Publications

This article examines student accounts of credentials, talent and academic success, against a backdrop of the enduring liberal ideal of an education-based meritocracy. The article also examines Bourdieu’s account of academic qualifications as the dominant source of institutionalised cultural capital, and concludes that it does not adequately account for comparative differences in the social structure…

Ipsos MORI and WISERD were commissioned by the Welsh Government in April 2013 to conduct a process and impact evaluation of the Pupil Deprivation Grant (PDG). The PDG was launched in 2012 and provides additional funding to schools based on the number of pupils on their roll eligible for Free School Meals (eFSM) or who…

Migration is a key feature of population change in Europe, shaping the continent’s economy, labour markets and demography. In 2013 there were 20 million non-EU nationals living in the European Union, representing around 4% of the total population, up from 3.4% in 2005 (OECD /EU 2015, p. 300). The EU’s core principle of free movement,…

This article explores the possible affect schooling has on pupils’ orientations to cultural and national identity in Wales. The Curriculum Cymreig is a distinctive feature of the national curriculum of Wales that has important ramifications regarding the enactment of citizenship education in Welsh schools. Under this initiative, schools in Wales are required to incorporate Welsh…

Participation in higher education (HE hereafter) has increased dramatically during the latter part of the 20th century. The latest HEFCE research indicates that since the late 1990s, the rate of HE participation among young people has increased from 30 to 38 per cent (HEFCE, 2013:2). However, while participation has increased, concerns regarding unequal access to…

This report presents the principal findings and policy implications of a research project carried out by researchers from the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW). The broad aims of the research…

WISERD, in partnership with the Research Institute for Applied Social Science (RIASS) and the Academy of Social Science, have today launched a new booklet showcasing the vast array of social science research taking place in Wales; titled ‘Making the Case for the Social Sciences 10 – Wales’. It includes a new study by Welsh researchers which…

In recent years there has been an increase in awareness of social justice, equality and rights issues among Chinese citizens including university teachers (Li, 2011). The higher education (HE) sector is an important example of this because of its potential for developing and disseminating new ideas about a just society, and in influencing policy-makers. An…

It is clear that graduates from Chinese higher education, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, expect to find employment which provides a return on the investment they and their families have made in their formal education and training. They aspire also to employment appropriate to the level of education they have achieved and which…

In place of a distributive justice perspective which focuses simply on equal access to universities, this book presents a broader understanding of the relationship between Chinese higher education and economic and social change. The necessity for research on the place of universities in contemporary Chinese society may be seen from current debates about and policy…