Publications

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range…

In this report we outline the progress of the evaluation during the past year (August 2012 to July 2013). We also provide details about Stage II of the evaluation design, which has largely involved the collection of detailed information about the implementation of the Foundation Phase in forty-one schools and ten funded non-maintained settings from…

In 1997 John Martinussen’s “Society, State and Market: A guide to competing theories of development” was published in English. It was an important book, a model of its kind, written with lucidity and simplicity, and considered the most comprehensive account of international development then in print. As reviewers observed, its contribution was to discuss development…

In recent years, widening participation in higher education in Wales has been a key policy drive of the Welsh Government. Central to meeting its widening access agenda has been the adoption of area based strategies to widening access to higher education(HE) in Wales. This has been manifest in the targeting of residents of Communities First…

The current state of Welsh education has become a matter of widespread concern in recent years. Certainly, many of those outside Wales have formed a view of Welsh education that is extremely unfavourable. For example, following a series of well-publicised clashes between representatives of the two governments, the UK Government has made clear its belief…

The quantitative strand of the project will use a linked database of school and student records that has already been prepared by the Welsh Government. This database (subsequently referred to as the Widening Access Database) is based upon four linked administrative data-sets: the National Pupil Database (NPD) for Wales (including Pupil Level Annual Schools Census…

Despite major expansion of higher education (HE) in the UK over recent decades individuals from the least socially advantaged backgrounds continue to enter HE at lower rates than their more advantaged counterparts (Christie et al, 2005; Croll and Attwood 2013), and when they do, they enter less prestigious HEIs (Ball et al 2002, Reay et…

Widening participation in higher education has been a central pillar of UK Government’s higher education policy since the 1990s. In Wales, the centrality of the ‘widening access’ agenda within its strategy for higher education has resulted in pressure on HEIs to expand access to HE opportunities to those traditionally under-represented in it. With the aim…

Widening access to higher education has been a central theme within the Welsh Government’s strategy for higher education in recent years. This widening access agenda is predicated on the basis that particular social groups (namely, those from particular social, ethnic or geographical backgrounds) are under-represented in HE. Widening access to HE opportunities to these groups…