News and Blog

This blog outlines preliminary findings from a larger WISERD Education Data Lab project exploring non-attendance and school exclusions. Here we draw on annual attendance data and pupil level data. We explore the total number of school sessions missed by a cohort of young people over an 11-year period, from age 5 years old (Year 1)…

A previous blog introduced the context and patterns of early entries to GCSEs in Wales. This blog builds on this to examine the practice of multiple entry and the effect that this has on grades. Using national data of all pupils in Wales who completed Year 11 between 2006 and 2018, we distinguished between pupils…

GCSE entry practices in Wales have meant that many pupils may have sat their GCSE examinations, and thereby certified, before the traditional end-of-Year-11 point of their academic career. Not only have some pupils experienced early entry, some have been entered multiple times in order to maximise the final grade achieved. Influences on the practice of…

By generating high quality research-based evidence, the newly established WISERD Education Data Lab aims to help inform and challenge our understanding of educational processes and outcomes and to support the Wales education sector to meet the aims set out by the Welsh Government in their national mission for 2017-2021. In order to undertake this work,…

Early data suggests 15% of people in the UK have now lost their jobs due to Covid-19. Hidden within this figure is the disproportionate impact on already marginalised and disadvantaged groups, including black and minority ethnic people, women and those without a degree. Young people are also at the sharp end this surge in unemployment, as…

As Wales seeks to navigate a safe path out of the coronavirus lockdown, one of the biggest challenges for the Welsh Government is how to re-open the rural economy whilst avoiding a surge of new cases in the countryside and panicking an anxious rural population. First Minister Mark Drakeford has signaled that restrictions on the…

Professor John Morgan‘s recent book Civil Society, Social Change, and a New Popular Education in Russia has been nominated by the publisher Routledge for the Alexander Nove Prize 2020 of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies. Professor Nove was a famous economic historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. The book is…

New research by WISERD Co-Director, Professor Paul Chaney analyses civil society organisations’ perspectives on how the UK, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland governments are responding to their international human rights treaty obligations in the formulation and delivery of social policy. This socio-legal study is the first that examines human rights and the territorialisation of social welfare…

      This report provides an overview of our research activity in 2019 – a year that has marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, and has strengthened WISERD’s position as an important national research centre. Read more about our latest income profile, the work we’re doing to strengthen our…

The impact of Covid-19 on the economy and the world of work is unprecedented: full or partial lockdown measures are affecting approximately 80 per cent of the global workforce, with the harshest effects falling disproportionately on unprotected workers and those working in the informal economy[1]. For trade unions, the Covid-19 pandemic has cast light on…