This policy brief, written by Dr Joanne Moore and Annette Hayton (Department of Education), examines the types of evidence that are effective in evaluating widening participation initiatives. Working with staff in evaluation and management roles in a cross-section of higher education providers, their research captures current and emerging evaluation practices.

Their findings suggest that the current standards are increasingly unfit for purpose and could hinder rather than support strategies for widening participation. The authors argue that there is an urgent need for the evaluation framework to evolve, and call for a revised set of standards to support providers in collecting and using evidence.

Although designed to promote gender equality, parental leave policies in the UK have yet to close the gap in uptake, with women taking significantly more leave than men.

Authors Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Dr Alistair Hunt and James Bailey recommend reforming the UK’s current parental leave policies to enable better uptake of leave entitlement by fathers, in turn leading to greater sharing of childcare responsibilities between fathers and mothers, and a stronger attachment to the labour market among mothers.

In the report Costs and benefits of improved paternity leave: too good to ignore, they presented a cost-benefit analysis of one specific policy proposal – an expansion of paternity leave for employed fathers from two to six weeks, at a rate of pay close to salary replacement level.

In this companion piece, they take this proposal further by assessing the costs and benefits, and thus the social net benefit, of introducing a new entitlement for self-employed and worker fathers, who are currently ineligible for any support. They propose the introduction of Paternity Allowance – a six-week entitlement paid at the current Statutory Paternity Pay rate and mirroring in spirit the Maternity Allowance already available to mothers in similar position on the labour market.

A major five-year study – drawing on research with over 300 individuals across six Mexican states – finds that Indigenous students in higher education in Mexico face important institutional barriers to inclusion, as well as discrimination with regard to Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Indigenous students' increasing access to universities is challenging the colonial and postcolonial legacies of higher education in Latin America. In particular, its monocultural and monolingual nature excludes the linguistic and cultural diversity that Indigenous students can contribute to campus life and academic learning. The findings offer important insights for national policy and highlight crucial changes that higher education institutions in Mexico need to make.

Over the last 15 years the UK has seen a downward trend in young people’s optimism about their futures, particularly among those living in England’s regions. The UK is already one of the most spatially imbalanced economies in the developed world, with large disparities in education and labour market outcomes between London and the South East and the rest of the country.

However, this research offers cause for hope. It shows that young people in areas that received support as part of the government’s Opportunity Areas programme – a £108 million intervention that targeted 12 social mobility ‘cold spots’ across England – have bucked the national downward trend and have shown increased optimism for future study and work since the programme’s introduction in 2017.

A major expansion of free childcare entitlement in England is currently underway. Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Professor Kerry Papps and Sara Linjawi draw on monthly price data from a large nursery chain to show how prices have changed over the first two phases of the reform, which took effect in April 2024 and September 2024. They also compare how these prices measure up against prices reported by the providers in the 2024 Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey, as well as those charged by other providers in the neighbouring areas.

They find that government funding is likely to cover the costs for children under two in most parts of England, but that funding for three- and four-year-olds fails to cover costs in many places. They find that after the second phase of the reforms, the prices charged for unfunded hours rose fastest at nurseries in local authorities with the least generous funding rates.

Implemented ten years ago in England, the Raising of the Participation Age (RPA) placed a duty on young people to remain in learning (although not confined to staying on at school) until their 18th birthday.

This report presents the findings and recommendations from a research project examining the design, implementation and impact of the RPA on participation, retention and achievements in post-16 learning and subsequent labour market outcomes. Going beyond pure impact evaluation, the researchers explore the design of the policy from conception through to implementation and assess the extent to which it has achieved its objectives.

Authors: Prof Matt Dickson, Prof Sue Maguire, Dr Maria Jose Ventura Alfaro (University of Bath), Dr Andrea Laczik, Dr Dana Dabbous, Olly Newton (Edge Foundation) and Dave Thompson (FFT Education Datalab).

This project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.