Ofqual’s Algorithm: The method to madness

You would be hard pressed to find anyone willing to defend Ofqual’s calculated grades a month after they briefly arrested the dreams of many students. And yet the algorithm had its supporters and defenders before Results Day on 13 August. IF Research Intern Anthony J. Piwowarski explores the ways in which a now universally condemned… Read more »

The labour market and educational experience after COVID-19

The post-COVID-19 landscape in both education and the workplace is already looking very different. Olga Triay, a 20-year-old student of International Business Economics at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, assesses the positives and negatives of this changed world from the point of view of those affected the most: young generations.

The asymmetric intergenerational impact of COVID: the Italian case

Worrying intergenerational divides were already apparent in Italy following the recent double-dip financial crises, and these can only have been exacerbated by COVID-19. Analysis by Luciano Monti, Adjunct Professor of European Union Policies at LUISS Guido Carli (Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali) in Rome, and Scientific co-director of  the Bruno Visentini Foundation, a research… Read more »

How a microscopic virus shines a searchlight on the world’s inequalities

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is unequal, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest – and nowhere is this clearer than in Africa. By David McNair, Executive Director, Global Policy, at ONE,“a global movement campaigning to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030 so that everyone, everywhere can lead a life of dignity and… Read more »

Online education in India: fault lines of enduring inequality

Online education necessitated by COVID-19 is aggravating educational inequalities in India, with the potential for dire and long-term consequences for students. Prasham Kothari examines the fault lines. An MSc graduate of the London School of Economics in Social and Public Policy and currently an economics tutor, he also works at the grassroots level with various… Read more »

Intergenerational poverty and conditional cash transfers in Brazil

Brazil’s Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) social welfare programme has clear intergenerational aspects, as João Cláudio Rocha Baeta Leal explains. A 24-year-old Brazilian public administrator currently doing an MSc on the Political Economy of Late Development at the London School of Economics, João Leal has carried out research in local development, poverty, democratic participation, government cooperation… Read more »