Alison Wolf has been a dominant figure in UK and global education policy for several decades now. Her 2002 book, ‘Does Education Matter?’, was an powerful and persuasive case against the prevailing trends in post-compulsory education policy under New Labour, lamenting the UK’s poor record on vocational training and its obsession with higher education expansion as a means towards economic growth. Wolf argued we’d got it the wrong way around: higher levels of education are a result as much as a cause of economic development.
Since then, Wolf has been most influential in further education and training policy, including being an integral part of the recent Sainsbury Review of vocational education pathways, accepted by the government in its entirety. Wolf has called current higher and further education funding policies unsustainable, and her views on the imbalance between HE and FE may be back in vogue. Cuts to FE have been stalled, and Theresa May’s cadre of Tory MPs are much more likely to believe that ‘too many people go to university’. If this narrative gains traction, expect Wolf’s influence to extend much further into the HE sphere. A cross-bench peer, she may also be pivotal when the HE Bill makes it to the Lords.