Simon Marginson. 

At first, after the June referendum, it was unclear what ‘Brexit’ meant, but the post-Brexit landscape is now emerging. Theresa May will table the complex bill to leave the EU in the House of Commons in March 2017, but the two most important decisions have already been made. First, the Government will give priority to ending free people movement from Europe. Second, as confirmed by Home Secretary Amber Rudd this week, total net migration will fall. The referendum was decided because people opposed migration and it seems that for the Prime Minister both measures have become politically essential.

These decisions are truly momentous as they trigger both a harder Brexit and a tough medium term prospect for higher education and research. In the universities, where relations with Europe have been unambiguously positive and productive, the (more…)

Laurenz Langer, Jan Tripney, David Gough.
The use of research evidence to inform decision-making can make policies and practices more effective and relevant. From the US federal regulation on blood alcohol limits, to the design and funding of microfinance programmes in low- and middle-income countries, and the establishment of behavioral science units in public administrations (such as the UK’s ‘Nudge Unit’), research evidence has informed and continues to inform decision-making.
In England, evidence on best practice in health is harnessed by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and is used in every hospital and GP surgery, and in education, the Education Endowment Foundation provides an evidence-based toolkit used by teachers and leaders.
At a time of intense public debate and polarised political environments, it is particularly important to raise the profile of the use of research evidence in public life. This makes next week’s What Works Global Summit in Bloomsbury (September 26-28) so timely. Presenters will share (more…)

 
The Nuffield Research Placement programme allows 1,000 students in the first year of post-16 education who want to go on to study Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths at university to gain some work experience in their field of interest. It’s (usually) done during the summer for around four weeks. Students who don’t have a family history of going to university or who attend schools in less well-off areas are encouraged to apply.
For the past three years, the IOE’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies has provided work placements to five Nuffield students. Over the course of their placements, the (more…)

Alison Park. 
Government departments and agencies build up routine information about all of us as part of their everyday activities. Who should have access to these data?
Were it not for Brexit, it’s likely that the last few weeks would have seen far more discussion about this topic. On 5 July the Cabinet Office published the response to its consultation on the ‘Better Use of Data in Government’. The document’s proposals  form the basis of a new Digital Economy Bill, which includes legislation to help researchers access data. The next day Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care, published her review of data security standards and proposed a new consent model for data sharing in the NHS and social care.
Researchers are interested in this so called ‘administrative data’ because its volume and detail can vastly exceed what it’s possible to collect through other routes such as surveys. As a result, bodies like the Economic and Social Research Council have set up special (more…)

Sally Perry
‘All reading can be done on iPads’
At the ATL teachers’  union conference earlier this month the third motion on the final day called for an end to cuts and closures in school libraries. The motion was supported by a survey of 485 schools, and evidence of both good and bad developments in library provision – though more bad than good – was presented.
While all the implied reasons for the cuts could be challenged – they generally concerned priorities in space and funding – one justification, quoted in the press release and picked up by the media, stood out: ‘The new head has decided a library is no longer needed so is planning to get rid of it as all reading can be done on iPads’.
With World Book Night being celebrated on Saturday 23 April (also the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death), this is perhaps a good moment to reflect on what we know about the reading habits of the younger generations. However, before considering the claim that (more…)

Chris Brown. 
Last week, delegates to the American Educational Research Association held its enormous annual conference in Washington DC. Engaging with research and evidence as part of effective professional teacher development is an obvious topic for such a gathering of teachers, academics, school leaders and students. It has benefits for teacher practice and pupil outcomes. At the same time school leaders often require help with understanding how to harness these benefits. As I note in Leading the Use of Research and Evidence in Schools, however, school leaders can support evidence-informed practice by addressing the five key checklist items set out below.
CHECKLIST ITEM 1: does your approach to research and evidence use demonstrate your own commitment as well as facilitate the efforts of others?
School leadership must actively and demonstrably buy-in to research and evidence use for it to become part of a school’s ‘way of life’. This means that school leaders must not only promote the vision for and develop the culture of a research engaged school, they must (more…)

Gwyneth Hughes. 
Nobody would dispute that teachers should have a high level of literacy and be able to read and write well. But what about ‘assessment literacy’?
It is well known that assessment is a tricky business. But being able to mark students’ work fairly and accurately – in other words knowing the rules – is not enough; assessors must also ensure that students learn from assessment. Being able to give students helpful feedback and making sure that they make good use of it is as essential to assessment literacy (or assessment know-how) as spelling and grammar are to writing.
Research at the UCL Institute of Education in the Assessment Careers project showed, surprisingly, that even experienced postgraduate students merely read their feedback and (more…)

Peter Scott.
There are growing worries in universities that restrictions on the use of public money to lobby the government, initially focused on charities, may have a chilling effect on the independence of publicly funded research. Whether this is ministers’ intention is an open question.
In mid-February, the government announced that a new clause will be inserted into new and renewed grant agreements from May 1, forbidding recipients from “using taxpayer funds to lobby government and parliament”. As well as covering grants to charities to carry out services, this also covers those “funding research and development”.
Pessimists, and conspiracy theorists, discern a pattern of the government displaying alarming authoritarian instincts. Ministers do not seem to recognise the need for (more…)

Geoff Whitty. 
In 2005 it was my turn to deliver the British Educational Research Association (BERA) presidential address, typically a ‘state of the nation’ review for education research. I considered many topics, but an overwhelming issue for the education research community at the time was the ‘what works’ agenda and its implications for the kinds of research that would continue to command funding. After consultation with colleagues, that is what I chose to focus on. Our concern was that this agenda would narrow the discipline of education, on a false prospectus of determining policy. Actually, in our political system research evidence is just one factor among many in policy decisions – and often a relatively insignificant one at that.
At the time, the address received a mixed reception: many welcomed my defence of the breadth of our discipline, but some colleagues working in the ‘what works’ mould rejected what they saw as its premise that researchers and policymakers were necessarily on ‘different sides’. But that reading was not my intention. I simply wanted to highlight the
messy and often indirect relationship between research and policy and the way in which all kinds of research could usefully input to public and policy debate about our education system – and the need for this to be reflected in research funding policy.
Ten years on, my IOE colleague Emma Wisby and I have revisited the BERA address as part of my new publication, Research and Policy in Education: Evidence, ideology and impact. In (more…)

Peter Blatchford. 
Here we go again. The arguments over class size are with us once more. Now there are worries about ‘supersized classes’ for young children in school, the result of pressure on school places and the current fragmented state of local educational planning.
Large classes are a recurring worry, especially when experienced by the youngest children in school.  Worries about this problem led the last Labour Government to introduce a legal cap of 30 on class sizes in England. Last year there was a debate in Parliament about perceived breaches of this rule by the then coalition Government, and now the problem is receiving coverage again. The concern is that the 30 maximum protection is being relaxed and this will have a negative impact on children’s education.
The educational issue here is whether there is a threshold beyond which class sizes (more…)