§ Mr. BradyTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment he has made of the quality of British university research relative to that of other comparable countries. [6939]
§ Dr. HowellsNone. But the Research Assessment Exercise conducted periodically by the higher education funding bodies assesses the quality of higher education research in the UK against an international standard of
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Maintained schools in England1 Local education authority Percentage of 15 year old pupils achieving 5 or more grades A*-C2 Rank Secondary school pupil teacher ratio Rank Primary school pupil teacher ratio Rank Isles of Scilly 73.1 1 8.1 1 15.0 1 Kingston upon Thames 59.9 2 16.2 38 23.8 78 Sutton 56.4 3 16.6 62 23.3 61 Harrow 53.5 4 15.6 15 20.8 11 Barnet 53.4 5 14.8 6 20.9 14 North Yorkshire 53.0 6 n/a n/a n/a n/a excellence. Further, the Higher Education Funding Council for England has commissioned a study on the international standing of research undertaken in English higher education institutions.
In addition, earlier this year, the Office of Science and Technology published a paper on "The Quality of the UK Science Base", which measured the performance of the UK science base in comparison with that of other countries. This showed that with only 1 per cent. of the world's population the UK carried out 5.5 per cent. of the world's research effort and was a major force in research with an 8.0 per cent. share of world scientific publications and a 9.1 per cent. share of world citations.