JFC

Dark times

Great day at the science museum as my stay at home dad era comes to a close.

Just need to keep repeating this point. Stagnant zero sum economies create political ungovernability. Productivity growth has collapsed in many rich countries since the financial crash on.ft.com/4hwRuoB

The two genders

This is an interesting piece. It shows why social mobility often doesn't get cut through. Our focus groups suggest that people think the country is deeply unfair, but working class people often feel meaningful change is virtually impossible. socialmobility.independent-commission.uk/britons-reje...

Exclusive: Family income data will replace free school meals eligibility as the trigger for pupil premium and other deprivation funding for schools, the government has said schoolsweek.co.uk/pupil-premiu...

Bond markets spooked as the Chancellor appears to disappear behind raised hands; gilts stage rally as she reveals she was actually there the whole time

70% of the additional spending from removing the two-child limit will go to families who are in work. This is targeting support for low-income working households who are being priced out of a decent standard of living despite doing everything asked of them.

We wonder why we're raising generations of ever more neurotic and self-involved young people when the last page of every baby book is a mirror.

Scrapping the two-child limit is a vital step towards achieving the Government's manifesto pledge to reduce child poverty and give more children the best start in life. 📉 Estimates show child poverty decreasing by 450,000 by 2029-30 as a result. metro.co.uk/2025/11/26/t...

💰Budget 2026 💰 The Government has announced that the two-child benefit cap will be abolished – a welcome move which will have a major impact on tackling poverty. But more could have been done on education more broadly in this Budget. Read our full analysis ⤵️🧵 @nickharrison73.bsky.social

Baby is really into books as objects. How twee.

Big challenge for all of us working in education

Oh my fucking god

Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

Not in attendance, but very pleased to be nominated for Report of the Year at tonight's @smartthinking.bsky.social #SmartThinkingAwards for our Opportunity Index report, with @beckymontacute.bsky.social and @ericaholtwhite.bsky.social

Last Friday, new English Indices of Deprivation were released for the first time since 2019, measuring relative deprivation in 33,755 areas of England across multiple domains. How do these geographic disparities relate to voting patterns in the UK’s last General Election? A short thread 🧵

Britain's wealth gaps means that a typical worker would need to save more than a lifetime’s worth of their earnings to become wealthy It would now take 52 years of typical earnings – £1.3 million in total – to move from the middle to the top of the wealth distribution. ➡️ buff.ly/Ya8kInK

This is a very useful guide for my parental leave over the next few months

A handy summary via @tesmagazine.bsky.social of what we say about improving inclusion in today's @ippr.org report: www.tes.com/magazine/new...

🚨 NEW: Children from low-income homes are more likely to have special educational needs and are also less likely to get the support they need, we have found. Our new research reveals massive socio-economic inequalities in accessing support from a SEND system in crisis 🧵⤵️

📣 Next week, the UK COVID-19 Inquiry will begin hearings for Module 8, which will examine the impact of the pandemic on children and young people across the UK. On Wednesday, our former Head of Research and Policy, @beckymontacute.bsky.social, will give evidence to the Inquiry.

Back from Labour conference now. Some glimmers of hope among the gloom. A lot of great work and thinking being done across the sector. Some encouraging signs from the new DfE ministers. A really welcome return of maintenance grants. Two excellent events run by my @suttontrust.bsky.social colleagues!

This morning at Labour Party Conference, our panel is looking at the attainment gap and asking why disadvantaged pupils are behind their peers. Chaired by @nickharrison73.bsky.social, we are joined by @sarahsmithlab.bsky.social, @childrenscomm.bsky.social, and @danielkebedeneu.bsky.social

Today we are at the Labour Party Conference to explore findings from the Sutton Trust's latest report, Elitist Britain. We are joined by @lindseymacmillan.bsky.social, @peter4bracknell.bsky.social, @lewisgoodall.com, Lord David Evans, and our own @carlcullinane.bsky.social. ⬇️ Follow updates below

Fantastic news. We've been banging on about how unjust the student finance system is for the ten years since grants were abolished, so this is great to see.

New schools minister @georgiagould.bsky.social very impressive at IPPR event on helping children and young people inside and outside the school gates.

Great session at Labour party conference by @coalitionedcare.bsky.social on the future for early years reform, hosted by @sarahronan.bsky.social

Cricket is the most elitist sport in Britain, with 50-60% of top players attending private school (vs. 7% of the population). Football is representative. Olympians in the middle with "only" 20-30% private school. Rugby is split men (elitist) vs. women (representative). @suttontrust.bsky.social

🫨 Did you know 95% of the remaining hereditary peers in the House of Lords went to private school? Over half went to Eton alone. 52% of all Lords were privately educated. There's a long way to go before the 829 member Upper House is representative of the wider population.

🚨 Data viz on the backgrounds of Britain’s elite 🚨 Our brand-new research offers rich data on the school and university backgrounds of Britain’s most powerful people. Compare sectors and professions for yourself using our interactive tool 📊 elitistbritain.suttontrust.com/compare

Power structures in this country are still dominated by a small group of people. 1️⃣ The 7% who go to private schools 2️⃣ The roughly 1% who go to Oxford or Cambridge for university This is especially true for those who attend both private school and Oxbridge 👇

No escaping Nick Gibb

Every day with an 8 month old is like hanging out with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. What horrifying ability are they going to develop next.

🗣️ "There is an onus on the state to think about how do we compensate for the private tutoring system through the state system." Our Director of Research and Policy, @carlcullinane.bsky.social, appeared on BBC Radio 2 to speak about tutoring with Jeremy Vine yesterday 📻

Have you read missing experts report, I’d deliver the findings, everytime people shocked. Each time nothing much improved www.reclaim.org.uk/it-should-fe...

🚨 Dedicated microsite on the backgrounds of Britain’s most powerful people 🚨 We published new research on elitism in Britain today. Visit our microsite to read the report, browse case studies, and use our data viz to directly compare professions for yourself 👇 elitistbritain.suttontrust.com

Are kids at private school 5x as smart as those in the state sector? Of course not - but they are 5x as likely to end up in the most powerful and influential positions in Britain today. New @suttontrust.bsky.social research - Elitist Britain.

Some fairly shocking stuff in the report this morning! Explore the full data here: elitistbritain.suttontrust.com

Pleased to write about working class access to the media industry in @theguardian.com today. Our Elitist Britain research out today shows that almost half of columnists, commentators and top podcast hosts went to private schools. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Explore the Elitist Britain data on our (excellent) microsite!

🚨 NEW: Britain’s most powerful people are still 5x more likely to have been privately educated than the general population. Our brand-new research reveals that jobs in the media, business, charity, creative and public sectors remain dominated by those from private schools ⤵️🧵

🤔 Where do Britain’s most influential people go to school and university? Which professions are the most socially excusive? Tomorrow, we will publish Elitist Britain 2025, a landmark report updating on our previous research on elitism in 2019. Keep your eyes peeled! 👀

Happy to contribute to this great piece on Progress 8 and measuring school performance by @ellencph.bsky.social. We should take this opportunity to bring in a measure that better captures the context a school is achieving in, while not losing sight of high standards: www.tes.com/magazine/ana...

Today is #GCSEResultsDay! Here’s what we know about the results as of yet ⤵️ 🧵

Not much change since last year in GCSE results today. Regional gaps wide but unchanged, gap between state and private sector narrowed slightly after an increase last year. Main trend is grammar schools continuing to pull ahead of both comprehensives and private schools since the pandemic.

📝New @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social working paper Why are students from elite high schools much more likely to go to high ranked university courses than equally qualified students from the state sector? 🤔 w @opmc1.bsky.social @lindseymacmillan.bsky.social & Jo Blanden econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...

Suppose AI *does* totally obliterate the economic value of being a good writer. Even if that happens, I still think there is a powerful argument for teaching writing because it's a really valuable life skill. substack.nomoremarking.com/p/what-is-th...