This report puts forward practical actions to address economic and social disparities across the United Kingdom (UK). It sets out the evidence of the impact universities are making across three main themes, outlines the potential to go further, and makes recommendations for how the government can work with universities to maximise their…

The concepts of decent work, inclusion and supporting individuals to find pathways to learning and work opportunities present new opportunities and real challenges. Job security, roles and labour markets are changing rapidly. We focus on how the UK careers support landscape in each of the four home nations is changing in response to the pandemic.…

Concerns over the supply of highly-skilled (HS) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) workers are well established and have been a feature of policy discourse in the UK for more than 50 years. Since the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, these concerns have been exacerbated by uncertainty about the movement of labour…

This paper simulates the likely fiscal and employment effects of a vast public annual investment programme of free universal high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in the UK. It examines the extent to which it would pay for itself fiscally for different scenarios of pay increases. Investing in high-quality universal ECEC…

In this chapter, I examine the problematic issue of identifying as a 'linguist' for graduates who have studied languages, in an employability context. I challenge them to reframe their identity as 'global graduates', with reference to the competencies outlined in the "Global Graduates into Global Leaders" report (NCUB, 2011). In the…

This article critically interrogates East Asian academics' positional identities in UK universities, internationalisation and diversification against the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework. Contemporary UK policy promoting racial equality and diversity is often over-generalised, while the critical race…

The impact of employment laws pertaining to individuals with learning disabilities in Canada and dyslexia in the UK were investigated via the extant research literature. Currently, there is very little research in this area despite Canada and the UK having laws in effect for decades. Surprisingly, their laws have been revamped despite an absence…

The United Kingdom's Coalition government has introduced an education policy that is focused on increasing the opportunities to promote and advance social mobility for all children within state education. Raising young people's aspirations through school-based initiatives is a prominent theme within recent policy texts, which are focused on…

This study explores UK students' motivation to study foreign languages, linking unrewarding past learning experiences with attrition rates and posing questions about the influence of official policy and socially structured conditions. 31 Further Education college students were given a questionnaire based on Gardner's (1975) Attitude/Motivation…

In recent years concerns about inequality have been growing in prominence within UK policy debates. The many causes of inequality of earnings and income are complex in their interactions and their tendency to reinforce one another. This makes inequality an intractable or "wicked" policy problem, particularly within a contemporary context…

As cities across the country and globe continue to generate new solutions to a wide variety of vexing problems, sharing information about what works and what doesn't has become more important than ever. Yet, outside of a few prominent policies, the vast majority of successful municipal experiments never reach a national audience or, for that…

The UK government's austerity cuts have negatively impacted many voluntary-sector interventions that provided support to refugees. One such intervention, the Refugee Integration and Employment Service (RIES), is discussed in this paper. The RIES was a UK Border Agency-funded integration programme for recognised refugees and operated through…

This article is a brief personal reflection on the state of research into the relation between education and social mobility. Quantitative methods are both essential and advancing in this field. Sociologists seek scientific solutions but achieve ethical neutrality only with difficulty because all are tempted to bias from social and political…

Professional training opportunities for students with physical and learning disabilities in the performing arts are conceived and developed in the context of government policy initiatives for inclusion and models of disability that aim to ensure that educational provision is of a kind which does not stigmatise individuals or devalue their…

The first decade of the current Labour Government had been characterised by a whole raft of education reforms aimed at driving up standards--a focus on early literacy and numeracy, standards funds to push up exam results, the much greater use of technology to track individual pupils' progress and to ensure a growing number achieved the benchmark…