New thinking, ideas & policy solutions for post-18 education in the UK
Reports
Y Gorau Oll: Making Wales the best place in the UK to be a student
Gwenno Roberts and Jim Dickinson set out eight student ambitions for Welsh higher education and test for the newly-commissioned review of Welsh HE. Is Wales prepared to make its system “y gorau oll” – “the very best”?
5 August 2026
Recent reports
A Ministry for Manchesterism: rewiring Whitehall for locally-driven prosperity and change29 June 2026Blood, debt, toil, and arrears: why thirty years of policy struggle has left us without the higher education system we deserve16 April 2026Earning the license: How to reform university governance in the UK6 November 2025Marking the course: Realising the ambitions of the post-16 white paper26 October 2025Doing better, getting better: Getting a grip on the full-time student experience7 July 2025The cashpoint campus comeback – franchising, fraud, and the failure to learn from the FE experience25 June 2025
Policy Signals
24 September 2026Happily HEVA After: A new value add framework for higher education22 July 2026No Country For Young Men: Four scenarios for higher education in a shrinking Britain7 July 2026Silence of the Loans: How loan book fictions prevent higher education reform7 June 2026The Big Shortfall: Demographic downturn and the post-18 education system
From the Director
Human Capital-pede – Or: Why economic returns for the state’s investment in HE are important, but education value is important-er
Everyone agrees what higher education does. The question is which of those things it exists for, and who gets to decide when ministers want something else.
20 October 2026Professor John Blake