In the last few months, there has been a series of strikes by teachers in further education colleges across England over pay and conditions, and more strikes look set to impact the post-16 education sector this year. With inflation at around 10%, college teachers have experienced large...

Five years ago, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson made "levelling up" a central plank of the Conservative Party's bid for re-election, with a manifesto pledge to "level up every part of the UK". In 2022, the government published a thorough and ambitious White Paper setting out 12 levelling up...

The introduction of universal credit (UC) has been the most significant reform to the workingage benefits system since the reforms following the post-war Beveridge Report. When fully rolled out, around 8 million families - 29% of all working-age families - will be entitled to the benefit. UC is...

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of children's lives, with impacts on their social and emotional development as well as their educational attainment. School closures increased social and emotional difficulties (Blanden et al., 2021); lack of contact with friends and extended family...