Professor Alison Wolf CBE

Alison Wolf CBE is the Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management, and she sits as a cross-bench peer (Baroness Wolf of Dulwich) in the House of Lords. She specialises in the relationship between education and the labour market. She has a particular interest in:

• training and skills policy including apprenticeships
• the role of universities in modern societies

She currently directs the MSc in Executive Management.

Alison has been seconded part-time to central government since 2020, as an expert adviser on skills and manpower policy. In 2022 she was appointed to the Advisory Council for the UK government’s Levelling Up strategy. In 2019 she delivered the annual King's lectures, on 'Universities. the economy and the state'.

In February 2018, Alison was appointed to the English Government's Review of Post-18 Education and Funding, as a member of the independent expert panel. The report of the panel ('the 'Augar Review') was published in 2019: the government has published an interim response, accepting some of the key recommendations. In 2015/16 she was a member of the independent panel on technical education, chaired by Lord David Sainsbury, whose report formed the basis of the Government's 2016 Skills Plan.

In March 2011 she completed the ‘Wolf Report’ on vocational education for the English government. The recommendations were accepted and implemented. Alison has also been a specialist adviser to the House of Commons select committee on education and skills, writes widely for the national press and is a presenter for Analysis on BBC Radio 4.

While most of Alison's current work focuses on the interface between education institutions and labour markets, she also has long-standing interests in assessment, and in mathematics education. She was the founding Chair of Governors of the King's College London Mathematics School, established by King's College London and continues to be a governor of the school. She has been an adviser to, among others, the OECD, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Ministries of Education of New Zealand, France and South Africa, the European Commission, the International Accounting Education Standards Board, and the Bar Council.

Alison's books and monographs include The XX Factor: How Working Women Are Creating A New Society (Profile Books 2013) ; Remaking Tertiary Education (Resolution Foundation 2016) and Managers and Academics in a Centralising Sector: new staffing patterns in UK higher education. (2021) Her recent work has focused on the changing structure of the UK university sector, including the impact of international league tables. She has published widely in applied economics and education journals. She was educated at the universities of Oxford (MA, MPhil) and Neuchatel.

Alison spent her early career in the United States working as a policy analyst for the federal government, and worked for many years at the Institute of Education, University of London. Alison was awarded the CBE for services to education in the Queen's 2012 birthday honours.

Alison's Research Excellence Framework 2021 impact case study is called Rethinking and Re-engineering Government Skills Policy. Read the impact feature on this case study here.