Frances Leather

Title

Senior Associate

Profile

Frances worked for many years in the education sector as a secondary school teacher (mathematics, student support) and in management positions.  She taught in rural and city schools and at The Correspondence School.  Her Master of Public Policy degree, completed in 2005, included an internship as an analyst with the Education Review Office Corporate Office.  Frances held contract positions as a researcher at the VUW School of Government from January 2005 until November 2009 including from 1 July 2007 as a Research Fellow within the Institute of Policy Studies for the project Education capital formation, employment, migration, gender, work-life balance and missing men.

Research interests

Frances’s current research is focused on continuing the development of an evidence-based profile of the population of children and young people of compulsory school-age who are living in New Zealand.  In particular, she is researching indicators associated with migration that may provide early identification of those who at a young age are at risk of ‘dropping out’ from mainstream society

Publications

Leather, F (2009) Structural and data-based comparisons between the Estimated Resident Population and the Education Sector Population for children and young people of compulsory school age who are living in New Zealand IPS Working paper 09/11, Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies

Leather, F (2009) Prioritising Ethnic Data from Schools: Who are we Missing? A Research Note Social Policy Journal, 36: 82-87

Leather, F. (2009) Prioritising data in an increasingly multi-ethnic society. IPS Working Paper 09/05, Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies

Callister, P., Leather, F. and Holt, J. (2008) Gender and tertiary education: Is it useful to talk about male disadvantage? IPS Working Paper 08/10, Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies.

Leather, F. (2008) Young Adolescents in New Zealand. IPS Working Paper 08/09, Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies