Research

Jake’s research focuses on better understanding the causes and consequences of educational inequalities, evaluating policies and programmes aiming to reduce these inequalities, and how best to do this evaluation. His work has been supported by grants from UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation, the Education Endowment Foundation and the European Commission’s Horizon Europe. There’s more information on a selection of these projects below.

COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities (COSMO) study

COSMO is a longitudinal cohort study seeking to generate high-quality evidence to answer the central research question of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected socio-economic inequalities in life chances, in terms of short-term effects on educational attainment and well-being, and long-term educational and career outcomes. It will study a representative sample of young people in Year 11 across England, and follow them as they progress through their education. Existing studies have looked cross-sectionally at pupils in school at a variety of ages, however this study seeks to complement this work by harnessing the power of longitudinal research to capture a cohort experiencing the pandemic at the same stage of their development. Pupils currently in Year 11 are at a crucial stage in their education: the first point where young people take significant choices about their pathways, with long term consequences for their life trajectories. Having experienced two school years in a row of serious disruption, along with uncertainty about and ultimately cancellation of their GCSEs, they must now make these transitions with little time for schools to recover.

This project is funded by UKRI’s COVID response fund and the Economic and Social Research Council, with additional support from the Sutton Trust and XTX Markets. There’s more information on the COSMO website.

Evaluation of Universal Primary Free School Meals in London

In February 2023, the Mayor of London announced £130 million of funding for emergency provision of free school meals for all primary pupils in the capital. Although primarily intended as a cost of living support measure, projected to save families around £440 per child, the initiative could also have important impacts on children’s learning, well-being and health. The evaluation is based on a quasi-experimental design which makes use of multiple sources of secondary data to examine the impact of UPFSM on KS2 attainment, pupil attendance, engagement, behaviour, and well-being, as well as household financial distress. The primary triple-difference evaluation design will exploit comparisons over time between the 27 London boroughs that will start to offer UPFSM in September 2023 with 1. two London boroughs (Southwark and Tower Hamlets) that already have UPFSM and 2. local authorities outside London that do not offer UPFSM. The impact evaluation will be accompanied by an implementation and process evaluation which will explore the barriers and facilitators of UPSFM provision and the perceived impact of the policy on schools, pupils, and households.

This project is funded by the Education Endowment Foundation. There’s more information on the EEF website project page.

ADR UK Youth Transitions Community Catalyst

There is a growing demand to map the journeys of young people through school; further and higher education; employment; healthcare; criminal justice and other systems that are an intrinsic part of our social life. Doing so through administrative data provides a cost-effective approach to understand and address inequalities and improve outcomes for all young individuals. But a combination of paucity, poor quality and impenetrable access regimes around data prevent a structured approach to address these issues. Aims of the Youth Transitions Community Catalyst Project are to: * Review the evidence base on youth transitions and identify gaps in our understanding of what works, to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities affecting young individuals. * Conduct a review of the data landscape to record the as-is state of the data portfolio and using that as the basis explore a future model comprising greater linkages between datasets and improvements to the quality and coverage of existing data sets. * Develop an ambitious research agenda aimed at addressing key gaps and developing high level strategies to address these gaps. * Establishing a diverse and sustainable research community to promote knowledge sharing; engagement with the topic and the research agenda and opportunities to advance research using administrative data in this area. * Build capacity for academic research by supporting researchers, at all levels, to conduct data analyses using administrative datasets. * Address research priorities through allocation of embedded fellowships to enable impactful research using administrative data.

Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) (part of UK Research & Innovation), Youth Futures Foundation (YFF) and Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) are co-funding this initiative that maps the data sources, identifies potential avenues for better data linking and creates a community of data users to answer important research questions on youth transitions. There’s more information on the UKRI Gateway to Research project page.

Private Schooling in the UK in the 21st Century: Participation and Outcomes

Private school pupils form a relatively small proportion of the pupil population, but their influence extends far more widely. British private schooling is quite unusual in international comparison, combining both very high fees and only a low level of public subsidy through tax reliefs. From earlier studies we know that private school alumni educated in the 20th century on average achieved well in public exams and had substantially greater success in the labour market, when compared with similar pupils who attended state schools. In the last 30 years the private schools have changed enormously, as has the economy. School fees have risen by around three times in real terms. The pupil-teacher ratio has been halved, physical plant and equipment greatly improved, and a broader range of extra-curricular sport and cultural activities is supported, aiming to instil broader outcomes of cultural capital, more than just a high academic achievement. Systems of management have been modernised. There have been no comprehensive studies, however, of changes in private school participation and of the value-added delivered by modernised private schooling in the 21st century. The aim of this project is to investigate two key related aspects of the role of private schools in Britain in the 21st century: the choice of a private school, and the association of private schooling with educational outcomes and with subsequent labour market and broader outcomes in early adulthood.

This project was funded by UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). There’s more information on the UKRI Gateway to Research project page.

Competitive Effects of Free Schools (CEFS)

This project is carrying out a major analysis of free schools and their competitive effects on student outcomes and neighbouring schools. Free schools were introduced by the coalition government following the 2010 general election to make it possible for parents, teachers, charities and businesses to set up their own schools. The government has invested significantly in the development and promotion of these schools, arguing not just that they will be excellent in their own right and offer parents better choices, but also that this will create new pressures for improvement in neighbouring schools. However, there is no rigorous evidence on the outcomes for students, and some concern that free schools may have a negative impact on neighbouring schools. This research will provide evidence for how free schools influence local patterns of choice and competition, as well as their effects on pupil outcomes. It will also identify whether free schools have a disproportionate impact on outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged children. The research team will work with key stakeholders from the DfE throughout the project, and findings will inform policy on how decisions are made about opening new schools.

This project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation. There’s more information on their website.

Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on young peoples’ learning, motivation, wellbeing, and aspirations using a representative probability panel

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented challenge for pupils, parents, schools, and policy makers, with many children returning to school in September for the first time after six months at home. This project collected and analysed high quality data on young people (ages 12-19) in England using an existing representative sample to assess the impact of the cancellation of exams, home learning experiences, and returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic on pupils’ learning, motivation, wellbeing, and aspirations. This was a follow-up of an established stratified random sample, the Science Education Tracker (SET). Data collection was delivered online by Kantar, who carried out the original fieldwork, with explicit permission from 5,991 respondents for re-contact. These data, linked to the National Pupil Database, provided a unique opportunity to answer the following pressing research questions separately by SES, gender, and ethnic group: 1. Has the cancellation of examinations had differential impacts on wellbeing and motivations? 2. Has this changed pupils’ aspirations for further study and future careers? 3. Has home-schooling affected pupils’ transitions into further and higher education? 4. What role do young people’s experiences of home learning under lockdown and returning to education play in this?

This project was funded by UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). There’s more information on the UKRI Gateway to Research project page.

Learning About Culture: Five randomised controlled trials of cultural learning interventions

UCL and the Behavioural Insights Team working in partnership were selected by the EEF to run a large multi-trial evaluation of five cultural learning interventions in English primary schools. 8,500 children in 400 state schools with a significant proportion of pupil-premium eligible students participated in trials of five cultural learning activities, starting in September 2018. These trials represented the biggest study of its kind ever undertaken and provided much-needed insight into both what works and how it works. We worked closely with the RSA on their broader work to contextualise effective cultural learning activities and improve the use of evidence in this area.

This project was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and more information is available from the RSA website project page and the five evaluation pages on the EEF website: The Craft of Writing, Power of Pictures, Young Journalist Academy, Speech Bubbles, and First Thing Music.