Yearly Archives / 2020

COVID-19: health and social care research projects for educational purposes

BUCRU & RDS SW

  

Please note that Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) and NIHR RDS SW (Research Design Service South West) offices are currently closed due to Coronavirus.  Staff are still working and able to offer research advice remotely,

Please contact bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk in the first instance.

We are looking forward to working with you all face to face when this is over.

PGRs | Researcher Development Programme Online Resources

Online Resources

The Researcher Development Programme continues to provide an extensive range of online content which now more than ever may be helpful to you. These can be accessed 24/7 from the comfort of your own home. Don’t forget to keep a record of your ongoing development on the new training needs analysis template.

I am working with various workshop facilitators to arrange, where possible, for online session to be delivered. Please do bear with us whilst we work as quickly as possible, as you can appreciate there are some significant changes underway with taught programmes which may cause delays.

So…if you haven’t already, please explore the online resources on the Researcher Development Programme Brightspace unit, I will keep you all informed of any updates and changes as and when they happen.

Managing Pressure Positively: This workshop was due to be delivered on Thursday 2 April however given the restrictions on face-to-face teaching I am now working with Dr Margaret Collins to deliver this session virtually. Please keep an eye on announcements and emails for details on how to join.

Me@BU

I wanted to further take this opportunity to highlight the resources available via Me@BU. On here you may wish to use the self-care toolkit which provides useful advice and resources to support you in managing your wellbeing and lots of links to The Wellbeing Thesis.

Celebrating Achievements

While it is easy to get overwhelmed by the ongoing challenges we all face, it is important to acknowledge and share our accomplishments be this big or small. I have set up a discussion board for us all to use to come together as a PGR community and share our daily achievements and remain connected. Please don’t be shy! Share away.

If you have any questions relating to the Researcher Development Programme please do not hesitate to contact me.

Take Care!

Natalie
Research Skills & Development Officer
pgrskillsdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk

Reminder: Expressions of Interest invited from senior academics to join the BU REF Appeals Panel

Our BU REF 2021 Code of Practice states that in the event of an appeal the Vice-Chancellor will convene and chair the BU REF Appeals Panel to undertake a review of each case. The role of the Panel is to:

• Review and consider all appeals submitted by appraising all documentation pertaining to the REF Steering Group decision and the case for appeal.

• Decide on whether or not an individual should be referred back to the REF Steering Group and/or the REF Circumstances Board for further consideration.

• Ensure final decisions are communicated to the Head of RDS who will report to the REF Steering Group and notify the individual of the outcome of the appeal.

The Panel is chaired by the Vice-Chancellor with support from a member of Research Development & Support (RDS). Membership will include at least three senior academics.

We are now seeking expressions of interest from senior academic colleagues (G10+) who are interested in joining the REF Appeals Panel. Successful applicants will be required to attend one or more meetings of the REF Appeals Panel (to be held in late September 2020), have a thorough knowledge of the REF guidance and the BU REF Code of Practice, and undertake REF-focussed equality and diversity training. We therefore ask for your commitment, active contribution and, most importantly, confidentiality due to the sensitive work of the Panel. In return you will be involved in an important cross-University committee, gain an insight into the REF and equality and diversity (both highly topical issues in the sector), and be engaged in academic citizenship.

Nomination procedure:

We are seeking to recruit a diverse group of at least six senior academics to potentially be called upon in the event of an appeal. Colleagues who are interested should submit an expression of interest stating your interest in being a member of the BU REF Appeals Panel and summarising the experience, skills and attributes you could bring to the Panel (max 250 words).  Your nomination should state your name, job title, Faculty and Department.

The deadline for expressions of interest is Friday 27th March 2020. Nominations should be emailed to ref@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Expressions of interest will be reviewed by a panel of reviewers who are responsible for agreeing on which applicants to invite to serve on the BU REF Appeals Panel.

Eligibility:

Applications are invited from senior BU academic staff (Grade 10+). You must be independent from REF preparations (for example, applicants cannot be UOA Leaders, impact champions or output champions and cannot be members of the REF Steering Group, REF Committee or REF Circumstances Board).

If you have any queries, please speak with Julie Northam (Head of RDS)  in the first instance.

Latest CMMPH publication by Dr. Alison Taylor

Congratulations to Dr. Alison Taylor in the Centre for Midwifery,Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) whose third PhD paper  has just been accepted by the International Breastfeeding Journal.  Alison’s paper ‘Commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding: video diaries by first-time mothers’ reminds us that many of aspects of our lives are increasingly commercialised in post-modern society.  Although breastfeeding is perhaps a late comer to this process in recent years, it too has seen significant commercialisation facilitated by social media and our obsession with celebrity culture.

This paper explores how the commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding impacts mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding.  The paper highlights that women preparing for breastfeeding are exposed to increasing commercialisation.  When things do not go to plan, women are even more exposed to commercial solutions. The impact of online marketing strategies fuelled their need for paraphernalia so that their dependence on such items became important aspects of their parenting and breastfeeding experiences.   Dr. Taylor and her co-authors  offer new insights into how advertising influenced mothers’ need for specialist equipment and services. Observing mothers in their video diaries, provided valuable insights into their parenting styles and how this affected their breastfeeding experience.

The International Breastfeeding Journal is an Open Access journal owned by Springer.

 

References:

  1. Taylor, A.M., van Teijlingen, E., Alexander, J., Ryan, K. (2020) Commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding: video diaries by first-time mothers, International Breastfeeding Journal (accepted).
  2. Taylor A, van Teijlingen, E.,Ryan K, Alexander J (2019) ‘Scrutinised, judged & sabotaged’: A qualitative video diary study of first-time breastfeeding mothers, Midwifery 75: 16-23.
  3. Taylor, A.M., van Teijlingen, E., Alexander, J., Ryan, K. (2019) The therapeutic role of video diaries: A qualitative study involving breastfeeding mothers, Women & Birth 32(3):276-83. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871519218300064

Donning the ‘Slow Professor’

Congratulations to the Bournemouth authors who published the paper ‘Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project’ earlier this month [1].  This paper was published in the journal Radical Teacher.  The paper argues that the corporatisation of Higher Education has introduced new performance measurements as well as an acceleration of academic tasks creating working environments characterised by speed, pressure and stress. This paper discusses findings from a qualitative, feminist participatory action research (PAR) study undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of women academics at a modern, corporate university in England. The study illuminates how corporatized HE erodes faculty autonomy, degrades learning environments, damages professional satisfaction and health. Strategies for resistance and liberation developed through the PAR process are discussed.

The writing collective for this paper comprised: Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Ann Hemingway, Sue Sudbury, Anne Quinney, Maggie Hutchings, Luciana Esteves, Shelley Thompson, Helen Jacey, Anita Diaz, Peri Bradley, Jenny Hall, Michele Board, Anna Feigenbaum, Lorraine Brown, Vanessa Heaslip,  and Liz Norton.

Reference: Ashencaen Crabtree, S., Hemingway, A., Sudbury, S., Quinney, A., Hutchings, M., Esteves, L., Thompson, S., Jacey, H., Diaz, A., Bradley, P., Hall, J., Board, M., Feigenbaum, A., Brown, L., Heaslip, V., Norton, L. (2020) Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project , Radical Teacher, Vol. 116

HE policy update for the w/e 20th March 2020

We are going to change the way that we do the BU HE policy update to respond to current circumstances.  No-one wants to receive a long bulletin on a Friday evening after a long week juggling working from home with all the other requirements on your time.  And really, we need to discourage anyone from working at the weekend if you don’t have to.

So, we will move to publishing mid-week, probably Wednesday.  However, as admissions are such a hot topic we are doing one last Friday update focussed only on admissions and the current state of affairs.

What on earth are we going to do about admissions

Since the summer exams were cancelled earlier this week, HE policy communications channels have been lit up with speculation, opinion and views about what might happen next.

The latest government guidance (afternoon of 20th March) says:

There will also be an option to sit an exam early in the next academic year for students who wish to.

Ofqual will develop and set out a process that will provide a calculated grade to each student which reflects their performance as fairly as possible, and will work with the exam boards to ensure this is consistently applied for all students.

  • The exam boards will be asking teachers, who know their students well, to submit their judgement about the grade that they believe the student would have received if exams had gone ahead.
  • To produce this, teachers will take into account a range of evidence and data including performance on mock exams and non-exam assessment – clear guidance on how to do this fairly and robustly will be provided to schools and colleges. The exam boards will then combine this information with other relevant data, including prior attainment, and use this information to produce a calculated grade for each student, which will be a best assessment of the work they have put in.
  • … More information will be provided as soon as possible.
  • The aim is to provide these calculated grades to students before the end of July. In terms of a permanent record, the grades will be indistinguishable from those provided in other years. We will also aim to ensure that the distribution of grades follows a similar pattern to that in other years, so that this year’s students do not face a systematic disadvantage as a consequence of these extraordinary circumstances.
  • We recognise that some students may nevertheless feel disappointed that they haven’t been able to sit their exams. If they do not believe the correct process has been followed in their case they will be able to appeal on that basis. In addition, if they do not feel their calculated grade reflects their performance, they will have the opportunity to sit an exam at the earliest reasonable opportunity, once schools are open again. Students will also have the option to sit their exams in summer 2021.
  • There is a very wide range of different vocational and technical qualifications as well as other academic qualifications for which students were expecting to sit exams this summer. These are offered by a large number of awarding organisations, and have differing assessment approaches – in many cases students will already have completed modules or non-exam assessment which could provide evidence to award a grade. We are encouraging these organisations to show the maximum possible flexibility and pragmatism to ensure students are not disadvantaged. Ofqual is working urgently with the sector to explore options and we will work with them to provide more details shortly.
  • The Government will not publish any school or college level educational performance data based on tests, assessments or exams for 2020.

Issues raised include:

Does no exams = no results = students who want to, not being able to go to university either because they have to go back to school and do another year or because they are just left in some sort of limbo? Under the government plan some students might choose to go back and take exams later, or even in summer 2021. But most will end up with grades calculated using the new process.

Does no exams = no results = all existing offers become unconditional and we enter a mass clearing and adjustment process? As everyone will have a grade, this is not necessary.  However, some universities seem to be already doing this in the meantime.

  • The government doesn’t like unconditional offers because they think they are a form of “mis-selling” with students potentially being bamboozled into taking an offer from a university when they could go somewhere “better”, and because they then don’t try too hard with their A-levels.   We have written about this before and remain unconvinced about either of these arguments, but this is why the OfS are doing a (now paused) review of admissions.  If you are stuck at home with not enough to do, it is worth looking at the OfS questions, a new deadline will be set at some point and your policy team are co-ordinating a BU response (read more here).
  • There was always going to be a risk that the Minister and the OfS would, retrospectively, require universities to inform them if they have done this and then criticise those institutions for “taking advantage” of the situation and “taking advantage” of student anxiety to get bums on seats and protect their financial position.    Institutions will of course argue, not unreasonably, that they have done it to reassure students.  But it is certainly too late to reverse it.  And sure enough, after we wrote this, the OfS asked universities to pause making unconditional offers: Some universities and colleges have in recent days reportedly been making unconditional offers that may not be in students’ best interests. We are today asking that all universities and colleges pause unconditional or other offers that could disadvantage students. Given today’s reassurances there is no reason to depart from the normal admissions processes. All universities and colleges should work to put the student’s interest first.’

Does no exams = different assessment methods = wait until “results day” in August and carry on as normal – including a clearing and adjustment process once the results are out? This is what we have got.

  • Students could simply have been given their predicted grades – this would have had the advantage that for those students already in the UCAS system these grades already exist.  It has the disadvantage that they are notoriously inaccurate.  They may have been “gamed” to help a student with an application to a super-elective university.  They may not reflect the potential of a disadvantaged student.  These things are problems in the current system.  They are mitigated to some extent by adjustment and clearing – mitigations that would not be available if everyone was just given their predicted grades.  Although simple, at least for HE, this did not look like a totally attractive solution.

So we have a new calculated grade process:

  • Teachers will recommend a grade based on mocks and other non-exam assessment – using guidance from the DfE.
  • Exam boards will moderate this using other data – including prior attainment (that suggests looking at GCSE for A-levels).
  • The distribution of grades will follow a similar pattern to other years (“so this year’s students do not face a systematic disadvantage”, it says – but also no grade inflation either).

What does this mean for HE?

In theory, not much changes.  Offer have been made, we will get grades a little bit earlier than usual, clearing can happen more or less as usual.  But is it that simple?

  • Research Professional on 20th MarchSmita Jamdar, partner at the law firm Shakespeare Martineau, suggested to Playbook that if students were assessed in a new way, offers based on meeting a different kind of assessment would no longer be valid; from a legal perspective, the whole offer-making process would need to start again, although higher education institutions might still be able to come up with a practical solution. [We say: surely not – the government won’t want that to happen. Their announcement says: “ In terms of a permanent record, the grades will be indistinguishable from those provided in other years.”]
  • The government plan while it aims to reduce some of the risks with using predicted grades, still potentially has problems in relation to disadvantaged students and Johnny Rich has a good thread on twitter on this

And what about the sector more generally?

  • Will student numbers go down across the UK with a potentially devastating effect on some institutions? Even if the virus itself is in retreat by September it seems highly likely that international student numbers will go down as students across the world miss their own assessments, are unable to take language tests, are still subject to travel restrictions or are simply unwilling to take the risk and travel abroad for a while.
  • That has led some to speculate that universities will be rushing to fill the corresponding gap in their budgets by recruiting additional UK students, leading potentially to a “rush to the top”. Remember that we are also at the bottom of the demographic dip.
  • So will the government take steps to cap student numbers? There have been rumours that they are thinking of doing this anyway, although in a more sophisticated way than time would allow this year.  [HEPI responded to the more general story on 19th March here]
  • And will there be other financial support available for universities? Read Jim Dickinson on Wonkhe on 19th March here.

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External readers: Thank you to our external readers who enjoy our policy updates. Unfortunately we cannot subscribe you to receive the updates direct to your inbox as they may contain privileged content from our partners and subscriptions which we may only be permitted to share with our internal staff. However, you can continue to read our truncated updates which omit the restricted content on the policy pages of the BU Research Blog – here’s the link.

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter                   |                       policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

Nepal reproductive health paper published yesterday

Congratulations on the latest paper published yesterday by Dr. Preeti Mahato in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Reproductive Health (CMMPH) and colleagues.   This paper ‘Factors associated with contraceptive use in rural Nepal: Gender and decision-making’ [1], is freely available for the next 49 days through our personalized link: click here

 

This research paper in the journal Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare reports on a secondary analysis of pas a quantitative cross-sectional study in four villages of a hilly district in Nepal.  This authors found that gender was associated with current/ever use of contraceptives but decision-making was not found associated with current/eve use of contraceptives.  And, as perhaps was to be expected, socio-economic factors such as husband’s and wife’s education; and indicators showing sharing of childcare responsibilities were found to be associated with contraceptive use.   the paper concludes that educational, health promotional and family planning programmes involving husbands are needed to promote use of contraceptives.


Preeti’s co-authors are based at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, at CMMPH and at Singapore Clinical Research Institute/Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore.

 

Reference:

  1. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., De Souza, N., Sheppard, Z. (2020) Factors associated with contraceptive use in rural Nepal: gender and decision-making, Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare 24: 100507 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.srhc.2020.100507

 

Medical textbook translated into Spanish

This week saw the publication of Psicología y sociología aplicadas a la medicina [1].  This is a translated version of the fourth edition of Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine: An Illustrated Colour Text  [2] which was published last year by the international publishing house Elsevier.  This textbook for medical students is edited by Bournemouth University’s Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, who is a Medical Sociologist and Prof. Gerry Humphries, who is Professor in Health Psychology at the School of Medicine, University of St Andrews.

Una sólida herramienta que aporta a los lectores valiosos conocimientos sobre los provesos psicológicos y sociológicos, fundamentales para proporcionar una atención personalizada.  Obra extremadamente relevatne para el currículo y la práctica médica actual, donde se hace cada vez más hincapié en el lugar que ocupa la medicina en la sociedad y en la enfermedad como producto de las circunstancias psicológicas y sociales, más que como un mero fenómeno biológico.   Los temas se presentan resumidos visualmente enuna doble página. Se acompañan con casos que refuerzan la comprensión de los conceptos fundamentales y con cuadros resumen y cuestiones para la reflexión.   Ayuda a apreciar el lado “no científico” de la medicina; lo importante que es entender de dónde viene el paciente, geográfica e ideológicamente. Además, aborda a la perfección temas tan actuales, como las dificultades sociales derivadas de las pruebas genéticas.

References:

  1. van Teijlingen, E. & Humphris, G. (Eds.) (2020) Psicología y sociología aplicadas a la medicina (Spanish translation), Madrid: Elsevier España [ISBN 978-84-9113-674-3/eISBN 978-84-9113-713-9].
  2. van Teijlingen, E. & Humphris, G. (Eds.) (2019) Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine: An Illustrated Colour Text (4th Edn), Edinburgh: Elsevier.

BU Academic Targeted Research Scheme

In recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to continue the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. Following the successful recruitment of five new posts, we will employ one other new Senior Lecturer with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with the targeted research areas:

  • Health and Science Communication

We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.

To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.

To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.

The deadline for applications is Sunday 10 May 2020.

Any enquiries should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Book review published by BU sociologist

The international journal Sociological Research Online published (online first)  a review of  the book The Mood of the World by Heinz Bude and published by Polity.   This is an interesting short  sociological book about mood, reviewed by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.  Bude’s book covers a broad analysis on the mood of the current situation and the function of collective moods. He notes that people live and make everyday decisions not only through reason or based on theory but also because of their feelings and emotions. Moreover, mood acts as a key component for the human being as a whole. Instead of intellect, people structure and find themselves as a part of the world through collective experiences. As Bude says “The world is present in mood but, instead of outside me, I find myself within it” (page 23).   But mood is also personal according to Bude since “Depending on my mood, I am capable of anything or nothing” (page vii).

 

Reference:

  1. van Teijlingen, E. (2020) The Mood of the World by Heinz Bude (book review), Sociological Research Online (Online First)

He policy update for the w/e 13th March 2020

The first budget of the new Government was delivered on Wednesday. Overall a quieter week as most focussed on the nation’s health.  We can do no better than refer you to the BU website and for staff, the BU intranet pages.

The Budget

There was very little specifically relating to HE in the budget. Of most relevance is the increase in the research and development investment:

1.220 The Budget sets out ambitious plans to increase public R&D investment to £22 billion per year by 2024-25. This landmark investment is the largest and fastest ever expansion of support for basic research and innovation, taking direct support for R&D to 0.8% of GDP and placing the UK among the top quarter of OECD nations – ahead of the USA, Japan, France and China. This unprecedented increase in investment will support a range of objectives, including:

  • supporting world-leading research in all regions and nations of the UK, including by cutting bureaucracy, experimenting with new funding models, and establishing a new funding agency to focus on high-risk, high-reward research
  • meeting the great challenges facing society, including climate change and an ageing population, and providing funding to pursue ‘moonshot’ scientific missions
  • investing in the government’s own strategic science capability and improving public services
  • backing businesses to invest and innovate so that they can compete in the global technology-driven economy

1.221 Details of how this funding will support these and other objectives will be set out  at the forthcoming CSR, but the Budget announces a set of measures that will have an  immediate impact.

And

  • The government is providing an immediate funding boost of up to £400 million in 2020-21 for world-leading research, infrastructure and equipment. This will help build excellence in research institutes and universities right across the UK, particularly in basic research and physical sciences.  The government will also provide £300 million for experimental mathematical research to attract the very best global talent over the next five years. This will double funding for new PhDs and boost the number of maths fellowships and research projects.
  • The government will invest at least £800 million in a new blue-skies funding agency here in the UK, modelled on the extraordinary ‘ARPA’ in the US.65 This agency will fund high-risk, high-reward science.
  • In recognition of their excellence and global reach, the government will increase funding for the UK’s foremost specialist institutions by £80 million over the next five years. This will support world-leading organisations such as the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Royal College of Art and the Institute of Cancer Research among others. At the CSR, the government will examine how R&D funding as a whole can best be distributed across the country to help level up every region and nation of the country.
  • The government is committed to ensuring that the UK’s fast-growing and innovative businesses continue to have access to the finance they need to invest and grow. The Life Sciences Investment Programme will provide the British Business Bank with additional resources to make up to £200 million in equity commitments to support the UK’s most innovative health and life sciences firms over the next five years. Invested alongside private sector capital, this is expected to enable £600 million of finance to create high-quality jobs and help UK patients benefit from more ground-breaking treatments and care. This funding will build on the £350 million of finance to life sciences firms currently supported by the British Business Bank by supporting large-scale venture growth funds. The programme will launch within a year.

Other HE matters

  • Freezing the maximum fee cap – As announced in July 2019, the government has frozen the maximum fee cap in England for the 2020-21 academic year at £9,250 for regular full-time undergraduate courses and at £11,100 for accelerated degree courses.
  • Removing the student finance three-year residence requirement for victims of domestic abuse – From academic year 2020-21, the government is removing the three-year ordinary residence requirement for student finance for those granted Indefinite Leave to Remain as victims of domestic abuse.
  • Entitlement to part-time Maintenance Loans – The Budget takes into account the fiscal impacts of part-time Maintenance Loans not being extended to sub-degree (level 4/5 courses) and distance learners, as announced in June 2019 and March 2019 respectively.
  • Institutes of Technology – The government will provide £120 million to bring further education and higher education providers in England together with employers to open up to eight new Institutes of Technology. These institutions will be used to deliver high-quality higher level technical education and to help close skills gaps in their local areas.

On FE

  • Further education capital funding – The government will provide £1.5 billion over five years (£1.8 billion inclusive of indicative Barnett consequentials), supported by funding from further education colleges themselves, to bring the facilities of colleges everywhere in England up to a good level, and to support improvements to colleges to raise the quality and efficiency of vocational education provision.
  • Facilities and equipment to support T levels – The government will provide £95 million for providers in England to invest in high quality facilities and industry-standard equipment to support the rollout of T levels. Funding will support T level routes being delivered from autumn 2021, including construction, digital, and health and science.
  • National Skills Fund – The government will consult widely in the spring on how to use the new National Skills Fund.
  • Apprenticeship Levy – The government will look at how to improve the working of the Apprenticeship Levy, to support large and small employers in meeting the long-term skills needs of the economy.
  • Apprenticeships – The government will ensure that sufficient funding is made available in 2020-21 to support an increase in the number of new high-quality apprenticeships in small-and medium-sized businesses.

Dods summarise and speculate on the main educational elements within the budget:

  • The spending review could represent a more pivotal moment for education funding generally, with the government set to issue their response to the Augar Review. In the interim, debates about value in HE could predominate, with the outcomes of the TEF review anticipated. The Government’s R&D ambitions and commitment on “world leading, research infrastructure and support” are interesting in this context. HEPI have urged the Government to recognise the interdependence of teaching and research, as well as prevent Augar and TEF conclusions circumscribing universities role in underpinning R&D objectives.
  • Augar will also have major implications for an FE sector desperate for investment to match the rhetoric in both 16-19 and adult education. A spring consultation on the £3bn National Skills Fund will likely elicit contrasting responses across the sector, with some demanding devolution to elected mayors and LEPs and others advocating providers be allowed to compete for funds. Colleges may also query whether today’s commitments can ensure preparedness for forthcoming T-level qualifications.
  • It was arguably education funding pledges that introduced “levelling up” to parliamentary parlance last September, with steps to harden the formula for per-pupil funding allocations presented as emblematic of government resolve to tackle regional disparities. As a result, the budget contained few surprises for compulsory education, with school budgets set to increase by £4.3bn in real terms by 2022/23. From 2010, this represents an historically unprecedented funding squeeze (IfS), with schools also required to absorb a government increases to teaching salaries.

A series of regional factsheets have been published on the 2020 budget. Here is the one for the South West, it includes:

  • £79 million for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole including funding for new cycle freeways and bus priority schemes through the Transforming Cities Fund.
  • The South West will benefit from a share of the next £5.2 billion flood and coastal defence investment programme starting in 2021. These locations will benefit from at least the following levels of funding as a result of this programme: £114 million for Bridgwater, £34 million for Poole, and £1.4 million for Gloucester to better protect over 7,000 properties.
  • The Government will support the Western Gateway, a strategic economic partnership across south Wales and the West of England, to oversee an independent economic review to identify long-term economic opportunities and challenges for the region.

And sharing the national pot to access:

  • £100 million of seed funding for 21 schemes from the Health Infrastructure Plan, seven of which are in the South West.
  • £640 million as part of the Nature for Climate Fund.
  • Over £500 million to cement our world-leading position in cutting edge technologies including space, electric vehicles and life sciences

The budget also launched the long-awaited Comprehensive Spending Review (2020). This will conclude in July when the Chancellor will set out the detailed spending plans for public services and investment, including the resource budgets from 2021-22 to 2023-24 and capital budgets up to 2024-25. It will be a key time for HE as many of the delayed big decisions such as Augar Review, student fee levels, and TEF are set to be tackled as part of the CSR.

Cross subsidisation – Teaching & Research

Cross subsidisation – whereby HE institutions fund aspects of research activity from student fee income  – has been a contentious point which bothered Government in the recent past. It was overshadowed as the value for money discussion rose; however, quiet rumblings about whether cross subsidisation is ‘right’ have continued in the background. On Monday, prior to the budget, HEPI published a report on cross subsidisation within the post-Augar context and exploring the Government’s 2.4% R&D target.

The report argues that the debate about value for money in higher education alongside parts of the Augar Review (the £7,500 tuition fee recommendation) fails to acknowledge the interdependence between teaching and research. It argues that adopting the Augar recommendations would circumscribe university investment in new programmes such as artificial intelligence and machine learning – contradictory to the Government aim to strengthen research in these areas.

  • University research is underfunded against its true costs – the latest figures show a gap amounting to £4.3 billion across the UK and £3.7 billion in England and Northern Ireland.
  • The shortfall in research funding has been partially filled by cross-subsidies from international students’ fees – each international student in the UK pays an average of £5,100 more than it costs to educate them.
  • Depending on how the Government opt to respond to the Augar review’s recommendations on tuition fees, then the shortfall on teaching home undergraduates could increase by between £0.7 billion and £2.3 billion above its current level of £0.2 billion.
  • A larger gap will need to be covered by increases in productivity, a lower quality student experience, or redirecting the cross-subsidy arising from international student fee income.
  • If international student fees are used to fill in – or merely reduce – a bigger gap in the funding of home students, they will no longer be available to cross-subsidise research, meaning the annual research deficit in England and Northern Ireland alone could rise to £4.9 billion. Teaching and research could suffer; and:
  • This will make it very challenging to reach the Government’s R&D spend target .
  • The splitting of teaching from research in Whitehall – a different Minister and Department for each hampers the joined-up approach to the two activities undertaken by HEIs.
  • An increase in overseas students could relieve some of the financial pressures but is not inevitable, given international competition, changing geopolitics and the Home Office’s general approach in recent years to international students. Dare I also mention COVID-19?!
  • If policymakers want to hold down – or reduce – tuition fees, preside over further improvements to the student experience and ensure much greater R&D spending, they are likely to need to spend more than planned.

The paper concludes:

  • The Government want to see an increase in education export earnings to £35 billion a year by 2030, up from £20 billion in 2016, with 600,000 students hosted in the UK, up from 470,000 in 2017/18. If such targets are to be achieved then it might be possible to continue cross subsidising research from international student fees while also substantially increasing the cross-subsidies for teaching home students.
  • However, this would make the university sector even more reliant on other countries at a time when there are already fears of over-exposure to fluctuations in geopolitics. Moreover, relying more on international student fees to bolster the teaching of home students will always make it harder to realise the R&D target than if all the available cross-subsidies were spent on research

Nick Hillman, the Director of HEPI and the author of the report, said:

  • If the UK university sector is to continue thriving, then it is crucial that the Chancellor recognises the interdependencies between teaching and research in the budget and subsequent spending review.
  • Universities roughly break even on teaching home students but make a big loss on research. They fill in part of that gap from the surplus on teaching international students. But they now face a looming large loss on teaching home students, for example because of tweaks to tuition fees in England. If that happens, they will have to use international student fees to subsidise home students and there will be less money for covering gaps in research funding.
  • We need to redouble our efforts to ensure a better understanding of the interdependencies between teaching and research in the face of the latest Whitehall changes, which mean we now have one Minister for Universities and a different Minister for Science.

A change of heart from the OfS

Nicola Dandridge has set out her plans to improve the relationship that the OfS has with HE providers in an interesting blog on Wonkhe.

It sets out plans such as:

  • …a review that will help us assess the impact of our regulatory activity on individual providers.
  • …new guidance on an area that I know has caused frustration to some universities and colleges – reportable events. The guidance will set out in clear terms the things providers need to tell the OfS about, and explain how we will deal with those reports.
  • We are improving how we correspond with universities and colleges in response to their feedback. Some providers have found our engagement with them too impersonal. In future, letters and emails will normally be sent from named individuals so it is clear who has dealt with individual queries. We have added specific contact details to our website, so that providers can quickly reach the most relevant teams with questions, with a dedicated phone number for regulation and monitoring queries. We also plan to move to two release dates per month for letters and consultations we send to vice chancellors and principals, when possible, so that the pace of communications feels more ordered.
  • We have taken steps internally to improve the clarity and tone of our communications to individual providers, and to make them feel less bureaucratic. We have started to share calendars of key activities, updating them regularly on our website. We will also improve our communications on data requirements, ensuring clearer understanding of how to use our templates, making sure our deadlines allow sufficient time for engagement with both management and with governing bodies/councils where that is expected. We will actively seek feedback as we develop our processes for data collection and presentation
  • Later this spring, we will be hosting both a national event and a number of regional events for universities and colleges on our approach to regulation…

In the meantime the requirement to make daily reports to the OfS of numbers of staff or students with the corona virus appear to have been bypassed by advice to stay at home and not seek to get tested if you are showing symptoms – making the numbers essentially meaningless.  Universities up and down the country will be hoping that this particular requirement will be relaxed.

 The graduate premium

HESA have issued a report that says that “Research shows decline in ‘graduate premium’ less pronounced for 1st and 2:1 degrees”.

From the HESA website;

  • Researchers from HESA and the Department of Economics at Warwick University compared the pay of graduates with non-graduates. Given the growth in the proportion of graduates with a first or upper second class award, they looked for changes in the returns to a first or upper second class degree compared with lower grades. They found graduates born in 1970 who had a first or upper second class degree earned 20% more than non-graduates at age 26, compared to a graduate premium of 14% for those with a lower second class degree or below.
  • The researchers had previously found that the graduate premium has reduced over time. The same comparison for people born in 1990 found that graduates with a first or 2:1 earned 14% more than non-graduates at age 26, while the return to a 2:2 or lower class degree was only 3%.
  • The study found that the overall reduction in the return to a degree was largely explained by stronger pay growth in non-professional occupations than in professional jobs. They suggest that the accompanying increase in the gap between the returns to higher and lower degree classifications, from 6 percentage points to 11 percentage points, may relate to workplace recruitment focussing on graduates with at least an upper second class degree.
  • The research also compared the returns to a first with the returns to a 2:1, and the returns to a 2:1 compared to a 2:2. The tentative results, based on a small number of first-class degree holders born in 1970, found that the relative benefit of having a first over having a 2:1 has decreased by up to 3 percentage points. The study’s authors note that this may be due the long-term trend of more graduates being awarded a first class degree. Meanwhile the relative benefit of a 2:1 over a 2:2 has increased by up to 8 percentage points.

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Other news

DfE has published new figures on apprenticeships in England.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

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