Blog

Employment hurts

Everyone has a job in this country! Is this good news for the taxpayer? Well, not necessarily. Read more

Spend meets Cost

Cost is what it actually takes to get someone on track. Spend is what public services give to someone just because they do not have more. In this blog, I make the point that we know little about actual costs. Read more

What prevention takes

I think people do not stop to do the maths when they say prevention is cheap. It does hit taxpayers quite hard.

The train of taxpayer funded care carries over one million children. Imagine it only stops once a year. In 2016, over 600,000 new passengers jumped on it. Many others stayed on from previous stops. Read more

Oh my cost!

In this blog, I explain why planning public services is difficult, and argue that spending information is more accurate than many think. Read more

Lessons learned on prevention

Over the last two years my team has looked into more than 30 preventative services for children, young people, and adults in the UK. Here are five lessons we have learned. Read more

Spend now, or regret later

Many people see prevention as the solution in children’s services because it is cheap in the short term and can save money in the future, but they might be wrong.

If a child receives targeted and expensive support early, the cost may end up being 40 per cent cheaper in the long term. Read more

Closing the gap with tutoring

Around 60 per cent of pupils achieve good marks in their GCSE exams, but if they come from a worse-off family the percentage comes down to 30. You may think that the solution is to give them more teaching hours in smaller groups. Not that easy.

At Aldaba, we looked at ten of the best pieces of research on after-school tutoring in the world. We found some useful lessons for teachers, policy makers, and school investors. Read more

Universal Credit is not pocket money

In this blog I argue that the good work that Government economists do needs to be explained clearly. I take the Universal Credit as an example. My estimate is that 80 per cent of the savings associated with the Universal Credit will never turn into cash.

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Shaping the participation market

In this blog, I argue that the funding model for schools and colleges might create pervasive incentives which make participation of NEETs in learning more difficult. Read more