Sam Sims

New research from Michigan State shows a) school climate has a pretty strong relationship with pupil absenteeism b) this seems to have got stronger since pandemic c) student sense of 'connectedness' may be particularly important aspect of school climate

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at UCL An academic position as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.

Are you a post-doc social scientist with strong quantitative skills?

Would you like to come and work with myself and @clairetyler.bsky.social alongside all the brilliant people at @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social?

If so, please apply for this job!

Please repost!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQK316/p...

Hi Mike! Sadly Jerrim not on Bluesky. I have not seen any research of the sort mentioned here about Michaela. The data is available to do it though. The anecdote/comment may be able KIP schools, rather than Michaela.

Some perspective: The S&P opened down -1.3% on Trump's Greenland saber-rattling. That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland.

And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.

In our latest CEPEO Working Paper, @drsamsims.bsky.social studies the effects of an intervention to improve A level physics uptake among female students by countering gender stereotypes. Read the results here:
econpapers.repec.org/paper/uclcep...

THREAD: I'll fact-check all the viral misinformation about the US military operation in Venezuela in this thread

This image, purporting to show the US military arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, is AI-generated.

According to Google's SynthID detector, it was created using Google AI.

Yes, the referencing in this sentence has gone badly wrong. Thanks for pointing out. Will fix in the new year.

Many students - and indeed adults - underrate themselves when it comes to maths. So what do we know about teaching for confidence in mathematics?

www.ambition.org.uk/blog/five-in...

Teacher Professional Development: Costs, Benefits and Policy Explore teacher evaluation methods, incentives, and their impact on student outcomes. Learn how performance measures drive teacher behavior and skills.

CEPEO colleague @drsamsims.bsky.social has co-authored a new book chapter on effective teacher training.

Access it for free here: livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...

New research with @clareroutledge.bsky.social

Funded by the Gatsby Foundation

We asked 2000 UK/US undergrads to choose between pairs of hypothetical jobs to understand how more of them could be tempted into teaching

Agree! 😢

Yes I think it does. We just need somebody to work out how to implement it. As I understand it, the United Learning plan to do this was vetoed by the Treasury.

Thanks Tom :)

Thanks to Gatsby for supporting this and to my brilliant co-author Clare Routledge

Full paper here, including a discussion of the limitations of our approach: repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeo...

YouTube video by Department for Education Get into teaching TV advert 2015

So what?

1. Starting salary matters for recruitment. This complements the evidence on importance of pay for retention.

2. Recruitment campaigns should emphasise extrinsic rewards, alongside the many meaningful aspects. Great 2015 example here - watch to the end! www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTzz...

Existing research, using traditional self-report methods, consistently finds that intrinsic/altruistic motives dominate the decision to become a teacher: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So why do we find such contrasting findings? One possibility:

We also find only limited differences in preferences across maths/physics/engineering (MPE) versus other undergrads

The often more severe shortages of teachers in maths and physics is therefore unlikely to be explained by differences in preferences

Drawing on the literature on ‘public service motivation’ we find some differences in preferences for jobs with social impact

In this graph, points further to right indicate more of a preference

But 1) these are modest 2) high PSM grads place no less weight on extrinsic rewards than low PSM grads

It's plausible that those on the margin of teaching (persuadable) are different to the average undergrad in our sample

But we find limited evidence for this among those who report they are considering/planning teaching:

Same graph but showing £ equivalent values:

6 weeks paid leave (grads) -> 13 weeks paid leave (teachers) = +£3.7k salary

Typical 40 hour week -> 52 hours per week (term time teaching) = -£3.2k salary

‘small’ social impact -> ‘significant’ (like teaching) = +£1.2k

TL;DR: Extrinsic rewards matter

Main results in image below

Horizontal axis: change in probability of choosing a job

Eg: Increasing starting salary from £28.5k (grad average UK) to £31.5k (teachers UK) increases probability of choosing a job by 0.08 (8 percentage points)

TL;DR: Pay and hours really matter to undergrads.

We used an online survey experiment with photo-ID-verified respondents

Our sample completed ~20,000 randomised job choice tasks, with values carefully chosen to reflect teaching and non-teaching jobs

Which would you pick?

New research with @clareroutledge.bsky.social

Funded by the Gatsby Foundation

We asked 2000 UK/US undergrads to choose between pairs of hypothetical jobs to understand how more of them could be tempted into teaching

edworkingpapers.com/sites/defaul...

Do you like the kind of research that we do at @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social? 📈

Do you want to learn more about education policy and analysis? 🏫

Then why not come and do our new MSc this September? 🧑‍🎓

Be warned - the module on teachers and teaching will be taught by me!

www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-...

We broadly welcome the recommendations of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, in particular citing CEPEO’s briefing note on the value of GCSEs (econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...) and...

KS3 Engagement Report - Lift Schools Our survey of 21,000 pupils found a stark drop in belonging from Year 6 to Year 9. We explore why student engagement dips in Key Stage 3. Read our full report.

More large-scale survey evidence that many students are becoming disengaged from education when they enter secondary school. This time from collaborators of mine at @liftschools.org

www.liftschools.org/ks3-engagement

Elon Musk's involvement in politics really hurt Tesla sales.

"Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles."

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Finally read the paper and it's worth the buzz.
mRNA vaccines saved 20 million lives in a global pandemic and the technology is opening up new avenues for the treatment of deadly cancers. This is really one of the most impactful scientific developments of our time.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reminds me of this UKIP add from 2010. Farage has always known that he functions as the F U button.