All posts tagged: IFS

Youth club closures affected GCSE results, warns IfS report

Youth club closures affected GCSE results, warns IfS report

Published by skeptic

Youth club closures in the 2010s resulted in lower GCSE results and increased offending among young people, a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests. The report estimated that for every £1 saved from closing youth clubs, “there are societal costs of nearly £3”. The austerity programme enacted by the coalition government in 2010 resulted in huge cuts to council budgets, which resulted in swathes of youth club closures. Research earlier this year by Unison found 1,243 council-run youth centres closed between 2010 and 2023. The new Labour government has pledged to spend £95 million on a new network of “youth future” hubs, in which schools are expected to play a pivotal role. Closures affected GCSE grades The IfS compared exam results and offending rates among teenagers living in areas where all youth clubs within a 40-minute walk closed with those teenagers whose nearest youth club stayed open. It found teenagers whose nearest youth club closed did worse in school. The impact was “roughly equivalent to a decline of half a grade in one …

Pupils in Wales perform only as well as disadvantaged children in England – IFS | Schools

Pupils in Wales perform only as well as disadvantaged children in England – IFS | Schools

Published by skeptic

Wales’s new first minister, Vaughan Gething, faces a major challenge in improving the country’s schools, after the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that pupils in Wales were performing only as well as disadvantaged children in England. The IFS study follows Wales’s weak performance in the OECD’s most recent Programme for international student assessment (Pisa) standings, in which results in Wales declined by more than in other UK nations and were well below the average across OECD countries. Wales’s lower attainment cannot be explained by higher levels of poverty, according to the IFS, as pupils in areas of England with higher or similar levels of deprivation such as Liverpool or Gateshead achieved “significantly higher” GCSE results than their counterparts in Wales. The IFS said the Pisa results showed the average pupil in Wales performed at the same level as the most disadvantaged children in England, despite education spending per pupil being similar. Luke Sibieta, the author of the IFS study, said: “Faced with this gloomy picture, policymakers should have the courage to make reforms based on …

Economic Expert Critiques Jeremy Hunts Pre Election Tax Cut Plan

Economic Expert Critiques Jeremy Hunts Pre Election Tax Cut Plan

Published by Sam

A top economic expert has cast doubt on Jeremy Hunt’s plan for tax cuts in the Budget. The chancellor wants to reduce the tax burden for voters in the run-up to the general election. But Paul Johnson, director of the highly-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the state of Britain’s public services meant Hunt will have little, if any, spare cash for giveaways. His comments came after the chancellor told ITV’s Peston programme that he will probably have less money than he had hoped for tax cuts in next month’s Budget. Hunt said: “As things stand at the moment, things can change, it doesn’t look like I’ll have the kind of room that I had for those very big tax cuts in the Autumn.” On BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Johnson said tax cuts would be “very difficult to do without having some really significant effects on the quality of public services”. “We know that prisons are full, the justice system has massive backlogs in it, social care is struggling, that local authorities are going …

Spending on university students in England ‘back to 2011 low point’, says IFS | Students

Published by Sam

University students in England are seeing less spent on their education than at any time since their tuition fees were tripled in 2012, according to new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. According to the IFS, students are receiving even less than they were in 1990 as the government badly underestimated the effect of high inflation since it decided to freeze domestic undergraduate tuition fees at £9,250 – leading to a steep erosion in university teaching resources. “This does not seem a sensible way to set policy,” the thinktank’s annual report concluded. By next year, the real-terms value of spending per student will have fallen back to the levels of 2011, when tuition fees were just £3,375 a year and the government contributed much more in teaching grants. In 2012-13, each undergraduate from England had the equivalent of £11,800 spent annually on teaching resources. But undergraduates in 2024-25 will get just £9,600, according to the IFS. “This will take it back to the same level as its low point in 2011, just before the …

IFS report highlighting £52bn stealth tax rise shows Tories have ‘crashed our economy’, says Labour – UK politics live | Politics

Published by Sam

Key events During his interview round this morning Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, welcomed the news that the US president Joe Biden is to fly to Israel after apparently getting the Israeli government to agree to corridors for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, and to the designation of safe areas where civilians will not be bombed. Speaking to Times Radio, Mitchell said this development was encouraging. And he said he hoped this would lead to the Rafah crossing, between Gaza and Egypt, being opened. Mitchell said Israel had “both a moral and a practical responsibility” to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. And he stressed the difference between Israel and Hamas. “Israel uses its army to defend its citizens. Hamas uses its citizens to defend Hamas,” he said. UK doing all it can to secure release of hostages held by Hamas, says minister As Harriet Sherwood and Ben Quinn report, two British teenage sisters are thought to be being held captive by Hamas after last weekend’s attack on communities in southern Israel. The girls were named …

UK households face tax rise of £3,500 a year by next election, finds IFS | Tax and spending

Published by Sam

UK households are facing an average tax rise of £3,500 a year by the next election, the country’s leading economics thinktank has said – the biggest increase over a parliament on records dating back more than 70 years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that on current forecasts the Conservatives were on track to raise £100bn more annually by 2024 than if taxes as a share of national income had stayed the same as in 2019. In a damaging report for Rishi Sunak as the Tory party faces growing internal divisions over the issue, the thinktank said tax revenue was on track to amount to about 37% of national income in 2024, up from about 33% four years ago. Compared with a world in which that shift had not occurred, the IFS said this amounted to an additional £100bn a year for the exchequer – the equivalent to about £3,500 more per household, although some would pay more and others less. Meanwhile, Sunak is preparing to head to Manchester this weekend for one of …

Funding of public services in England skewed against poor areas, says IFS | Society

Published by Sam

The government’s levelling up plans for England are being hampered by a funding system that is “not fit for purpose” and deprives the poorest areas of the financial support to match their needs, a leading thinktank has said. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the method for allocating money to pay for public services is out of date, based on inadequate data and skewed in favour of the better-off south-east. Calling for urgent reform, the thinktank said the funding system was doing a “poor job” in ensuring money was being spent in the parts of England where it was most needed. The IFS said the most deprived 20% of areas were getting a smaller share of local government and police funding than they were estimated to need, while the least deprived 20% were receiving a bigger portion than their needs required. Boris Johnson launched a white paper on the levelling up policy in early 2022. Last summer, Rishi Sunak admitted taking money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to other parts …