UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

ADR England works in partnership with the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) to enhance the accessibility, usability and impact of Department for Education data, with a particular focus on the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset.

This collaboration brings together leading academic expertise and government data capability to unlock the full potential of linked administrative data for public good research.

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Supporting the use of the LEO dataset

The Department for Education’s LEO dataset is a world-leading resource linking education, employment, benefits and earnings data for around 38 million individuals. Through ADR England funding, CEPEO works closely with the Department for Education to improve how researchers can access, understand and use this complex dataset via the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service.

CEPEO plays a central role in reducing the technical barriers associated with LEO by developing documentation, shared code, synthetic data and other training materials that support researchers working with large-scale administrative data.

Enabling research-ready data

A key focus of CEPEO’s work is improving the usability and consistency of LEO. The team develops supporting resources such as derived variables, reproducible code, and guidance materials that make it easier for researchers to generate robust and comparable findings.

This includes contributing to a growing ecosystem of shared tools within the Secure Research Service, helping to reduce duplication of effort and accelerate the production of policy-relevant evidence.

Driving public value and engagement

CEPEO also plays a key role in building a research community around LEO. This includes delivering seminars, training and engagement events that connect researchers, policymakers and data owners. Over the next funding period, CEPEO will further expand this work by increasing opportunities for in-person engagement, developing evidence summaries on policy-relevant topics, and strengthening feedback loops with users of the data.

Research enabled through LEO has wide-ranging applications across government and society. It supports analysis of social mobility, regional inequality and the relationship between education and economic performance, which are all key priorities for policymakers.

Through its partnership with ADR England and the Department for Education, UCL CEPEO is helping to ensure that LEO data can be used more widely, more effectively, and with greater impact. This work is contributing to a stronger evidence base to inform policy decisions and improve life chances for current and future generations.