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Differences in the quality of education are large, both within and between countries. A recently published study by Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen (free working paper version here) suggests that those differences can partly be explained by management quality.

‘Character education’ is one of the current hot topics in the education policy world. Personality characteristics such as resilience, conscientiousness, and sociability are thought to have an impact on educational attainment and career success.

Over the last decades, technology has frequently promised to transform education, but with little actual success in raising pupil performance. Governments have invested in, for example, laptops, tablets, and interactive whiteboards, with disappointing results.

Vouchers in school reform programmes in the United States have made little headway over the years - mainly due to opposition from powerful teachers' unions. Professor Paul E. Peterson reminded us in this week's Friedman lecture that it wasn’t Milton Friedman who first championed school vouchers , it was our own J.S.

A recent collection of essays published by the Centre set out, among other aims, to draw salient factors from the mix of those which may relate to England and Wales’ long-term upward trend in 14-19 exam grades.