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The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) holds its annual research conference as a means of communicating its research and information interests to the research community and to encourage engagement in key policy issues. This report provides details of the papers presented at the conference along with information about the Department's recently commissioned work and research publications. The report begins with the keynote speech by John Healey, Minister for Adult Skills, in which he emphasised the importance of strong links between policy and research evidence in education and skills. Strategies to achieve this goal include improving accessibility of research evidence to potential users outside the research community, employing a strategic approach to investment in research, and ensuring a coherent research effort and the effective dissemination and impact of research. Charles Desforges, Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) teaching and learning research program, outlined the challenges ahead for educational research over the next five years. The report provides summaries of the following seminars: Education and exclusion: multi-agency responses; Childcare; School; 14-21 participation; Skills; Adult participation and basic skills; The wider benefits of learning; Early years: Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE); The teacher labour market; Returns to education; Youth issues; Workforce development; Higher education: widening participation; EPPI-Centre (the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre). The concluding plenary session summarises the contributions of a panel discussion of future directions for education and skills research. The final section of the report lists research funded by DfES in 2000 and 2001.