Dr. Jutta von Maurice and Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach attended the conference alongside other scientists from 21 different countries and used this opportunity to contribute to the advancement of the SLLS policy group’s aims by organizing the symposium “Educational Research in Germany: A Dialogue between Policy, Administration, and Research”. In this way, participants had the chance to discuss the contested fields of policy, administration, the general public, and research with Alexander Renner, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), as well as Manfred Egner, former school principal and Ministerial Commissioner and today freelance staff in the LIfBi public relations team. 

The symposium was instigated as an initiative of the SLLS policy group, bringing together scientists from across Europe and the world on the basis of the following principles:

• Policy is developed within a political framework in which complex research evidence is only one element

• The timetable for action on policy rarely harmonises with that for producing findings at fixed intervals from longitudinal research

• Past evidence from long term longitudinal research may be seen as of ‘fading relevance’ to the key policy questions of the ‘here and now’

• Translating findings into policy-relevant messages and conclusions for practice requires communication and brokerage skills which are often lacking in research teams
  
  

  (from an e-mail by John Bynner and Tom Schuller, September 26, 2014).

  The Director of LIfBi, Prof. Hans-Günther Roßbach, is especially looking forward to hosting the SLLS conference at LIfBi in Bamberg in 2016.