Research projects

The aim of the project was to provide an analysis of the current state of education in Wales, based upon a critical review of the available evidence. This analysis provided the basis for the development of a future programme of educational research. More specifically, the objectives were: To construct a robust ‘political arithmetic’ of the performance…

Overview The Pupil Deprivation Grant was introduced in 2012-13 and provides schools with additional resource to raise levels of achievement of a particular group of economically disadvantaged learners. This two-year evaluation looked at how schools have used this new grant and what impact this additional resource has had on these children and young people. In…

QUANT@C is an innovative group within the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. The aim of the group is to research and develop new pedagogic strategies for student engagement with quantitative methods in the social sciences. The ESRC Research Development Initiative (RDI) project aimed to train quantitative social science teachers, increasing the number of…

Overview The Assisted Places Scheme was introduced in 1980 by the Conservative Government in order to provide a ‘ladder of opportunity’ for academically able students from poor homes. Over the next 17 years, more than 75,000 pupils received means-tested assistance from public funds to attend the most selective and prestigious private schools in England and…

The overall aim of the proposed research was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the secondary analysis of administrative data-sets to delineate patterns of participation in higher education (HE) and, thereby, to contribute to the development of policy and professional practice in widening access in Wales (and more widely). The project was based upon a collaboration between the…

Overview: This was an evaluation of Pori Drwy Stori, a bilingual reading intervention designed to raise educational outcomes for young children by increasing the quality and quantity of adult-child interactions around reading in the home learning environment (HLE). This evaluation hoped to explore how the Pori Drwy Stori resources and support materials are adopted by parents and…

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Overview WISERD Education has the potential to change the landscape of education research in Wales and will put Wales at the forefront of research capacity building developments in the UK and beyond. The main aims of the Programme are: to enhance the capacity to carry out high quality educational research within the higher education sector in Wales;…

Overview Professor Chris Taylor was awarded an ESRC Mid-Career Development Fellowship to carry out an analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The Economic and Social Research Centre (ESRC) awards only 10 to 15 Mid-Career Development Fellowships each year. They are intended to enable outstanding researchers to develop their careers by taking their research in a new…

WISERD undertook an independent evaluation of the Foundation Phase early years education policy for the Welsh Government. The Foundation Phase (FP) is an early intervention approach to learning for all children aged three to seven years in Wales. It is based on principles of experiential learning – or ‘learning through doing’ – and marks a radical…

Overview The existence of a ‘brain drain’ of graduate labour from Wales has long been a focus of debate (for example, Drinkwater and Blackaby, 2004, c.f. Fevre, 2004). Welsh and English higher education and labour markets are interconnected (for example, Rees and Taylor, 2006) and Wales is a ‘loser’ region generating more undergraduates than it…

Overview This study, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation (£295,915) examined the extent to which an ICT intervention to enhance sustained shared thinking impacted on young children’s cognitive and linguistic outcomes. The project aimed to maximise the benefits of children’s early use of ICT whilst minimising the potential problems that may result from their use….

Overview This project focused on increasing the engagement between local authorities and the higher education research community in Wales by reviewing current local authority education research capacity and activity in Wales and identifying factors that had an impact on activities, examining existing datasets, and identifying good practice in relation to collaborative research activities.

Project Lead: Robert French The purpose of this project is to explore patterns and trends in education in Wales and to inform policy making within Welsh Government. The project will bring together national datasets on education from primary school to university. The aim is to explore issues around school-level attainment, school improvement, progression to higher education,…

Project Lead: Alexandra Sandu Project Overview : The project explores the relationship between household and family characteristics, socioeconomic factors, and educational outcomes in Wales. By linking census and education data and using advanced geospatial techniques like Geographically Weighted Regression, the research seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of how various factors relate to and interact…

Project Lead: Jennifer Keating The broad aim of this project is to investigate education outcomes for children with additional learning needs (ALN). In particular, I am interested in whether the timing of receiving ALN support has an impact on children’s attendance, exclusions, and attainment. Previous research has shown that children with ALN are more likely…