In January 2025, 22 percent of people in the UK thought that the Labour Party would be the best at handling education, compared with 15 percent who believed that the Conservatives would be the best, and ten percent who thought the Liberal Democrats would handle the issue best.

Transcripts of interviews with UK policy advisors on Hong Kong education policy.

Recently England has engaged heavily in external policy referencing to drive its educational reforms. Hong Kong has been a major source of such referencing by virtue of its strong performance on international tests of pupil achievement. Using Hong Kong as a case study; the project will analyse external policy referencing, with England as the ‘borrower’ and Hong Kong the ‘lender’. The aim is to cast a light on the role of external policy referencing in the policy making process, and how policy referencing is operationalised in the England context. The study provides an insight into the contemporary patterns of external policy referencing, and its manifestation in the West and East Asia, and examines the evidence used to inform the process. The study will undertake a literature review and interviews with stakeholders in both contexts to address the following research questions: (1) What have been the critical features of the patterns of external policy referencing in England since the 1990s? (2) How have policy makers in England interpreted the sources of success of Hong Kong’s education system, and how does this compare with the views of key stakeholders in Hong Kong?

In 2007 the Principal Investigator returned to London after working for 31 years in Faculties / Institutes of Education in Hong Kong and specialising in East Asian education systems. As political parties in England competed to promote their vision of schooling, he was constantly bemused as to the extent to which their plans for reform were based on the claim that what they were proposing was a feature of one or all of the high performing East Asian societies that do well on international tests of pupil achievement e.g. the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The 2010 Schools White Paper in England and the ongoing review of the National Curriculum extensively cite practices in Hong Kong to support their policies. Also, agencies now bidding to get contracts to examine the New Baccalaureate have to demonstrate that they will follow the best practices of high performing nations. Some of these claims seem far removed from the reality that the Principal Investigator had experienced both as an academic, and as someone heavily engaged in policy making in Hong Kong. What is more worrying is that these claims are largely unchallenged in England. The claims are accepted partly because people generally have limited knowledge of foreign education systems, and comparative educators have tended to avoid engagement in the public debates relating to ongoing policy making about how schools should be reformed. The purpose of this study is to help address that situation. We plan to focus on how policy makers in England portray features of Hong Kong's education system to promote domestic reforms. We examine the nature of these features in Hong Kong by finding out what the relevant laws or rules are, and by interviewing people who are directly involved with these education features. This will allow us to find out the extent to which the claims made in England are valid and accurate. It will also allow us to contribute to the ongoing debates in comparative education as to the influence of global and local factors on education reform.

This statistic shows the most suitable political parties for dealing with issues concerning education and school policies in the United Kingdom, according to an opinion poll among adults in Great Britain in June 2017, broken down by gender. Of male respondents, 36 percent reported they believed the Labour Party to be the most able at improving the educational sector, with an equal share of female respondents believing in the Labour Party's ability. 28 percent of male respondents were sure the Conservative Party would be best at dealing with issues facing schools and the educational system, while 28 percent of female respondents were unsure which party they could put their trust in.

This study forms part of the teams Reform Area B workstream that focusses on decentralisation and district innovations through four specially selected innovative districts that will be used as "learning laboratories" to generate findings. In each district, the team studies a particular system innovation and its impact on learning outcomes. Some of these innovations are co-designed with the district government.

The folder contains datasets of teacher surveys, including teachers of primary school grade 3 and grade 4, and teachers of lower secondary school grade 9. The data was collected in Vietnam in 2020.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

• 2004: key challenges and teachers’ aspirations for the future
• 2005: continuing professional development, personalised learning, assessment and developments in education
• 2006: teaching and learning, continuing professional development, equality, assessment and developments in their own careers and in education more widely
• 2007: pupil achievement, continuing professional development, career plans, and awareness of and training on equalities
• 2009: teacher accountability and its purposes, and also how teachers maintain and improve their professional knowledge and practice through CPD; and
• 2010: what teachers do to inform and improve their practice

The COVID-19 pandemic brought many disruptions to children’s education, including the education of children with intellectual (learning) disability and/or autism. We investigated the educational experiences of autistic children and children with an intellectual disability about a year after the COVID-19 pandemic started in the UK.

An online survey collected data during the summer/autumn of 2021 from 1,234 parents of 5 to 15 year-old children across all 4 UK countries. The study investigated school attendance and home learning experiences of children with intellectual disability and/or autistic children who were registered to attend school in 2021. The study also investigated the experience of Elective Home Education in families of children with a neurodevelopmental condition whose child was de-registered from school before and after the pandemic started in the UK in March 2020.

The study provided evidence on the impact of COVID-19 on school attendance and home education for children with a neurodevelopmental condition.

Education changed dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools closed in 2019/20. There was compulsory return to school in September 2020 with measures in place to control infection and new regulations about COVID-19-related absences. School attendance in the first term of 2020-21 was lower compared to other years. Many children were de-registered from school. In early 2020-21, there was a second prolonged period of national school closures. The pandemic has caused many disruptions to children's education.

Children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs), in particular intellectual disability and autism, are the most vulnerable of vulnerable groups. Among children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), children with intellectual disability and/or autism consistently struggle to meet the required standards in education. Our study will focus on these two groups of children.

Before the pandemic, many children with NDCs missed school. Then the pandemic disrupted everyone's education. Approximately one year after the pandemic started, we will investigate the educational experiences of children with NDCs.

Our project will investigate: - School absence and reasons for absence among children with intellectual disability and/or autism - Child, family, and school factors associated with school absence - Barriers and facilitators of school attendance - Parents' experiences of home schooling

An online survey will collect data from approximately 1,500 parents of 5 to 17 year-old children with NDCs across all 4 UK countries. We will recruit parents of: (i) children registered with a school in spring/summer 2021; (ii) children not registered with a school in spring/summer 2021 but who were registered with a school at the start of the pandemic in March 2020; and (iii) children not registered with a school on either date. We will collect data on school attendance for those registered with a school, and data on home learning experiences for those not registered with a school. For all children, we will collect data on their mental health.

The first analysis will investigate school absence with a focus on children registered with a school. We will summarise school absence data as well as reasons for absence as reported by the parents. The second analysis will investigate school attendance: attending school or home schooling. We will describe the children currently registered to attend school (group 1), those not currently registered who were registered in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic (group 2), and those not registered on either point (group 3). We will summarise the reasons parents give for de-registering their child from school. Our final analysis will focus on home learning support during home schooling. We will describe the types of support schools offer to school-registered students during remote learning (when students are self-isolating/shielding, or schools are closed because of lockdown). We will describe the home learning experiences of school de-registered children and parents' satisfaction with these arrangements.

We will work closely with parents of children with NDCs, seeking their advice on the study. Our team includes the Council for Disabled Children, the largest umbrella organization in the UK bringing together many charities supporting disabled children and their families. We will share the study findings widely, including key messages for policies related to the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Policymakers in low- and middle-income countries who are working to improve student learning often find themselves flying blind. They see the budget that goes into education and (sometimes) the learning that students come out with, but they lack information on the crucial factors in between—the practices, policies, and politics—that drive those learning outcomes. The Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) shines a light on those hidden drivers.

Many countries, despite having significantly increased access to education for their children and youth, now realize that they are facing a learning crisis (World Development Report 2018). In low- and middle-income countries, despite near universal enrollment in primary school, 53 percent of children cannot read and understand a simple story by late primary age (World Bank 2019). This statistic underlines the reality that schooling is not the same as learning—even though education policy often assumes that it is (Pritchett 2013). It shows just how far off track the world is from the aspiration embodied in Sustainable Development Goal 4, of providing at least quality secondary education to all children.

The World Development Report 2018 argued that the learning crisis has multiple causes: poor service delivery in schools and communities, unhealthy politics and low bureaucratic capacity, and policies that are not aligned toward learning for all. To tackle the crisis and improve learning for all children, countries need to know where they stand on these three key dimensions: practices (or service delivery), policies, and politics. But providing such a systemwide overview requires better measurement. Many of these drivers of learning are not captured by existing administrative systems. And although new measurement tools capture some of those aspects well, no single instrument pulls together data on all these areas. This gap leaves policymakers in the dark about what is working and what isn’t.

To fill this gap, the World Bank, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK’s Department for International Development, and the Government of Japan, has launched a Global Education Policy Dashboard, which measures the drivers of learning outcomes in basic education around the world. In doing so, it highlights gaps between current practice and what the evidence suggests would be most effective in promoting learning, and it gives governments a way to set priorities and track progress as they work to close those gaps.

This study forms part of the teams Reform Area B workstream that focusses on decentralisation and district innovations through four specially selected innovative districts that will be used as "learning laboratories" to generate findings. In each district, the team studies a particular system innovation and its impact on learning outcomes. Some of these innovations are co-designed with the district government.

Further information about the study may be found on the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) webpage.

Further information about the study may be found on the COSMO website.

This dataset compares existing research data policies at UK higher education institutions. It consists of 83 cases. Polices were compared on a range of variables. Variables included policy length in words, whether the policy offers definitions, length of their definition of "data", defines institutional support, requires data management plans, states scope of staff and student coverage, specifies ownership of research outputs, details where external funder rights take precedent, guides on what data and documentation is required to be retained, how long it needs to be retained, reinforces where research ethics prevent open data, finalises where data can be accessed, speaks about open data requirements, includes a statement on funding the costs of Research Data Management, and specifies a review period for the policy. Data also includes the institution's year of foundation and a categorical variable grouping institutions by year of foundation allowing comparison across cohort groups of universities. A further two variables allow for identification of research based universities. Data on total research funding and research council for the year 2014/2015 was added, along with the number of research staff eligible for the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). Also included is the institution's Grade Point Average based on its REF score using a Times Higher Education (THES) calculated score.

Selection of national and international time series from different scientific publications and official statistics.

There were 487,344 penalty notices issued to parents for unauthorized school absence in England during the 2023/24 academic year, the highest during this time period. The vast majority of these fines were related to unauthorized family holiday absence, with just over 44,000 for arriving late or other reasons.

Vocational education-Government policy-Great Britain is a book subject. It includes 8 books, written by 8 different authors.

19 interview transcripts (verbatim) from UK education staff in various regions, settings and roles (leadership, teachers and teaching assistants) including those working from home or in school during the early lockdown period.

The interview schedule aimed to address the following research questions: 1) What changes have school staff experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in their own lives, in the school climate or their professional role? 2) What has the impact of these changes been on school staff mental health and wellbeing? 3) What factors do school staff perceive to have sustained or improved wellbeing during the pandemic?

Therefore data consists of participant responses to these questions.

Original Project details (please read on for Covid-19 related adjustments): The integration of health and education policy and practice, with a specific focus on the role of schools in mental health education and preventative intervention, is of major topical concern. There is strong support in the existing literature on the importance of taking a whole systems approach to supporting young peoples' mental health through schools. However, there is a need to further understand the complexity of this process, including the potential impact on school climate, as well as staff and pupil outcomes.

In 2015, I began my PhD research study in order to investigate this research gap, focusing on an example of whole-system (WS) mental health intervention across a county in the North of England. The initiative was commissioned by Public Health England and developed in partnership between local authority services and schools. Eighteen schools participated in the resulting locally facilitated WS implementation, which was based on the Academic Resilience Approach (ARA, Hart; Williams, 2018), developed by Professor Angie Hart and other colleagues at the UoB and partner organisations. The ARA aims to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable pupils by building resilience across the school community, taking a whole systems perspective.

A fully integrated and embedded mixed method design was utilised. This enabled me to research the experiences of multi-professional staff from schools and local authority services, exploring the perceived impact of the intervention at multiple system levels and considering the potential sustainability of this project in the future. Results of the study showed that there was a significant improvement in staff perceptions of school climate as a result of school engagement in the ARA. In addition, both school and local authority staff reported improved communication, a greater sense of shared values, and increased participative decision making. Existing research suggests that these changes establish the foundation to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged pupils, although further research is required in order to understand the mechanisms that result in impact for YP.

This fellowship provides the opportunity to maximise the impact of these important PhD findings, through disseminating the results of the study with key stakeholders in four local areas in the UK that are engaging in WS approaches to health promotion in schools. These findings will be beneficial to both practitioners (e.g. school staff) and policy makers (e.g. Local Authorities) because they will help to understand the potential school wide outcomes and optimal conditions associated with WS approaches. My results also help staff in local areas to identify 'school readiness' to engage in this type of approach and help to prepare and support school staff, making it more likely the approach will have a positive impact for pupils. Building on established networks in these four local areas, learning can be shared between different regions. During the fellowship, further research will also be carried out in order to explore pupil experiences of WS approaches, extending the findings from my PhD. Learning from my PhD will be distributed via multiple and diverse platforms including on online blogs, at national conferences, and through paper publications in internationally recognised journals. This fellowship is also ideally suited to develop my own research skills and networks, and to enable me to contribute to the urgent priority of developing dynamic and collaborative approaches to multi-sector promotion of public health and other social policy priorities.

Covid-19 Impact and changes:

Due to Covid-19 the original research proposed for this grant (workshops with young people in schools to explore whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing) was not possible. Therefore a new application for ethics was made for a new research project which explored school staff mental health and wellbeing during the first national lockdown and partial school closure, and this research, having gained ethical approval, was carried out online in June 2020 towards the end of the grant period. Data in this collection relates to that...

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This data collection includes interviews that were carried out with senior leaders, governors and parents as part of an in-depth, multi-sited, case study investigation of school governance in England. Interviews were carried out over a period of 18 months between January 2013 and May 2014. Interviews were conducted across nine schools including two free schools, three converter and sponsor academies, one foundation school and three local authority maintained schools.

Since 2010 there has been a rapid expansion of academies and free schools in England together with the ‘hollowing out’ of local government. During this time new regulations have been introduced to specify the role and responsibilities of school governors which include holding senior leaders to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. Against the background of these trends this study

• Describes the ways in which senior leaders and school governors understand and perform governance at this time, and the different forms of knowledge, skills and (claims to) expertise that shape dominant understandings and practices of governance; • Explores how different governance setups impact the role and responsibilities of school governors, and the extent to which power over decision making is practised differently within these governance models; and • Captures the relations of accountability that exist between school governors and different organizations and actors, and explore the different mechanisms by which different accountabilities are enhanced.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The list of UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) submitted to RAE2008 in SUbject category "Physics": names , Scopus search phrase, #of publications and total # o f citations in March 2020+Raw files exported from Scopus: publication data extracted in March 2020 for each HEI