News and Blog

In the shadow of the fallout from the qualifications results announced for young people in Scotland earlier this month, and last-minute amendments made by the Welsh and English governments to the awarding of grades, this blog reflects on the steps taken to calculate grades, necessitated by these unprecedented times. Detailed information is now publicly available…

Note: This blog has been updated on 28 July to include Student Loan Company data to the end of June 2020. There has been much discussion, forecasting and concern around the impact of COVID-19 on the higher education sector. With many universities beginning to slowly lay out their intended teaching and learning practices for the…

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…

Over the past six years, the WISERD Education Multi Cohort Study (WMCS) has made an important contribution to understanding the lives of young people in Wales, by conducting an annual survey of over 1,000 young people, aged eight to 18-years-old. A key part of the data we’ve been gathering is around our young people’s educational…