half of the variation of the intention to pursue higher education. Moreover, the perceived consumption value can account for a substantial part of both the socio-economic gap and the gender gap in intentions to continue in full-time education.

We develop an equilibrium lifecycle model of education, marriage and labor supply and consumption in a transferable utility context.

This report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, shows how routes into teaching have changed in recent years, and looks at the costs, benefits and retention rates for each route.

Early exposure to adversity, such as abuse or neglect, is associated with poorer outcomes across social, education and health domains.

Since the early-1990s the UK experienced an unprecedented increase in university graduates, but at the same time the age profile of the graduate premi

Using unique data from Pakistan we estimate a model of demand for differentiated products in 112 rural education markets with significant choice among public and private schools. Our model accounts for the endogeneity of school fees and the characteristics of students attending the school.

The government has committed to freezing school spending per pupil in cash terms in England up to 2019–20. It has also committed to introducing a national funding formula for schools in England from 2017 onwards. In this report, we provide historical context for these changes by showing how spending per pupil has evolved since the 1970s – comparisons that were previously unavailable. We also provide the first estimates of total school spending received across different cohorts over time and the variation within individual cohorts.