Jake Anders

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

“Quantity of petrol” was rather a dull James Bond film

Come and join us @sriucl.bsky.social We’re looking for an Assistant Professor in Quantitative Social Science with a research agenda on the environment and/or climate change, and expertise in causal inference. See full details and apply 👉🏼 www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Psychological Science special issue call 📣 Ever had your research denigrated bc it's "only descriptive", "what's the mechanism though?" and "but what are the theoretical implications?" Now has come your time to shine. Send your best descriptive work! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

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Today's GCSE results are mostly looking pretty stable: 70.7% of all grades 4 and above—up slightly from 70.5%; 23.1% at 7 or above—also nudging up from 23.0%. Even the share of entries being awarded grade 9 is the same as last year, not continuing to rise.

🚨As students receive this year's GCSE results, our new working paper by @robbiemaris.bsky.social, @jakeanders.uk , Tammy Campbell and @gillwyness.bsky.social shows that GCSE resits may harm student wellbeing.

prize fellowships are out: two three-year postdoc positions in sociology, time and resources to carry out independent research projects with minimal distraction. Deadline 21 September. Details: www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/the-college/...

A-level and other Level 3 qualification results are out with a lot of focus on top grades rising again: 28.3% of entries got an A or above (28.2% in 2025, 25.2% in 2019), and 78.1% got a C or above. But results aren't equally good news for everyone.

This draws on new evidence from a working paper by the same team, analysing data on perceptions of vocational education in countries across Europe: econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...

Following announcement of plans to expand technical education from age 14, our new briefing note by @robbiemaris.bsky.social @jakeanders.uk & @gillwyness.bsky.social asks: What would it take to achieve parity of esteem between academic and vocational education? econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...

Our incoming Prime Minister has a greater knowledge of English literature than his predecessor: Would Starmer have been able to name any of the key locations in Macbeth? Burnham would.

New article: Experimental education research: rethinking why, how, and when to use random assignment Out today (even though it’s Saturday): doi.org/10.1080/1380... With @drsamsims.bsky.social @mjinglis.bsky.social @benweidmann.bsky.social @benstyles.bsky.social & Hugues Lortie-Forgues

Last night (3rd July) between 10.50-11.30 my electric cargo bike was stolen. Black Pakyak E+ with a baby carrier. First time I’d taken it to town 🥹 . I parked it on the Plain roundabout near the Cape of Good Hope pub. Secured it with a Diamond grade lock. If you saw anything please let me know.

New paper out in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social on teacher sorting and the impact of teacher qualifications on student achievement. Read more here:

Had to read this one to figure out whether it's as click-bait-y as the title. As somebody who has written a lot about causal inference with observational data, I'm quite conflicted about it.> asteriskmag.substack.com/p/the-case-a...

🚨🚨 4 weeks to go until the 2026 CEPEO #annyleccy! 🚨🚨 Prof. Jacob is going to tell us what happened when schools banned phones in the US -- just as a widespread ban (probably) comes into force in the UK. Sign up at the link below!

Interesting research job for a quant sociologist at the ESRI in Dublin. 5-year contract with possibility of permanency. €93k. candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

📢 Open positions! I’m recruiting 2 postdocs + 3 PhD positions at C³S, @goetheuni.bsky.social in #ClimateJustice, environmental inequality, #Demography & #ComputationalSocialScience 🌍📊💻 3–4 years + strong support for training🎒 Deadline: 23 June 2026 More: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen...

A new Economics of Education Research Centre (EERC) — run by CEPEO, @cep-lse.bsky.social and @theifs.bsky.social — has been awarded a ~£3m DfE contract to build the evidence base on economic and social returns to education and skills, from early years to post-16. www.ucl.ac.uk/consultants/...

I have a new working paper out today, looking at the impact of educational use of ChatGPT/AI on student test scores. Importantly, this is overall student-led use (incl for cheating!), not specialized AI tutoring tools. To my surprise, I found... no effect at all! arxiv.org/abs/2605.08812

Good data is essential for policy. Today it’s been a year since we had a permanent National Statistician. No news on what is happening with the current recruitment which began Oct 2025. This is an under the bonnet issue that points to state failure 🧵 uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/stateme...

📢WE'RE HIRING! 1 pre-doc and 1 post-doc position, both until 31 March 2028 initially. We're a super friendly multi-disciplinary team, though these positions have a strong economics focus. Closing date 20th May. Please share widely! Pre-doc: tinyurl.com/3t75je4a Post-doc: tinyurl.com/ycyrzaxp

New data alert! 🚨 Our #LEARNineq team at UCL CEPEO is diving into the latest wave of the Millennium Cohort Study. Tracking UK people born in 2000, it looks at changes in education, work, health & families to help tackle educational inequality. Learn more: cls.ucl.ac.uk/millennium-c...

📢 Upcoming seminar (UCL CEPEO Spring Series 2026) Revisiting the 'Dominance Approach': An appropriate measure of social origin for those born in Great Britain during the 1950s–1980s? 🎤 Dr Michael Vallely (University of Strathclyde) 📅 30 April 2026 ⏰ 3pm (UK) 🔗 Join us: ucl.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

If you're a current or recent PhD student based in London and using quantitative methods...we're currently recruiting TAs for next year, get in touch!

This is excellent from @samfr.bsky.social Why saving universities is far more than academic observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Why do we still run marathons even though it is much quicker to get a train or taxi? Why should we learn to write even though it is much quicker to get the LLM to do it for us? Sometimes the aim of doing something is to do it. There is no shortcut. substack.nomoremarking.com/p/what-is-th...

This would be bad at any time, but while the government is talking g about an AI revolution and automating / digitising the state with a data revolution etc, it's absolutely insane. Statistics are at the bedrock of all of this stuff.

How did you get this footage of me?

Considering using Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data in your research? Seems daunting? CEPEO, funded by @adr-uk.bsky.social, are working with DfE to help! Presenting a synthetic version of LEO to download & explore today: datacatalogue.ukdataservice.ac.uk/studies/stud...

Still time to register and join me for an introduction to some of the practicalities of doing youth transitions research using administrative data tomorrow lunchtime Registration link below ⬇️⬇️⬇️

A postdoc position is now available in my project Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity. Start date flexible within the next 12 months, apply by 9 May. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

📢📢 interested in doing research on youth transitions using adminstrative data? 📢📢 join our very own @jakeanders.uk who will be giving a practical introduction to exactly that next tuesday (14/04) online sign up for the webinar here: zoom.us/webinar/regi... @adruk.bsky.social community catalyst

May I interest you in £10k for humanities or social science research? Our small grants scheme is open. Apply by 3rd June. We allocate through partial randomisation - awarding randomly between all applications that meet our quality threshold www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...