Dave Thomson is chief statistician at FFT with over fifteen years’ experience working with educational attainment data to raise attainment in local government, higher education and the commercial sector. His current research interests include linking education and workplace datasets to improve estimates of adult attainment and study the impact of education on employment and benefits outcomes.
Natasha Plaister is a statistician at FFT Education Datalab, having previously spent 10 years as a project manager at the Institute of Physics. Her interests include diversity and social mobility in education, particularly the inclusion of women in maths and science.
Dave Bibby specialises in resolving the technical challenges inherent in maintaining and analysing large education datasets. He develops and implements methods for handling such issues as the cleaning of raw data, imputation and estimation of missing data, linking of multiple datasets and carrying out complex analysis in very large datasets.
Katie Beynon is a statistician at FFT Education Datalab, having previously spent five years as a secondary school data manager and three in higher education. Her main research interests are inclusion and fairness in education, with a particular focus on the areas of attendance, curriculum, and student outcomes.
Laura James is Head of Tutoring & Projects at FFT Education Datalab and FFT Education, with over eight years’ experience of managing large-scale data and research projects. She is currently responsible for the delivery of Tutoring at FFT, who are an approved provider of the National Tutoring Programme. Laura also manages a number of projects for the Educational Endowment Foundation, Welsh Government, C2K in Northern Ireland and other international customers.
Rebecca Allen is an associate research fellow, having led FFT Education Datalab from its launch in February 2015 to January 2018. She is an expert in the analysis of large scale administrative and survey datasets, including the National Pupil Database and School Workforce Census. In January 2018 she took up a position as a professor at the UCL Institute of Education, leading the Centre for Education Improvement Science.
Sam Sims is an associate research fellow at FFT Education Datalab and a post-doctoral researcher at the UCL Institute of Education, where he completed a PhD on the economics of the teacher labour market. His research focuses on how we can better attract, train and retain teachers.
John Jerrim is a research associate at FFT Education Datalab and a professor of education and social statistics at UCL Institute of Education. John’s research interests include the economics of education, access to higher education, intergenerational mobility, cross-national comparisons and educational inequalities.