Beginning in the mid-1980s, European governments have increasingly implemented performance-based funding systems for higher education. While a focus on the transnational pressures that contributed to the widespread adoption of performance-based funding in Europe accounts for the impetus for performance-based funding policies, it fails to address…

In this HEPI Report, Nick Petford, Robert Griggs and Terry Neville explore the rationale and development of the University of Northampton's Waterside Campus, one of the UK's most ambitious university relocation projects. They conclude with a series of lessons learned.

In this reflective piece, representatives of the agencies that funded and managed the Early Learning Systems Research program -- the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the World Bank -- take stock of recent global developments in research, policy, and financing by donors for early childhood education (ECE). A rapid increase…

Over the last 20 years, the UK Higher Education sector has experienced a significant change to its funding base with a shift away from government funding, to operating within a highly competitive marketised environment. This shift has impacted the governance and management structures within the sector, with universities encouraged to adopt a more…

This dissertation utilizes performance-based funding for higher education in Europe as the mechanism through which to interrogate broader relationships between universities and their external resource environments. Structured as three distinct journal-length articles, I first explore the emergence of performance-based funding systems for higher…

Motivated by empirical reality of differences in the scope and meaning of school choice and private schooling this article focuses on the public demand for increasing diversity of educational options In Europe and the division of public and private provision in it. We aim to test self-interest and ideology-driven logics of education policy…

A detailed analysis of "Hansard" transcripts was undertaken to explore the dialogue used in parliamentary debates and committee meetings where reference was made to grammar schools between October 2015 to March 2019. During this period, the first new grammar school for fifty years had been approved, along with the establishment of the…

Cuts to education may be regarded as counter-productive at times of upheaval, but it has been reported Ministers want to make savings on higher education in England at the next spending review. Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has therefore published some new modelling commissioned from London Economics on various possible changes to…

This paper reviews evidence on two serious imbalances in the UK education and training system: The heavy bias in public spending on initial education and training (for 18-24-year olds) towards higher education at the expense of further education and vocational education and training. The very weak government support for continuing education and…

Freed of the shackles of the EU, Brexit offers a valuable window of opportunity for the United Kingdom, America's closest friend and ally, to reassess and rethink existing policy in a whole range of areas, from defense and foreign policy to immigration and cybersecurity. Brexit offers tremendous opportunities for innovation not only in the…

Higher education in England has expanded in most years since the Second World War, moving from an elite system to a mass one where half of school leavers now progress to university. A lasting funding settlement, however, has proved elusive as the generosity of the post-war decades became unviable as the sector expanded. Eventually this led to the…

The General Election of December 2019 ended the political gridlock of the previous three years. The question of whether we remained in or left the European Union was definitively settled, and not in the way universities had hoped. In this report, the authors call for fundamental change. Now, they argue, is the time for universities to become a…

Due to the historically outsized influence of the United Kingdom's development assistance office on international aid, a better understanding of the underlying ideologies and political priorities guiding this agency would help the larger aid community more clearly understand the power dynamics and structural context of the development industry.…

The diverse arena of International Schooling concerned with schools delivering a non-local curriculum in English largely outside an English-speaking nation, has grown enormously during the current wave of globalisation. Traditionally, the arena of "International Schools" played an intended ideological and pragmatic role, albeit in a…

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these…