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
Why the way we pay for higher education is everyone’s problem
It is hard to make the case for public investment in colleges and training providers when the dominant narrative says that the other half of the post-16 system has already solved its funding problem. But hasn't: it has just found a more sophisticated way of not talking about it.
16 September 2026Professor John Blake