CEER Publications
The Publications are organised in four groups:
GCSE 2024: Job Done?
CEER, August 2024
The report looks at the trends and policies relating to GCSE results, gender differences, grade disparities and subjects studied. All raise issues that the new government should address. Grade inflation is creeping back. Boys are chronically underperforming. Compulsory re-sits have little benefit. Access to the separate sciences is restricted by having to take all three. EBacc is well passed its sell-by date. GCSEs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have become so different as to require rebranding.
Download: GCSE 2024: Job Done?
A-Levels 2024: Back to Pre-Covid Standards?
CEER, August 2024
Teacher assessment during the lockdowns led to a near-doubling of top grades. The intention is to return them to normal by 2024, which will involve a further loss of up to 11,000 A* grades, nearly 14 per cent. Teachers were not only over-generous, but also tended to favour girls and subjective subjects. Provisional entries point to 2024 being a pivotal year with the social sciences, humanities, and performing arts declining and big increases in maths, physics and computing.
Download: A-levels 2024: Back to Pre-Covid Standards?
Education in The Conservative Effect 2010-2024: 14 Wasted Years? (Eds. Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton)
pp 157-204, Cambridge University Press, June 2024.
In education, the years were far from wasted. The first schools ministers – Gove and Gibb– had shadowed their posts for at least three years and during their time in office successfully worked towards rounding off the reforms of successive governments since the mid-1980s. Not everything worked: teacher shortages persisted; Ofsted was overloaded; and buildings were neglected. But Gove and Gibb succeeded in achieving their core aim of making England’s schools world class. After they left, however, there was considerable churn, and the department lost its way.
A-levels 2023: Return to Normal?
CEER, August 2023
With the return to exams, the government is seeking to restore standards to pre-pandemic levels in two steps, with 2022 as a halfway house. This would mean nearly 100,000 fewer A* grades than were awarded in 2021. It did not quite get half-way last year.
Will it make up the ground and complete the task in 2023? It will be a brutal reduction which students, parents and schools may find too hard to bear.
Download: A-Levels 2023: Return to Normal?
GCSE 2023: Restoring the Value?
Buckingham: CEER, August 2023
The A-level results strongly indicate that GCSE grades in England (Wales and Northern Ireland are waiting till next year) will be restored to pre-pandemic standards. Although it may not feel like it to those receiving their grades this year who have seen the years above them being awarded strings of nines, it is good news because it provides much better information on which to base decisions about the future.
The greater precision will also help to improve education because it puts policies under scrutiny. What is the point of mandatory maths and English re-takes when the failure rates are so high? Is combined science a basis for science A-levels when the grades are so poor? Should the study of foreign languages continue to be pushed when pupils are so solid in their resistance? And what’s behind the growth in religious studies?
Download: GCSE 2023: Restoring the Value?
Are Schools Failing Boys?
Buckingham: CEER, January 2022
Boys are getting poorer results, on average, at all levels of education. This has been known for some time, but little has been done about it. It appears that many boys are not developing to their full potential. The seriousness of the issue is such that it calls for a major national inquiry.
Download: Are Schools Failing Boys?
Where Next for Apprenticeships 2016
CIPD, August 2016
In a policy report of the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development edited by Tess Lanning, Alan Smithers argues that the introduction of national apprenticeship qualifications would turn the government’s hopes for the new apprenticeships into reality.
Download: Where Next for Apprenticeships 2016 (PDF).
Social Disadvantage and Widening Access to Universities
Buckingham: CEER, November 2015
Achievement in higher education is not uniformly spread across the various sections of society. Females, those from higher income backgrounds, those from more affluent neighbourhoods, and those who are white, gain proportionally more good degrees. Universities face a dilemma: to admit on excellence or representativeness.
Download: Social Disadvantage and Widening Access to Universities (PDF).
HEFCE’s Blunder
Buckingham: CEER, November 2015
HEFCE has made a crucial error in its latest report on degree outcomes. It states that 82% of those getting firsts or upper-seconds in 2013-14 came from state schools against 73 per cent from independent schools, whereas the analysis actually shows the reverse to be the case.
Download: HEFCE’s Blunder (PDF)
The Coalition Effect, 2010-2015
Edited by Anthony Seldon and Mike Finn, Cambridge University Press, pages 257-289, March 2015
The government rushed to unsettling reforms of education but was given an ‘easy ride’ by Labour. Michael Gove’s departure left a lot of unfinished business on academies, qualifications, apprenticeships and fair funding. A new Conservative-led government is very likely to see these through. But what Labour would do is far from clear since so far it has offered only bits and pieces.
Download: The Coalition Effect, 2010-2015 (PDF)
The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools
London: Civitas, pages 194-205, March 2015
There has to be selection in education since people differ greatly in their talents, interests and aspirations. Fifteen would be a good age allowing for an array of interconnected three-year pathways across the academic and occupational.