News and Blog

Children in Wales are required to begin school at age 5. Although parents have no legal obligation to put their children into forms of education before this age, it is widely accepted that pre-school education has a positive impact on children’s cognitive and social development. Pre-school education is therefore universally popular and local authorities in…

Cardiff University coverage of WISERD Education’s report to HEFCW – Access to Higher Education in Wales can be found by following the link below. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/141953-catchment-22-school-and-local-authority-impact-university-chances

The impact of social media on young people’s lives is underlined starkly today as a new study by researchers at the Cardiff University-based Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research Data (WISERD) reports that more than one in five teenagers say they “almost always” wake up during the night to look at or post messages….

A recent review of the national curriculum for Wales has called for a radical reimagining of how curriculum is to be conceptualised, enacted and assessed (Welsh Government, 2015). Currently, citizenship education in Wales is philosophically framed by the Curriculum Cymreig, an initiative to develop a “Welsh ethos” in schools in Wales and delivered through the Personal…

How young people make choices about university, where and what to study has been a question asked by many social researchers, policy-makers and practitioners alike. Research has shown that when young people make choices about going to university, a range of factors come into play including peer influences, their families’ experience of university and their…

Professor Sally Power was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thinking Allowed’ programme discussing research on how school children say they would spend a million pounds.

On July 6th, Cardiff University hosted the Welsh Baccalaureate Conference. This event was developed through a partnership between the Welsh Government, the WJEC and Cardiff University research staff. The aim of the conference was to engage secondary and further education teachers with some of the ins-and-outs of conducting research, with a particular focus given to enabling them to better assist their…

Ann Keane, former HM Chief Inspector at Estyn, delivered our first keynote address of the WISERD 2015 Annual Conference. Ann discussed what she’d learnt throughout her 5 years at Estyn, and what she regarded as the key issues for Welsh education moving forward. Ann Keane, former HM Chief Inspector at Estyn, delivered our first keynote…

At the WISERD conference I talked about what people expect from an inspectorate of education and training in Wales and I outlined the methods that inspectors use to come to professional judgements about standards in education.  I also talked about standards in the education system and the challenges that continue to exist. Inspectorates offer public…