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...

In this report, we analyse the current state of the education system in England and set out the key challenges that the next government will inherit. This is not just a tale of despair. Compared with many other developed countries, England's education system does well in terms of student...