Education and skills

"Please government, stop putting good, professional, public servants in an almost impossible situation by forcing them to choose between two incompatible versions of doing the right thing." Paul Johnson in The Times.

In this note, we analyse how participation in and spending on 16–18 education have evolved over recent years.

Over the last two decades, Sure Start Children’s Centres (and their predecessors, Sure Start Local Programmes) have been one of the most important policy programmes in the early years in England. These centres operate as ‘one-stop shops’ for families with children under 5, bringing together a range of support including health services, parenting support programmes, and access to childcare and early education.

At the last election, the Conservative Party manifesto committed to increasing teacher starting salaries in England to £30,000 per year by September 2022. However, to ease pressure on school budgets and the public finances, the government has now announced a freeze on teacher pay levels in England for September 2021, and pushed back starting salaries of £30,000 to September 2023.

'The power of the Treasury needs constant challenge and scrutiny, but in the end, it needs to play its role in challenging and scrutinising the rest of government. It needs to be unpopular.' Paul Johnson in The Times on the Treasury's role in last week's decisions on education spending.

In this observation we look at the arguments to consider when assessing the merits of the large injection of education spending.

Recent IFS work shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds see some of the largest financial benefits from going on to university. But these students are also less likely to attend university than their better-off peers who get exactly the same grades as them. And, even among students with the same grades attending the same HE programme, those from disadvantaged backgrounds still on average go on to earn less.

This briefing note describes the range and level of COVID-related spending on education in England.

In this briefing note, we assess the key policy announcements made in the DfE’s recent ‘Skills for Jobs’ White Paper around the funding of post-18 education.

The Social Mobility Commission investigated the drivers of socio-economic differences in post-16 course choices and their likely social mobility consequences.

'It is an abiding failure of our system of governance that, with an average tenure of less than two years, secretaries of state barely have time to understand the problems, let alone put in place lasting and effective reform.' Paul Johnson on education reform in The Times.

We investigate differences in the returns to undergraduate degrees by socio-economic background and ethnicity using the Department for Education’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data set.

This report seeks to set out the potential effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on inequalities in the UK. The pandemic has affected inequalities in education, training, wages, employment and health, including how these vary by gender, ethnicity, and across generations.