This report considers the extent to which differences in parental characteristics explain gaps in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children at older ages. It documents and explores the differences between children born to cohabiting and married couples for a range of other...

The Effective Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) project is the first large-scale British study on the effects of different pre-school experiences on children's outcomes. It enables researchers to look at the impact of both pre-school education and pre-school quality not only on...

Why do the children of wealthy parents accumulate more wealth than children from poorer backgrounds? Does parental wealth have a role in determining young people's earnings, saving choices, returns to wealth and access to homeownership? How much wealth do parents give directly to their children?...

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a monumental blow to the education of English school children. Over the past 18 months, English school pupils experienced two long periods of nationwide school closures. The first round of universal school closures lasted 10 weeks (from 23 March to 1 June 2020);...

Education spending is the second-largest area of public service spending in the UK, representing about 4.5% of national income in 2015-16. Government spending on education grew by around 1.7% per year in real terms over the 1980s and 1990s, before increasing sharply over the 2000s by more than...

With the COVID-19 lockdowns and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the importance of the early years system for children and their parents has been made particularly obvious over the last few years. In this report, we analyse how public spending on early childhood education and care has changed...