News and Blog

WalesOnline, 7th June 2020 Read the full article. Professor Chris Taylor is quoted in the article: “Much of the research on transitions says that it is the familiarisation with high school that is important – knowing where to go, who the teachers are, how work is organised, how much homework there will be, will they get…

Wales is in the process of undertaking a major overhaul of its national curriculum. Until recently, the curriculum largely resembled that put in place by the 1988 Education Reform Act. The new Curriculum for Wales, based on the Successful futures for all review by Graham Donaldson (2015), entails a radical move away from the traditional…

WISERD Director, Professor Sally Power, has won the Learned Society of Wales’ Hugh Owen Medal 2020 for her outstanding educational research. Professor Power is a leading education researcher, with a broad focus on policy and inequality. She plays a significant role in supporting education research throughout Wales. The WISERD Education Multi-Cohort Study (WMCS), directed by…

GCSE exams were due to take place over the next few weeks in Wales, but have been cancelled due to COVID-19. In the second of our blogs about the impact of the pandemic on young people’s education I look at the replacement of formal examinations with teacher assessments. As qualifications bodies will be relying more…

Those of us in WISERD engaged in education research have real worries about the impact of the Coronavirus on the welfare and progress of children and young people. Some are rightly concerned about the impact on young people’s physical and mental health. But here we want to concentrate on the potential effect of the response…

The team of researchers leading WISERD’s foundational economy work has contributed to a COVID-19 report, which makes a case for renewal of the foundational economy, after the immediate public health crisis is over. The crisis demonstrates the importance of the foundational economy, that part of the economy which produces essential goods and services consumed by…

The COVID-19 virus is changing the way we live our lives, and our society and economy is having to adapt. From the closure of schools and the changes to assessment to the role of civil society and the effects on workers, our research can help to make sense of some of these changes. In the…

Our recent event, Growing up in Wales: school students’ perspectives and experiences, explored the latest findings to come out of the WISERD Education Multi Cohort Study (WMCS) survey data.  Over the past seven years, the WMCS has made an important contribution to understanding the lives of young people in Wales, by conducting an annual survey…

This week, Dr Nigel Newton presented findings from our ‘Successful Futures for All’ project to members of the Children, Young People and Education Committee of the National Assembly for Wales. The project explores the way the new curriculum is being developed in Pioneer Schools and the potential impact on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Curriculum for…

Efforts to promote minority languages among children and young people would benefit from improving the way projects are evaluated, and from adequate funding. These are among the key findings of research into minority language promotion activities in the Celtic nations. Academics at Aberystwyth and Edinburgh Universities conducted research into the activities of organisations in Scotland,…