Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford
Doctor of Letters
Iram Siraj-Blatchford PhD, is professor of Early Childhood Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has been awarded the status of Academician of the Social Sciences (AcSS) and Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA). Her recent research projects have included Evaluation of the Foundation Phase across Wales and she is a principal investigator of the major Department for Education study on Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) and of the influential Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years project.
She is also a principal investigator of the five-year E4Kids study based at the University of Melbourne and funded by the Australian Research Council, and a three-year randomised control trial looking at children’s development in a disadvantaged area of Dublin funded by the Irish government and American philanthropies.
The EPPSE project has followed 3,000 children from age three to 16 years and is informing many of the radical changes in education that the previous and current government are currently introducing. She is a specialist early years advisor to governments and ministers in the UK and advises governments and non-governmental organisations like UNESCO, the World Food Programme and UNICEF overseas.
Her research has informed government developments and associated funding through the Treasury, which has led to an understanding of the importance of high-quality early years provision and of having a highly qualified and educated workforce. This has included: central government introducing pre-school to all disadvantaged two-year-olds, the Early Years Professional Status Programme (EYPS) which the University of Brighton runs, and local authorities funding the university’s Foundation Degree in Early Years Care and Education.
Professor Siraj-Blatchford is president of the British Association for Early Childhood Education and she has published over 50 major research reports, monographs and books and over 120 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in scholarly books. She is or has been honorary visiting professor at the universities of Wales, Wolverhampton, Beijing Normal, Melbourne, Waikato, Macquarie, Swansea and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. She is a consultant for several local authorities with whom the university has partnerships. She gave the keynote address at the 2009 EYPS conference in Crawley. Her professional activities also include: Ministerial Early Education Advisory Group, advisor to Minister for Children (England), governor of Coram Children’s Centre, specialist early years advisor by public appointment to the Ministerial Advisory Group in Wales and she has provided evidence several times to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education.
