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Someone in the know, who needs to remain anonymous, has been in touch to challenge my criticism of the amount going to research in the FCDO budget. They say :

“Research budget growth decisions were made all the way back in 2009-11 really; it takes so long to get programmes procured and live and then spending (which is never in the first year or even second year of a research programme). Even so, the research budget for education has been cut. We weren’t fighting for education attention against any other education budget – we had a 3% protected spend for the research department, and so went up against research funding for health / agriculture / governance etc. The hope was to generate research of a calibre that stopped ministers/spads questioning the viability of education spend because the evidence was seen as so weak (the Best Buys series didn’t help with that) – but the budget decisions weren’t related in process, nor in strategy.”.

If you have a view on this, but need to remain anonymous – get in touch by email at andybrockeducation@gmail.com and I will post your comment like this one.

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