5 Halt, who goes where?

A Government plan to construct a national database of the educational careers and achievements of all UK citizens seems to be underway http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/13/nschool313.xml While some may see this as part of a secret liberal plot to destroy the British way of life, I prefer to dwell on a more mundane consolation; that any such database will be a significant boost to educational research, as it will make the tracking of detailed educational outcomes a much more practical venture. A major difficulty for any such research, until now, has been the lack of any mechanisms to track individuals once they have left the schooling system. This has been true even when they have only moved into higher education, as school and UCAS reference codes were different and not easily matched. If this database is implemented, then I would expect to see some early results, especially in areas such as assessing the effectiveness of widening participation schemes into higher education. It would also facilitate longer term assessments into the significance of education and training for people’s lives.