News and Blog

Has the disability employment gap really declined?

If you keep track of key measures of disability equality in the UK, you’ll know that the gap in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled working-age people has gone down over the past fifteen years.  And you’d be in good company. Many experts have flagged this trend: Dame Carol Black in her influential 2008 Review, DWP indicators…

Flexible pre-school education pilots: Separating the impactful from the impractical

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…

New WISERD Book Explores the Varied Post-Devolution Governance and Policy Making in Wales

Set within the context of UK devolution and constitutional change, People, Places and Policy: Knowing Contemporary Wales Through New Localities offers important and interesting insights into ‘place-making’ and ‘locality-making’ in contemporary Wales. Combining policy research with policy-maker and stakeholder interviews at various spatial scales (local, regional, and national), it examines the historical processes and working…

‘People, Places and Policy: Knowing contemporary Wales through new localities’ – A new WISERD book published

Our book has finally been published! We say finally, because the idea for the book started to take shape five years ago during the first phase of WISERD. During this phase we were interested in understanding how different localities in Wales were behaving in relation to devolution and devolved policy areas and we developed a research strand…

Catchment 22: Pupils’ school and local authority area have substantial impact on chances of getting into university

Welsh school pupils’ chances of getting into university vary dramatically according to the school they attend and the local authority in which it is situated, irrespective of their individual educational attainment, according to a new report from Cardiff University’s Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD). A new report released today…

‘Wales’ poorest children struggle with language, report says’ – Wales Online

Professor Chris Taylor has advised the Read On.Get On. campaign, which is calling for the Welsh Government to increase investment in the early years workforce and support for parents in their child’s early years. The article can be accessed via the link below. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/children-living-poverty-twice-likely-10104399?service=responsive

Wales‘ poorest children already falling behind with language by the time they start school

Wales’s poorest children are starting primary school already struggling with language skills argues Ready to Read, a new report out today (22 September 2015). Professor Chris Taylor, Co-Director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research Data (WISERD), at Cardiff University, has advised the Read On.Get On. campaign, which is calling for the Welsh…