Our centre
Research
Our cutting-edge research seeks to inform evidence-led policy and practice to equalise opportunities.
Activities
CEPEO Annual Lecture
Policymakers, researchers and practitioners explore the pressing questions of our time in education policy and equalising opportunities.
CEPEO Seminar Series
The Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) hosts an online research seminar series, where guest speakers present cutting edge research.
COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO)
This major new youth cohort study is providing vital new evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected socio-economic inequalities in life chances.
Outputs
Working papers
Our working papers demonstrate our research in progress. They are multidisciplinary, reflecting CEPEO's broad research themes.
Briefing notes
Summaries of evidence on questions related to CEPEO’s four research themes.
Impact
The aim of our policy priorities is to offer evidence-led, practical steps to move towards a society of more equal opportunities from early years to adulthood.
Our goals
We are one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, in terms of outcomes and opportunities.
Our multidisciplinary work seeks to reduce these inequalities:
- We identify barriers to opportunity in under-explored areas, using innovative methods and thinking, and co-producing evidence-led policy solutions to reduce barriers to opportunities.
- We offer insight and impact at every stage of the life course, through the centre’s four main research streams: early years, schools, tertiary, and adulthood.
Our approaches
- We research previously unanswerable questions, through innovative data collection and analysis.
- We evaluate policies and programmes by designing, implementing, and analysing Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) and Quasi-Experimental Designs (QEDs).
- We address novel questions in under-researched areas using existing large scale data from administrative sources, and from our rich birth cohort studies.
More about our approaches.
Latest news
Poverty’s impact on mental health, food insecurity and academic performance
This podcast hears how mental health and life chances of young people and their parents are being dramatically affected by post-pandemic cost of living pressures.
27 Nov 2023
How to find a maths learning app you can count on for your kids
This podcast hears about research evidence focused on the role of apps in early education.
18 Sep 2023
No evidence grammar school systems are best for the brightest
The UK’s brightest pupils’ chances of getting top GCSE grades are actually lower in grammar schools than in comprehensives, according to a major new piece of research involving UCL researchers.
29 Aug 2023
What's on
View all centre eventsContact us
Department of Learning and Leadership
IOE – Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London, WC1H 0AL
