Publications

Good quality and extensive training opportunities are essential for increasing the skills of the workforce. This report tracks what has been happening in Britain’s workplaces in recent years.

Employees’ ability to influence decisions at work is one of the most important factors affecting their motivation and psychological well-being, and is also associated with good physical health. This report examines the trends in different types of employee control in British workplaces, and presents a mixed picture.

The evaluation uses a mixed methods design, incorporating a quantitative element based on existing large-scale datasets. The evaluation reports two key, but interrelated, findings. The first is that there is strong evidence to suggest that the WBQ is enormously valuable in helping students to enter higher education. This benefit would appear to be largely due…

The Foundation Phase is a Welsh Government flagship policy of early years education (for 3 to 7-year old children) in Wales. Marking a radical departure from the more formal, competency-based approach associated with the previous Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, it advocates a developmental, experiential, play-based approach to teaching and learning The Learning Country: a…

The aim of the 2011 ESF Leavers Survey is to assist in assessing the effectiveness of labour market interventions delivered under ESF. Telephone interviews were conducted with over six thousand people who had left an ESF project delivered under Priorities 2 and 3 of the Convergence Programme and Priorities 1 and 2 of the Competitiveness…

If the race is already halfway run even before children begin school,then we clearly need to examine what happens in the earliest years (Esping-Anderson 2004).

The importance of the early years is well understood within the Welsh Government. Since 2003 work has been underway to develop effective interventions in this area, such as the Flying Start programme. However, the question of what works best and is most effective remains important. Events such as this that bring colleagues from the policy,…

This document updates and extend our previous analysis on the public-private sector wage differential using six new quarters of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data. The data are split into two sub-samples – 2009Q1-2010Q4 and 2011Q-2012Q3. The results presented are based on a linear regression of log-hourly earnings against independent variables. The measure of pay we…

Access to higher education (HE) has become an extremely controversial area of policy, as successive UK administrations have sought to balance increasing student fees with ensuring that HE is open to individuals from as wide a range of social backgrounds as possible. There have also been numerous initiatives that have sought to increase participation by…

Work is an important feature of the modern Welsh economy. A lot is known about pay, but less is known about other features of work such as what skills do jobs require, how relevant are qualifications for work, and how does training and learning compare with other parts of Britain. This report provides some answers.