Andy’s research is focused around educational disadvantage, tackling low attainment and through his work on youth transitions highlighting the impact of early educational disadvantage on subsequent life chances.

This research has included recent work has focused on a number of randomised control trial evaluations of children’s literacy programmes. These are designed to provide evidence of programme effectiveness, and recent work has highlighted the importance of careful piloting and adaptation to different national contexts prior to formal evaluation. 

Other developing work is looking to draw upon existing datasets in the UK and Japan to document how educational inequalities manifest in early adulthood across the two national contexts.

The objective of the research activity is two-fold: to enhance our knowledge of effective educational programmes aimed at tackling low attainment and to understand and document existing inequalities in education systems and their subsequent impacts on later life chances.