The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented challenge for pupils, parents, schools, and policy makers, with many children returning to school in September for the first time after six months at home. Our new project will collect and analyse high quality data on young people (ages 12-19) in England using an existing representative sample to assess the impact of the cancellation of exams, home learning experiences, and returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic on pupils' learning, motivation, wellbeing, and aspirations. This will be a follow-up of an established stratified random sample, the Science Education Tracker (SET). Data collection will be delivered online by Kantar, who carried out the original fieldwork, with explicit permission from 5,991 respondents for re-contact. These data, which we will link to the National Pupil Database, will provide a unique opportunity to answer the following pressing research questions separately by SES, gender, and ethnic group: 1) Has the cancellation of examinations had differential impacts on wellbeing and motivations? 2) Has this changed pupils' aspirations for further study and future careers? 3) Has home-schooling affected pupils' transitions into further and higher education? 4) What role do young people's experiences of home learning under lockdown and returning to education play in this? Led by Professor Lindsey Macmillan, with Professor Patrick Sturgis, Dr Gill Wyness, and Dr Jake Anders, the team combines world-leading expertise in design and analysis of large-scale survey data with disciplinary expertise in educational inequalities. We will partner with the Department for Education and Wellcome to ensure the co-production of policy-relevant evidence. This will fill an important gap in our understanding of the experiences of young people and the impact on their motivations, wellbeing and aspirations during this unprecedented period.

SES2023 will be the eighth in a series of surveys of workers stretching back over 35 years. The OECD has stated that 'there is a strong policy need for better measures of job quality' to improve workers' well-being, increase productivity and competitiveness, and boost societal welfare. The UK government has gone further by agreeing to 'report annually on the quality of work in the UK economy and hold ourselves to account'. Yet, official data on job quality remains thin on the ground. To help plug this gap, a group set-up by the Carnegie Trust/RSA suggested that 32 new questions be added to the Labour Force Survey. However, in response, only two questions on career progression and employee involvement in decision-making have been added. This provides an inadequate response to the scale of the challenge and makes it difficult to paint a picture of the quality of working life in Britain today. Furthermore, the UK's data infrastructure in this area is particularly weak in comparison with countries where monitoring job quality is better resourced, such as Germany, France, Italy, Finland and the US. The withdrawal of the UK from the EU also means data from European surveys will not be available to plug the gap. Given recent societal and policy changes, the UK faces an increased need to know how the world of work has changed combined with a weakening evidence base on which to do so. There is an urgent need for the SES series to be extended to address this gap, provide data to meet user needs and secure the long-term foundation for research in this area. It will also address ESRC strategic research objectives, such as connecting with the UK policy agenda, and ensuring that data collection is resilient and responsive to change. The 2023 survey will collect data face-to-face from workers aged 20-65 as well as from similar aged workers who take part in an online/telephone version of the same survey. Respondents will be drawn from randomly created samples. Comparisons will be made between the two samples to determine the extent to which the mode of interview influences the responses given. The survey will collect data from around 4,300 workers, 2,835 of whom will be interviewed face-to-face and around 1,500 will take part online or on the phone if they do not have internet access. The proposal has the financial support of the Department for Education, and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. It also has the support of 17 stakeholders. These include the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Office for National Statistics, the Trades Union Congress, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Furthermore, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy are keen to explore funding boosts for their geographical areas.

Schools are planning to re-open in September and with the recent increased awareness of airborne transmission of Covid-19, there is an urgent need to monitor the situation and to provide guidance on ventilation best practice. This is emphasised by the expected onset of cooler weather when there will be a conflict between maintaining high fresh air ventilation flows and energy consumption and occupant comfort. We will quantify the risk of airborne COVID-19 transmission in schools and evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures, by developing techniques to assess the absolute risk of infection in a given indoor space, using field studies in primary and secondary schools, complemented by laboratory experiments and CFD to elucidate the flow patterns responsible for airborne transport. The understanding generated will underpin recent developments in infection modelling to predict the likelihood of airborne transmission within schools. The project will reduce the uncertainties associated with airborne transmission routes and provide evidence to evaluate mitigation measures. The scenarios we will investigate include changes to ventilation, use of screens, classroom lay-out and occupancy profiles. The methodology will facilitate application to offices, restaurants, shops etc. Airborne infection occurs through re-breathed air, the concentration of which can be directly inferred from measurements of CO2. Indoor flow is strongly affected by the locations of windows or vents, the heat rising from occupants/equipment and disturbances caused by people movement. Thus, accurate representations of these processes in the laboratory and CFD are needed to interpret the monitoring data currently collected in schools, which are typically single point measurements.

The Innovative Construction Research Centre (ICRC) is dedicated to socio-technical systems research within the built environment, with particular emphasis on through-life performance in support of the client's business operations. Our vision is for a research centre that not only supports the competitiveness of the architectural, engineering, construction and facilities management sectors, but also supports societal needs for built infrastructure and the broader competitiveness of the UK economy. The domain of enquiry lies at the crucial interface between human and technical systems, thereby requiring an inter-disciplinary approach that combines engineering research methods with those derived from the social sciences. The ICRC's research portfolio is organised into six themes: (1) Integration of design, construction and facilities management. Concerns the through-life management of socio-technical systems within the built environment. Topics of consideration include: integrated logistic support, design for reliability and systems integration for building services. Of particular concern is the way that firms within the supply chain are integrated to provide solutions that add value to the client's business. (2) Knowledge management and organisational learning. Addresses the means of supporting knowledge flows across extended supply chains and the extent to which procurement systems learn across projects. Of particular importance is the design of learning mechanisms that extend across organisational boundaries. Also investigates the degree to which the construction sector can learn from other sectors, i.e. aerospace, automotive, retail, defence. (3) Human resource management and the culture of the industry. The construction sector is too often characterised by regressive approaches to human resource management (HRM) with little emphasis on developmental to support innovation. Of particular importance is the concept of 'high commitment management' that has emerged as a central component in the quest to link people management to business performance. Any attempt to improve HRM practices in the construction sector must also recognise cultural barriers to the implementation of new ways of working.(4) Innovative procurement. Includes legal, economic and organisational aspects of procurement systems. The last twenty years has seen a plethora of new procurement methods seeking to encourage different behaviours and allocations of risk. Many such initiatives experienced significant reality gaps between technological intent and resultant behaviours. Of particular importance in the current context is the notion of performance-based contracting which seeks to reward parties on the basis of building performance.(5) Innovation in through-life service provision. Most innovation in facilities management (FM) is concerned with service provision rather than the design and construction of the built asset. The inclusion of FM-service provision reflects the ICRC's strategic focus on through-life issues. The shift towards service provision is reflected in practice through procurement approaches such as PFI/PPP. But the issue has a wider significance as construction contractors increasingly embrace service philosophy. (6) Competitiveness, productivity and performance. Focuses on techniques for performance improvement, coupled with a broader emphasis on competitiveness and profitability within the marketplace. Techniques for performance improvement include: process mapping, benchmarking, value management, risk management and life-cycle costing. Also seeks to assess the competitiveness of the construction sector in comparison to other countries, and to achieve a broader understanding of the economic context within which firms operate.

Working with national governments across the UK - including Defra's Food Vulnerability Directorate, the Scottish and Welsh governments and the Food Standards Agency, this project will apply a systems approach to enable understanding and monitoring of the array of activities to enhance or provide food access to vulnerable people during the COVID-19 outbreak, including both financial and direct access. Reflecting Defra's Food Vulnerability focus, target groups include people with low incomes, shielded individuals, and the 'non-shielded vulnerable'. The aims of this project are to: - Undertake comprehensive mapping of the food access systems, highlighting key areas of vulnerability within them and identifying links to other support systems. - Using a case study approach, develop and apply methods for monitoring and evaluating the food access for vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 outbreak and through the easement of lockdown restrictions. - Develop 'exit strategies' for managing the transition out of systems that will not be provided after the crisis. - Establish 'best practice' protocols for resiliency planning for the future. The project methods include collaborative systems mapping, local area case studies (collating qualitative and quantitative data) and in-depth interviews with system users and other key actors. The project will provide policymakers with a comprehensive overview of food access activities for vulnerable groups and identification of key gaps and weaknesses within this system, informed by stakeholders who use these systems and those contributing to them. Civil society and business communities benefit by directly informing this work, but also from its evaluative and monitoring components, enabling them to identify and refine their efforts in the wider context.