News and Blog

Welsh children’s subjective well-being during the pandemic ranks below average in international survey

In my previous Children’s Worlds project blog posts, we looked at the impact of the pandemic on Welsh children’s well-being in relation to school and whether they live in urban or rural areas of Wales. For this third and final instalment, we now turn our attention to how the overall level of subjective well-being for…

Research grant success for academic and practitioner partnership

Dr Elizabeth Woodcock is Research Fellow on the Social Prescribing Community of Practice research project. The project is led by Dr Koen Bartels, Associate Professor at the Institute of Local Government (Inlogov), University of Birmingham. The main research partner is The Active Wellbeing Society, a Community Benefit Society established in 2017 from Birmingham City Council’s…

The S.S. Empire Windrush and Colin MacInnes’ The London Trilogy and England, Half English

The 75th anniversary on the 22nd June this year of the arrival in Britain of the S.S. Empire Windrush has prompted me to re-read Colin MacInnes’ The London Trilogy, comprising City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr Love and Justice (1960). MacInnes, who died in 1976, was an English writer and journalist, who…

Exploring transitions to post-compulsory education in Wales

In a new ADR Wales Data Insight, researchers Dr Katy Huxley and Rhys Davies looked at the transitions to post-compulsory education in Wales. The team linked Welsh education data sources, allowing them to identify characteristics associated with those who do, and do not, transition to further learning. The linked datasets included the Welsh National Data Collection…

Gender pay and career progression gap widens with experience in the teaching sector in Wales

Recent analysis from ADR Wales’ researchers used administrative data to estimate career progression and pay differences among female and male teachers and school leaders in Wales. Using anonymised administrative data from the 2019 and 2020 School Workforce Annual Census (SWAC), ADR Wales education researchers found that 77% of the qualified teacher workforce was female, however: 15% of male…

Missed out: the households experiencing multiple deprivation in the least deprived areas in Wales

The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) is the Welsh Government’s official measure of relative (‘ranked’) deprivation for small areas in Wales. WIMD is used by government and other organisations to target services to address social disadvantage. For example, as part of their programme to increase access to higher education, the Higher Education Funding Council…

The UK Strike Wave: ‘the genie is out of the bottle’?

2023 brought a new wave of strikes following six months of increasing industrial action across the country. More and more workers, including those in key public sector roles, voted for industrial action often with huge majorities and mostly comfortably clearing the high ballot turnout threshold imposed by government legislation aimed at making strikes more difficult….

Leading academic to discuss democratic reform in Aberystwyth

The prospects for political reform in Britain will be discussed at Aberystwyth University this month, when Professor Alan Renwick delivers the annual Welsh Politics and Society Lecture. The lecture, ‘Do the UK Public want Democratic Reform?’, will be held on Thursday 25th May at 6pm in the International Politics Main Hall, Penglais Campus. Entry is…

Is job quality better or worse after the pandemic?

In a new, open access paper, Rhys Davies and Professor Alan Felstead share insights from quiz data collected before and after Covid-19 to examine what short-term effects the pandemic has had on job quality in the UK. The results show that non-pay-related job quality has improved, differences between occupations have shrunk and the growth of…

Young people posting daily social media content and in regular contact with internet-only friends could be at risk for poorer wellbeing

Dr Emily Lowthian is a lecturer at Swansea University in the Department of Education and Childhood Studies in the School of Social Sciences. Emily presented her research with Dr Rebecca Anthony, Georgia Fee at a WISERD lunchtime seminar in March. Online communication behaviours, such as social media use, are often received negatively in the mass…