IWA Research Programmes

Research 2007/2008

Recent Research Publications

Media in Wales – Serving Public Values
This document is a survey of media in Wales – across print, broadcast and online and in Welsh and English – and includes data and commentary. The research was supported by a Welsh Assembly Government grant. The report also contains reflections on Ofcom’s second public service broadcasting review and on the options to improve Wales’ media provision. The report will also be published as a booklet soon.
To download click here (PDF 1.1MB). To download a Welsh Language version of the Reflections chapter click here (PDF 204K). ISBN: 978 1 904773 34 4

Europe: United or Divided by Culture?
By Anthony Everitt, author and cultural consultant
2008 is the EU’s Year of Inter-Cultural Dialogue. As a contribution to this dialogue the IWA has published Anthony Everitt’s reflections on a series of seminars arranged by the European Cultural Foundation’s UK Forum and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The publication explores the importance of culture in the development of European identity and citizenship and the challenges and changes to identity brought by large-scale migration and other changes linked to globalisation.
Price £8/€12 (Discount to IWA members). ISBN 978 1 904 773 32 0

A Strategy for the Welsh Economy
By Dr John Ball, senior lecturer at Swansea Metropolitan University’s business school
The Welsh economy is facing unprecedented challenges from the impact of globalisation and must engage in a process of constant renewal if it is to prosper and survive. This publication offers a critique of current policies and suggests an alternative approach based on the ‘diamond’ model of economic development proposed by Michael Porter, a business expert. The publication aims to promote a fundamental re-think that will replace what are seen as the often unconnected, piecemeal and mutually exclusive schemes attempted over the years with higher order strategic themes. It suggests an overarching, innovative and radical strategy based on developing business excellence and regional competitiveness.
Price £10 (Discount to IWA members). ISBN 978 1 904 773 31 3

Assembly to Senedd: the Convention and the Move to Primary Powers
by IWA Director, John Osmond
The transition towards primary powers for the Assembly is well under way, given the 2006 Government of Wales Act that allows the Assembly to gradually acquire legislative competence to pass its own laws. The One Wales agreement of 2007 between Labour and Plaid Cymru promised to hold a referendum as soon as practicable and for both parties to campaign for a positive outcome. The coalition government also formed the All Wales Convention, which will try to raise awareness of current legislative arrangements and assess the public appetite for further devolution. This publication considers the issues facing Wales: the implications of further primary powers on the UK’s constitution; the formation of a Welsh jurisdiction; and whether it might be time to revisit the recommendations of the Richard Commission in 2004.
Price £10 (discount for IWA members). ISBN 978 1 904773 30 6

Small School Closure in Wales: New Evidence
Working closely with David Reynolds, Professor of Education, University of Plymouth, and Meriel Jones, a freelance social and educational researcher, we examined the impact of small school closure in Wales. Researchers sought the views of pupils, teachers and parents from communities in Powys and Pembrokeshire that had gone through the process of school closure and amalgamation. The research also considered the educational outcomes of the reorganisations and recommended how future small school closures should be managed to achieve optimum results. The project was supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Ernest Cook Trust and published in November 2007.
Price £10 (discount for IWA members). ISBN 978 1 904773 27 6

The Welsh Aerospace ‘Cluster’
This research looked at the challenges facing one of the key industrial sectors within Wales. Key issues included: a) the current and likely future situation of Welsh metal-based component manufactures in the light of the rapidly growing significance of composites; b) the state of and prospects for Welsh maintenance and repair organisations (MRO) in the face of growing competition from other advanced regions and low-cost countries; and c) strengths and weaknesses in the R&D and skills profile, and the provision and availability of training. The research involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of the sector to determine what might be the most appropriate cluster characteristics and also included interviews with keystone companies and other leading participants within the sector. This study by the IWA, working in partnership with Cardiff and Glamorgan Universities, was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government Economic Research Advisory Panel and follows an earlier project, Auditing Welsh Industry: A Clusters-Based Approach (2006).
To dowload click here (PDF 2.7MB)

Crossing the Rubicon: Coalition Politics Welsh Style
By IWA Director, John Osmond
At various times in the fraught two months following the May 2007 election each of the four parties in the National Assembly faced the prospect of participating in Government, and each also stared into the abyss of Opposition. There were two critical moments. In the first the Welsh Liberal Democrat Executive Committee, in a tied vote, rejected the opportunity to participate in the so-called Rainbow coalition government with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives. In the second, the Plaid Cymru Group was faced with an extraordinary, unforeseen and historic choice: whether to be the junior partner in a coalition with Labour, or engineer a no confidence vote that would result in it leading a Rainbow coalition with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Including interviews with many of the key participants, this book reveals how the One Wales agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru was made, telling the story of two of the most extraordinary months in the history of Welsh politics.
Price: £10 (discount for members) ISBN 1 904 773 26 9

Time to Deliver: The Third Term and Beyond. Policy options for Wales
This book, the work of eight groups of experts brought together by the IWA during 2006, examines policy options for Wales during the third term of the National Assembly, elections for which will be held in May 2007. It looks at what is likely to be in the in-tray of Assembly Government Ministers in the new Welsh government and at the longer term horizon issues that will need to be borne in mind when framing policies. Each of the chapters in this 316 page volume reviews what has been achieved during the first two terms and then addresses the much harder task of coming up with practical policy interventions that could be achievable in the four years following May 2007.
Price £30 (discount for members) ISBN 1 904 773 18 4

Roaring Dragons: Entrepreneurial Tales from Wales
The IWA’s study into Welsh-owned medium-sized businesses, which forms Phase 1 of a Hodge Foundation supported research programme, was published in November 2006. It involved interviews with eleven leading businesses to provide an understanding of how they have developed to reach their present market position, the challenges they face and how they have overcome them.
Price £15 (discount for members) ISBN 1 904773 17 6

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Research Work Under Way

Academy Health Wales
The Institute of Welsh Affairs and UWIC, supported by the pharmaceuticals company, Pfizer, propose the creation of a health academy for Wales to be a focus for improved communication between health and social care policy makers and practitioners. Health and social care comprise the largest segment of the Welsh public service, both in terms of expenditure and personnel, yet there is a widely shared view that there is insufficient dialogue within the sector.

Academy Health Wales is seeking to develop a wide membership, bringing together policy makers from the Assembly Government, health boards and trusts, political parties, academia and the health care and pharmaceutical and other related health industries, as well as the wider civic society. It provides a regular forum for dialogue and discussion on health policy. Proceedings of the inaugural conference held in July 2007, entitled The Welsh Health Battleground: Policy Approaches for the Third Term, were published in January 2008.
Price £10 (Discount to IWA members). ISBN 978 1 904 773 29 0

Academy Health Wales will be meeting in early May 2008 to produce a response to the Welsh Assembly Government’s consultation on the reorganisation of health trusts and boards within the NHS in Wales. The Academy’s second annual conference is on the theme ’Innovation in health and health care delivery’ and is being held at the Parc Thistle Hotel, Cardiff, on November 10. Dr Leszek Borysiewicz, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council will be the keynote speaker.

The Heads of the Valleys Experience
A conference in Tredegar on this theme was held on February 7, 2008 followed by a seminar hosted by the Regeneration Institute at Cardiff University. Contributions and subsequent reflections by the conference contributors will be published during 2008. A key question is: how can we make a psychological breakthrough to enable people to envisage a different but viable future for the Heads of the Valleys?

The Stern Report: The Challenge for Wales
On February 28, 2008, the IWA held a conference on this theme in Cardiff, in association with Cynnal Cymru: the Sustainable Development Forum for Wales and CBI Wales. The Stern Report, in December 2006, commissioned by the UK Treasury, recommended that 3.5 per cent of our current GDP should be spent on mitigating the impact of climate change by reducing carbon emissions. This poses questions for Wales, including: how can the Welsh economy move in a direction that responds to the Stern review? Can Wales get ahead of the game by playing to our strengths in such fields as renewable energy? The publication will incorporate findings from a forthcoming conference in association with the Institute of Directors, Making Business Sense of Sustainable Development, to be held on June 12, 2008. See the Events section for more details. [more]

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Research Proposals in Development

Tackling Educational Disengagement
A key underlying policy challenge facing Wales is the educational under-achievement of our school leavers:
• The number of 19-year-olds without adequate qualifications (judged to be five GCSEs at Grade C or above) has been fluctuating at around 30 per cent for the past ten years or so. In fact, 10 per cent or so leave school with no qualifications at all.
• 19-year-olds who have failed to acquire adequate qualifications at that age are unlikely to have remedied this situation by the time they are in their mid twenties.

What this means is that each year, with 30 per cent of the cohort leaving secondary school without adequate qualifications, we are simply projecting into the future more poverty statistics and more economic under-achievement. Research has shown that there is a critical moment when this 30 per cent is created. This is at about the time children move from primary into secondary school. At this point many of our young people start to perform poorly because they become disengaged from the education process.

Former Education Minister in the Assembly Government, Jane Davidson, acknowledged this reality, allocating £16m a year over two years to a new programme Raising the Attainment and Individual Standards in Education, or Raise. It is providing funding for 510 primary, 71 secondary and 30 special schools in mainly disadvantaged areas across Wales. The money will be used for activities such as: appointment of learning mentors; out of hours activities; development of home-school links; collaboration with FE institutions; behavioural strategies; community focused activities.

This research project is designed to provide an early understanding of the likely effectiveness of these strategies. Involving interviews with key participants in a selected group of the schools, it will probe whether more radical measures will be needed, such as a recasting of the curriculum with more emphasis given to vocational courses, and the potential advantages of 7 to 14 Middle Schools.

Severn Barrage
The Institute of Welsh Affairs wishes to promote an informed debate around the inter-related environmental, economic, social and political issues arising from the possibility of major investment in exploiting the energy potential of the Severn estuary and the Western Approaches. The Environment Agency Wales, Cynnal Cymru and Severn Estuary Partnership support the IWA’s efforts to organise a study into the socio-economic impact of a Severn barrage.

A major research study on the potential for tidal power in the UK, including the Severn Estuary, has been published by the Sustainable Development Commission. The IWA is planning to participate in this project in the area of public engagement and the socio-economic consequences of a barrage. This could involve our organising a number of seminars or conferences to gauge stakeholders views on possible development alternatives.

Promotion of Welsh language teaching in English-medium schools
Following the publication of Saving Our Language by Ken Hopkins in May 2006 we are in discussion with the Welsh Language Board and Cwmni Iaith, about creating a project to communicate the main messages in the report to the English-medium secondary school sector across Wales. In his paper Ken Hopkins describes the success of Treorchy Comprehensive School in the Rhondda, in co-operation with its feeder primary schools, in transforming two of its eight form intakes into Welsh medium streams. The proposal, still at an early stage, is to develop a seminar programme which can be taken to other English medium schools across Wales to communicate what can be done for the language in this key sector.

Civic Engagement with the National Assembly during the Third Term
Now that the Government of Wales Act 2006 has come into force, following the May 2007 election, the Assembly Government and backbench members have greater opportunities to initiate primary legislation, using the new Orders in Council procedure, Assembly legislation-making (Measures) and the expansion of existing powers (with Legislative Competence Orders) in a range of fields specified in the 2006 Act.

What opportunities will there be for the public to become engaged in this process, either through pre-legislative scrutiny or for providing views on legislation as it is proceeded with by the Assembly? The IWA proposes exploring how mechanisms might be put in place to facilitate such involvement. These could take various forms:

• Organising seminars on particular areas of policy with legislative potential, for example in the health or education fields.
• Putting together citizens’ juries on specific legislative proposals as they come forward.

Living with our Landscape
In association with the Countryside Council for Wales we are developing a proposal to examine the medium and long term future of the National Parks in Wales in light of potential legislative changes that may be proposed during the Assembly’s third term. One proposal, for example, is for a Wales specific designation of the Parks and other Areas of outstanding Natural Beauty and SSSIs. The proposal, currently being worked on, is to hold an expert seminar in June which will lead to a publication to be launched at a major all-Wales conference in early 2009.

April 2008

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