Projects cut short after government withdraws money earmarked for education and employment evaluation
The government has withdrawn millions of pounds earmarked for research and evaluation of its education, employment and business policies since it came to power, documents revealed to the Guardian show.
An evaluation of academy schools, set up under Labour, is one of several research projects to have been scrapped sparking renewed criticism that the coalition is abandoning evidence-based policymaking.
A group of statisticians and researchers, the Radical Statistics Group, who campaign for greater transparency in the use of official statistics, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a list of research projects which had been cancelled or cut short across four departments since May last year.
The responses reveal that 70 projects worth �8.9m over several years have been halted.
They include:
? A �400,000 evaluation of academies that was established under Labour
? A �2.8m survey of disabled children's services
? Six projects run under the auspices of the Department for Work and Pensions, including one on lone parents. In all, the department spent �612,000 in the current financial year on work that now won't be finished.
? Research on the Fire Service worth more than �177,000
? A survey of the public's views on social cohesion, discrimination and race relations known as the Citizenship Survey.
More than �715,000 has been spent on research that will not now be completed, the government's responses reveal. This is because many of the projects were already under way when the decision was made to terminate them.
The revelations fly in the face of David Cameron's claims that the government supports evidence-based policy-making. It follows claims from scientists in December that the government was rejecting evidence-based policy when it proposed that ministers would no longer be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy.
Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Communities and Local Government (DCLG), Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE) have defended the scrapping of key evaluations and dismissed accusations that the cuts indicated a move towards more ideologically driven decision-making.
The Department for Education said the same amount would be spent on research this year as last year. A spokesman said the academies evaluation was commissioned by the previous government and little work had been undertaken. Its remit was confined to the previous government's sponsored academies and therefore excluded schools becoming academies under the current government, a spokesman said. He added that ministers were considering alternatives. "There is no point in simply doing research for research's sake ? it is only right that it reflects ministers' priorities and informs the policies of the government."
A DWP spokesman said ministers were "committed to evidence-based policy making," adding that the department expected to spend a total of �20m on research and evaluation in the current financial year.
A BIS spokesman said an assessment was "always" undertaken before decisions to curtail or cancel research were made. "Owing to a challenging spending review settlement, research needs to be prioritised in order to get the best value for money for the taxpayer," he said.
Defending the decision to axe the Citizens Survey, a spokeswoman for the DCLG said it was a "complex and expensive survey to run" and had been cancelled following a review of where savings could be made.
Academics have attacked the cuts. Ludi Simpson, professor of population studies at Manchester University, said cancellation of the Citizenship Survey was shortsighted. "The Citizenship Survey was the only source of assessing how people felt about immigration and integration. All surveys cost what they do. We will be left only with unrepresentative internet surveys, unsuitable for serious government policy-making."
A RadStats spokesman said: "Key government ministers have proved themselves to be practically innumerate in their use of existing evidence to justify new policy moves. How do we know they have cut/curtailed the right projects? And what plans have they to address any information gaps they have created to check their new policy moves are working? This could be a double whammy of waste ? wasted research monies on unusable research from curtailed research, and a waste of spending on policy moves that early evidence could show may not do what was expected of them."
Stephen Overell, associate director of policy, at The Work Foundation think tank, said the axing of so many projects cast doubt on the coalition's claims to support evidence-based policy. "The anxiety here is that ideology not evidence directs which research projects are cancelled or curtailed, leading to doubts about the coalition's commitment to evidence-based policymaking. Properly and independently evaluating government programmes and initiatives are a duty of policymakers that must underpin the policymaking process. It seems especially wasteful to be cutting research already well under way without deriving any value from it."
? Full FOI data can be found via Radstats at: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/reduced-statistics/
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/26/money-research-education-policy
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