How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected socioeconomic inequalities in life chances, in terms of short-term effects on educational attainment and well-being, and long-term educational and career outcomes? This study will provide immediate findings to this and related research questions about the impact of the pandemic on educational inequality by SES, gender and ethnicity by designing, analysing, reporting on, and archiving two annual waves of a high-quality new cohort study of pupils in year 11 in academic year 2020-21 across England. This brand new resource will collect data from pupils, parents and schools, augmented with administrative data from DfE's NPD and other sources. Moreover, it will provide the start of a long-term resource for the research community to explore medium/long-term effects as participants move into further and higher education, and the labour market (with planned LEO consent questions). Led by Dr Jake Anders, with Professor Lindsey Macmillan and Dr Gill Wyness (UCL CEPEO), Professors Lisa Calderwood and Alissa Goodman (UCL CLS) and Carl Cullinane (Sutton Trust), with Kantar as lead fieldwork agency, the team combines world-leading expertise in educational inequalities, social mobility, analysis of longitudinal data, and the design and management of cohort studies. Our bid is supported by key stakeholders, including DfE, ADR UK, EEF, TASO, OfS, and HEAT to ensure co-production of policy-relevant evidence. This study will fill an important gap in understanding of the medium and long term effects of COVID-19 on young people completing their education and moving into the labour market at this unprecedented time.

This project responds to the current crisis of sexual violence, abuse, and harassment in schools in England specifically pertaining to the relationship between schools and the police in responding to and preventing what is typically termed 'harmful sexual behaviours' (HSB) among young people in schools. Presently, it is apparent that police have a role to play in tackling HSB in schools but there is a lack of guidance on best practice for the nature of the relationship they should have with schools. The proposed project will draw upon and consolidate the local partnership between academics, Surrey police, a network of Surrey schools, and other policy and practice stakeholders. It will directly address a key policing priority - the prevention of and response to HSB in schools - with transferable value for other local education authorities and police forces and national stakeholders. Specifically, the project will develop a framework for the relationship between police and schools in preventing and responding to HSB in schools. The framework will address the extent to which and how the police should be involved in responding to and preventing HSB in schools and how the police can work most effectively in and with schools. It builds on a review of evidence about HSB in schools, completed by the project team in March 2022 for the Department for Education (DfE), which identified that HSB is a cultural issue spanning a continuum of behaviours that vary in their harmfulness and (il)legality and must be understood as distinct from 'healthy' or 'normative' adolescent sexual development. The framework will be co-designed with stakeholders through four distinct but complementary strands of stakeholder engagement, knowledge exchange, and best practice development in partnership with schools, police, and local and national organisations and bodies concerned with the prevention of violence against women and girls. It is specifically designed to foster and expand the connections between these stakeholders and develop the partnership between Surrey police, academics, and other stakeholders. The Evidence-Based Policing team at Surrey Police will oversee and lead the project from the policing side of the partnership. The stands include: 1. A review and collection of data within Surrey Police, including interviews with staff, and a review of available data, policy documents, and educational materials and resources. 2. A review of data recently collected via a survey of the network of Surrey schools about their experiences of police involvement in HSB involving pupils, along with more in-depth data collection within one school in the network involving a review of incident data, policies, procedures, and educational materials, interviews with teachers, observations of interventions, and discussion groups with pupils. 3. A set of three stakeholder engagement sessions, involving Surrey police and Surrey schools along with Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition members and local and national policy and practice stakeholders. These sessions will include a seminar and two workshops for knowledge exchange and framework development based on the findings from strands 1 and 2. 4. An in-person launch event of the co-designed framework whereby stakeholders will co-identify areas for future research and policy and practice development and evaluation. The purposes of the work strands are, first, to identify the needs, priorities, and challenges from the perspective of local stakeholders (including young people, educators, and police) via strands 1 and 2; and second, to co-design the adaptable framework for the police-school relationship based on the different perspectives. The work strands will be designed to collaboratively and constructively include the different perspectives and will seek to bridge gaps between academia, practice and policy.

SES2023 will be the eighth in a series of surveys of workers stretching back over 35 years. The OECD has stated that 'there is a strong policy need for better measures of job quality' to improve workers' well-being, increase productivity and competitiveness, and boost societal welfare. The UK government has gone further by agreeing to 'report annually on the quality of work in the UK economy and hold ourselves to account'. Yet, official data on job quality remains thin on the ground. To help plug this gap, a group set-up by the Carnegie Trust/RSA suggested that 32 new questions be added to the Labour Force Survey. However, in response, only two questions on career progression and employee involvement in decision-making have been added. This provides an inadequate response to the scale of the challenge and makes it difficult to paint a picture of the quality of working life in Britain today. Furthermore, the UK's data infrastructure in this area is particularly weak in comparison with countries where monitoring job quality is better resourced, such as Germany, France, Italy, Finland and the US. The withdrawal of the UK from the EU also means data from European surveys will not be available to plug the gap. Given recent societal and policy changes, the UK faces an increased need to know how the world of work has changed combined with a weakening evidence base on which to do so. There is an urgent need for the SES series to be extended to address this gap, provide data to meet user needs and secure the long-term foundation for research in this area. It will also address ESRC strategic research objectives, such as connecting with the UK policy agenda, and ensuring that data collection is resilient and responsive to change. The 2023 survey will collect data face-to-face from workers aged 20-65 as well as from similar aged workers who take part in an online/telephone version of the same survey. Respondents will be drawn from randomly created samples. Comparisons will be made between the two samples to determine the extent to which the mode of interview influences the responses given. The survey will collect data from around 4,300 workers, 2,835 of whom will be interviewed face-to-face and around 1,500 will take part online or on the phone if they do not have internet access. The proposal has the financial support of the Department for Education, and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. It also has the support of 17 stakeholders. These include the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Office for National Statistics, the Trades Union Congress, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Furthermore, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy are keen to explore funding boosts for their geographical areas.

This project will provide tools and evidence to inform the Department for Education (DfE) policies and investment, by exploring the climate change risks and opportunities for new build and existing schools in the context of Net Zero Carbon Britain by 2050. This project also addresses the three key risks and opportunities identified in the Climate Change Risk Assessment 3 Report (CCRA3) for Health, Communities and the Built Environment (winter energy demand, summer energy demand and overheating). The overall DfE's Climate Change Risk strategy will build on this work and the risk assessment quantification and mapping methods already developed by the Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA) Team in DfE, the Environment Agency and the Government Actuaries Department to assess flooding, fire and crime risk in schools. The outcomes of this project will be disseminated via the DfE portal for Good Estate Management of Schools (GEMS) as well as the RPA websites. This project will be an essential part of the DfE climate resilience efforts under the Government National Adaptation Plan.

The aim of this network is to bring together interdisciplinary expertise to address the problem of air quality in schools. The future health of our nation and indeed all human society depends on educating children in healthy environments. The Tackling Air Pollution at School (TAPAS) network focuses on that vulnerable section of every society - school children and their environment. Our vision is to create and develop a menu of options that can be introduced into schools to provide an environment free of pollutants and in harmony with nature, so that children have a fulfilling and healthy educational experience. These products need to be effective, inexpensive and, where possible, educational: i.e. they should involve the children in an understanding of their environment and provide them with an opportunity to engage with it in social, scientific and behavioural terms. We have chosen to focus on schools and school children for the following reasons. Children are a particularly vulnerable section of society. They are physiologically less able to regulate their temperature and are more susceptible to exposure to air pollution than adults. Among the vulnerable groups in society school pupils will experience the impact of poor air quality for the longest period into the future. Recently, over 2000 schools in the UK were identified as being in 'pollution hotspots' where air pollution exceeds WHO limits. From a practical viewpoint, working in schools has many advantages. School keep records on student attendance and pupils which provide information on absences related to health. They also have data on room occupancy, pupil activities (e.g. PE, meals) and movement through the school. This information is essential to determine personal exposure. Additionally, schools offer a wide variety of spaces including labs, meeting halls, dining areas as well as classrooms, each with different ventilation and indoor sources of pollution. The ability of schools to mitigate exposure to pollution is hampered by lack of knowledge. For example, the impact of idling vehicle engines near school while dropping off and collecting children on exposure in the playground or on indoor levels of NOx and particulate matter (PM) is unclear, making it impossible for schools to decide whether to ban idling or not. Our interdisciplinary team consists of experts in indoor and outdoor pollution, air pollution modelling, data science, building design and ventilation, education, social behaviour and health impacts. This will allow this network to address the critical issues associated with pollution in schools by offering a menu of solutions. We also propose to include a significant educational component so that pupils will learn about the impacts of poor air quality and take this knowledge with them as they grow up, thereby producing a lasting change in society. Schools also accommodate children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who are even more vulnerable and who often require special environmental conditions. Furthermore, there are currently a wide range related activities concerning indoor environmental quality in schools that this network will bring together for the first time in a coordinated fashion.