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HE policy update for the w/e 3rd September 2020

Centre for Excellence in Learning, NHS

So it’s back to school for pupils and teachers, and Parliament is back (although still mostly virtually). What’s in the news?

Ofqual fight back

The House of Commons Education Committee grilled Ofqual this week in a fascinating session – the transcript is here. Before the session, Roger Taylor, the Chair of Ofqual, submitted a written statement, which you can read here.   We thought we would summarise the good bits for you.

Before you skip, though, the obvious question is “does it matter” – or is it all just a witch-hunt?  Clearly it does matter, because some of the same issues that led the government to cancel exams this year still apply – missed school time, uneven opportunities to learn, the implications of a second wave.  In our next segment, we look at the hints about next summer.

If you want to skip the next bit, the conclusion seems to be: Ofqual were handed an impossible brief by the Minister, who made it harder by changing policy on the hoof without asking them, they had a solution to it all in the form of a better appeals process to address outlying results (like high performing students in schools with poor previous performance) but never got a chance to roll it out because of the mocks fiasco, that they always thought exams should have gone ahead, and that the algorithm was fair and has been unfairly criticised by people who don’t understand the data!  Gavin Williamson is giving evidence soon, so that will be worth reading.  And Ofqual are going to publish correspondence so everyone can see that it wasn’t their fault….

David Kernohan has written about it for Wonkhe here.

The written statement  starts with an apology to students, teachers, and HE and FE providers.  As widely reported on the news channels yesterday, it confirms that Ofqual didn’t want the exams to be cancelled – they wanted them held in a socially distanced way.  Gavin Williamson decided to cancel them because of concerns about lost schooling and the risks with getting students back into schools.  So the well known solution and the well known moderation process was adopted. 

You will recall this decision was announced on 18th March – which was very early – and might be said to have shown decisiveness and the desire to provide certainty in a complex situation.  But of course that assumes that the alternative was going to be a good and not a mutant one, which we all hoped it would be…..

In the evidence session, Roger Taylor said that after Ofqual offered advice on options:

  • It was the Secretary of State who then subsequently took the decision and announced, without further consultation with Ofqual, that exams were to be cancelled and a system of calculated grades was to be implemented. We then received a direction from the Secretary of State setting out what he wished Ofqual to implement.

In the statement, Ofqual say:

  • The principle of moderating teacher grades was accepted as a sound one, and indeed the relevant regulatory and examination bodies across the four nations of the United Kingdom separately put in place plans to do this. All the evidence shows that teachers vary considerably in the generosity of their grading – as every school pupil knows. Also, using teacher assessment alone might exacerbate socio-economic disadvantage. Using statistics to iron out these differences and ensure consistency Written submission from Roger Taylor, Chair of Ofqual looked, in principle, to be a good idea. That is why in our consultations and stakeholder discussions all the teaching unions supported the approach we adopted. Indeed, when we consulted on it, 89% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with our proposed aims for the statistical standardisation approach.

And they knew there were risks but on the whole the averaged out effect was correct:

  • We knew, however, that there would be specific issues associated with this approach. In particular, statistical standardisation of this kind will inevitably result in a very small proportion of quite anomalous results that would need to be corrected by applying human judgment through an appeals process.
  • For example, we were concerned about bright students in historically low attaining schools. We identified that approximately 0.2% of young peoples’ grades were affected by this but that it was not possible to determine in advance which cases warranted a change to grades. That is why the appeals process we designed and refined was so important. But we recognise that young people receiving these results experienced significant distress and that this caused people to question the process.

In the evidence session, Roger Taylor was asked about this and he said:

  • It was clear that to make a valid judgment would require a degree of human judgment and therefore a form of appeal would be necessary to make this work, but we were also exploring with the exam boards how we could implement a system of outreach to those students through the exam boards to let them know on the day, “Look, we think you’ve probably got a very good case for appeal.” That was the direction we were moving in. When the mock appeals route came in, that question became less relevant.

And they are still defending it:

  • The statistical standardisation process was not biased – we did the analyses to check and found there was no widening of the attainment gap. We have published this analysis. Indeed, ‘A’ and ‘A*’ grade students in more disadvantaged areas did relatively better with standardised results than when results were not standardised.

They were challenged on this in the evidence session.

  • Robert Halfon, the chair, asked about it: The Department for Education confirmed on 14 August that pupils from lower socioeconomic groups were more likely than their peers to have their centre assessed grades downgraded by Ofqual’s algorithm at grades C and above. The difference between Ofqual’s moderated grades and teacher centre assessed grades for lower socioeconomic groups was 10.42%. In contrast, the difference between Ofqual’s moderated grades and teacher centre assessed grades for higher socioeconomic groups was 8.34%.
  • Michelle Meadows, Executive Director for Strategy and Research, replied: We had done a full equalities analysis, looking at the grades not just by socioeconomic status but by other protected characteristics such as ethnicity, gender and so on, and what we were able to see and we were very confident about was that any fluctuation in outcomes seen for these various groups this year was extremely similar to the small changes in outcomes we had seen in previous years. In other words, there was nothing about the process that was biased.

And when challenged about the impact on individual students, Roger Taylor said in the evidence session:

  • I disagree with the notion that this algorithm was not fit for purpose or that a better algorithm would have produced a different result; but I strongly agree with your statement that to say this was fair just fails to recognise what happens to students—just the level of accuracy that was fundamentally possible with the information that was available was too low to be acceptable to individuals, and we recognised this right at the outset. We identified this as a risk.

And on small class sizes etc

  • However, the impossibility of standardising very small classes meant that some subjects and some centres could not be standardised, and so saw higher grades on average than would have been expected if it had been possible to standardise their results. This benefitted smaller schools and disadvantaged larger schools and colleges. It affected private schools in particular, as well as some smaller maintained schools and colleges, special schools, pupil referral units, hospital schools and similar institutions. We knew about this, but were unable to find a solution to this problem. However, we still regarded standardisation as preferable because overall it reduced the relative advantage of private schools compared to others.
  • Ultimately, however, the approach failed to win public confidence, even in circumstances where it was operating exactly as we had intended it to. While sound in principle, candidates who had reasonable expectations of achieving a grade were not willing to accept that they had been selected on the basis of teacher rankings and statistical predictions to receive a lower grade. To be told that you cannot progress as you wanted because you have been awarded a lower grade in this way was unacceptable and so the approach had to be withdrawn. We apologise for this.

And here is the killer statement:

  • With hindsight it appears unlikely that we could ever have delivered this policy successfully.

And whose fault is it?

  • Understandably, there is now a desire to attribute blame. The decision to use a system of statistical standardised teacher assessments was taken by the Secretary of State and issued as a direction to Ofqual. Ofqual could have rejected this, but we decided that this was in the best interests of students, so that they could progress to their next stage of education, training or work.
  • The implementation of that approach was entirely down to Ofqual. However, given the exceptional nature of this year, we worked in a much more collaborative way than we would in a normal year, sharing detailed information with partners.
  • We kept the Department for Education fully informed about the work we were doing and the approach we intended to take to qualifications, the risks and impact on results as they emerged. However, we are ultimately responsible for the decisions that fall to us as the regulator.
  • …. The blame lies with us collectively – all of us who failed to design a mechanism for awarding grades that was acceptable to the public and met the Secretary of State’s policy intent of ensuing grades were awarded in a way consistent with the previous year.

Autumn exams:   It was clear to everyone that autumn exams would be a problem for those intending to start university this year.  No plan or proposal was made for this, apart from ministerial exhortations that universities should be flexible, and vague references to a January start.  Put on top of an absolute prohibition on unconditional offers, it was hard to see what universities were meant to do. Ofqual say:

  • “the original policy was adopted on the basis that the autumn series would give young people who were disappointed with their results, the opportunity to sit an examination. However, the extended lockdown of schools and the failure to ensure that such candidates could still take their places at university meant that this option was, for many, effectively removed. This significantly shifted the public acceptability of awarding standardised grades”

I have no idea what that means….but it looks like blaming the context for the problems.  Roger Taylor clarified it in the evidence session:

  • When the decision was originally made, there was a strong belief that the autumn series would be the compensation for that—that people would be given a chance and that university places could be held open for them that they could take in January, and that that would limit that damage. At the time, it was felt that it was a fair offer, but of course, over time, schools did not reopen; there were no arrangements for late entry to university; and by July, it was clear that the autumn series did not represent any sort of reasonable alternative that candidates felt would make up for being given an inaccurate calculated grade. At that point, we were in a situation where it was difficult to see how people would accept it as a fair way to have their grades awarded.

Autonomy and influence

  • Roger Taylor: The relationship is one in which the Secretary of State, as the democratically accountable politician, decides policy. Ofqual’s role is to have regard to policy and to implement policy, but within the constraints laid down by the statute that established Ofqual. Those constraints are that the awarding of grades must be valid, it must maintain standards year on year, and it must command public confidence. We can decide not to implement a direction from the Secretary of State if we feel that it would directly contradict those statutory duties, but if the policy does not directly contradict those statutory duties, our obligation is to implement policy as directed by the Secretary of State.

There was a bit more about this in the evidence session when Roger Taylor was asked about the mock appeals policy (see below) and he said:

  • It is important, in trying to manage public confidence, that we do not have a Secretary of State stating one policy and Ofqual stating a different policy. It also struck us that the way to resolve this was to move at pace and it needed to be negotiated and managed in an orderly fashion. But we were acting with full independence.

The comings and goings about the use of mock results in appeals were discussed at length:

  • Roger Taylor:… the Secretary of State informed us that, effectively, they were going to change policy. Until that point, the policy had been calculated grades plus an appeals process. The Secretary of State informed me that they were planning to change this policy in a significant way by allowing an entirely new mechanism by which a grade could be awarded through a mock exams appeal. Our advice to the Secretary of State at this point was that we could not be confident that this could be delivered within the statutory duties of Ofqual, to ensure that valid and trustworthy grades were being issued. The Secretary of State, as he is entitled to do, none the less announced that that was the policy of the Government.
  • That having been announced as the policy of the Government, the Ofqual board felt—I think correctly—that we should therefore attempt to find a way to implement this in a way that was consistent with our statutory duties. We consulted very rapidly with exam boards and other key stakeholders. We were very concerned that this idea of a valid mock exam had no real credible meaning, but we consulted very rapidly and developed an approach that we felt would be consistent with awarding valid qualifications. We then agreed that with the Department for Education and, to our understanding, with the Secretary of State’s office. We then published this on the Saturday. We were subsequently contacted by the Secretary of State later that evening and were informed that this was in fact not, to his mind, in line with Government policy.
  • ….It was published about 3 o’clock on the Saturday. I think the call from the Secretary of State was probably at around 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock that evening. The Secretary of State first phoned the chief regulator. …
  • The Secretary of State telephoned me and said that he would like the board to reconsider. ….given the Secretary of State’s views, it felt appropriate to call the board together very late that evening. The board convened at, I think, around 10 o’clock that evening. I think at this stage we realised that we were in a situation which was rapidly getting out of control—that there were policies being recommended and strongly advocated by the Secretary of State that we felt would not be consistent with our legal duties, and that there was, additionally, a growing risk around delivering any form of mock appeals results in a way that would be acceptable as a reasonable way to award grades….

Grade inflation

  • Ian Mearns asked: This is the problem: Ministers are regularly telling us that we have more good and outstanding schools, with the most highly professional teaching profession that we have ever had. Given that process, that improvement and that continuing improvement, should there not be some increase in the levels of achievement by youngsters year on year that cannot be put down as grade inflation?
  • Roger Taylor replied: On your point about grade inflation, we were very aware that being very strict about grade inflation would only make this situation worse. That is why, in the design of the model, at every point where we could reasonably do this, we erred in the direction of making decisions that allowed grades to rise. Consequently, the final result of the moderated grades did allow for between 2% and 3% inflation in grades which, in assessment terms, is very significant and larger than would represent the sorts of effects that you talked about resulting from improvements in teaching, but we felt that that was appropriate in these extremely unusual circumstances, given the disruption happening in people’s lives as a result of the pandemic.

Issues with CAGs:

  • David Simmonds MP said that he has had more complaints about the u-turn and the fairness of the CAGs than the original grades. There is concern about the lack of opportunity for students to appeal these grades.
  • Roger Taylor said: It goes to the nature of the problem: there is not an independent piece of information that can be used to determine between these two competing claims. That is why the lack of any form of standardised test or examination makes this a situation that people find very hard to tolerate.

On private students (who have to take exams in the autumn):

  • Roger Taylor: I have huge sympathy with these people. Clearly, they have been some of the people who have lost out most as a result of the decision to cancel exams. I will hand over to Julie to say a little bit more about this, but once the decision had been taken to cancel exams, it was very hard to find a solution. We explored extensive solutions, but ultimately the situation was one in which, once exams had been cancelled, these people had lost the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in a way that would enable them to move forward with their lives. That was the situation we were in.

On the tiering problem (students getting a higher grade than permitted by the exam, i.e. foundation students at GCSE who can’t get higher than a 5, who got a 6, for example):

  • Michelle Meadows: In the absence of papers this year, we felt that the fairest thing to do was to remove those limits on students’ performance. So there were a very small number of cases where, for the tiered qualifications, less than 1% of foundation tier students received higher grades and, for the higher tier, less than 0.5% received lower grades than they would normally achieve. We felt that it was a decision in favour of students—that they would not be constrained in the normal way.

And on BTECs:

  • Roger Taylor: It was not inevitable that there would be a domino effect, because the use of calculated grades inside the BTEC system was completely different from what had gone on with general qualifications. They were two completely separate pieces: one Ofqual was closely involved with and where we had the authority to make a decision; and the second was one that Pearson were responsible for and where we had no authority to determine how they were going to respond to the situation. That was their call.

And did the algorithm mutate?

  • Ian Mearns: At what point did the algorithm mutate?
  • Dr Meadows: I don’t believe that the algorithm ever mutated.

So what about next year

There are already discussions about delaying the exams, some elements have been changed, there are discussions about having an online option with open book exams, etc.  Ofqual have now made it extremely clear in the evidence session referred to above that they didn’t want to cancel exams this summer and they certainly don’t want to next summer, but also that they don’t want to rely on moderated CAGs again.  So some form of formal assessment seems likely.  But this one has some way to run.

For what was announced in August, Schoolsweek have a nice round up of the changes to A levels and for GCSEs here.  The Ofqual statement about A levels, AS levels and GCSEs is here.

In their statement referred to above, Ofqual confirm that amongst the lessons learned from this year are some things that will influence next year:

  • any awarding process that does not give the individual the ability to affect their fate by demonstrating their skills and knowledge in a fair test will not command and retain public confidence
  • a ‘better’ algorithm would not have made the outcomes significantly more acceptable. The inherent limitations of the data and the nature of the process were what made it unacceptable

And there should have been better comms and not just by them.

In the evidence session, Roger Taylor said:

  • I think we have been very clear that we think that some form of examination or standardised test, or something that gives the student an ability to demonstrate their skills and knowledge, will be essential for any awarding system that the students regard as fair. We have done some consultation, and have published the results of that consultation, but it is obviously a fast-moving environment, and the impact of the pandemic remains uncertain over the future, so it is something that we are keeping under constant review……I want to be really clear that, absolutely, we raised it in our initial consultation, and we are very conscious of the enormous benefit that would come from delay. We recognise the value in trying to find a way of making this work.

And Julie Swan said:

  • Content for GCSEs, AS and A-levels is of course determined by Ministers, and Ministers, as I am sure you will know, have agreed some changes to content for a couple of GCSE subjects—history, ancient history and English literature. We have published information about changes to assessment arrangements in other subjects that will free up teaching time, such as making the assessment of spoken language in modern foreign languages much less formal. …..as well as allowing, for example, GCSE science students to observe practical science, rather than to undertake it themselves….We are working with the DFE to get to conclusions within weeks, rather than months.

Gavin Williamson’s position

Gavin Williamson gave a statement to the House of Tuesday, on the first day back.  He said very, very little, really.  He apologised and then moved on quickly to talk about schools going back.  David Kernohan has written about this for Wonkhe too.

  • The problem with having a Prime Minister who will only sack officials is that we are forced to watch senior politicians descent into near-Grayling levels of farcical inadequacy without hope of respite. Williamson’s haunted soul screams for release, but still he has to field questions about next summer while struggling to get through the next five minutes.

Research Professional cover it here.

Meanwhile in HE

The Office for Students have today launched a call for evidence into Digital teaching and learning in English Higher Education during the pandemic.  It closes on 14th October 2020.

The review will consider:

  1. The use of digital technology to deliver remote teaching and learning since the start of the pandemic and understand what has and has not worked.
  2. How high-quality digital teaching and learning can be continued and delivered at scale in the future.
  3. The opportunities that digital teaching and learning present for English higher education in the medium to longer-term.
  4. The relationship between ‘digital poverty’ and students’ digital teaching and learning experience

If you are interested in contributing to a BU institutional response please contact policy@bournemouth.ac.uk as soon as possible.

Inquiries and Consultations

Have you contributed to a Parliamentary Inquiry?  Many colleagues from across BU have done so over the last year, and inquiries can be relevant for both academic and professional services colleagues.  Your policy team (policy@bournemouth.ac.uk) can help you prepare and submit a response – there are some important rules to follow about content and presentation, but a good submission might result in a call to give oral evidence (by video, these days) or get people talking about your submission.

You can find the list of open Parliamentary inquires here.  They include (just a few examples):

  • Police conduct and complaints (accepting written evidence until 14th September 2020)
  • Digital transformation in the NHS {(until 9th September)
  • Reforming public transport after the pandemic ?(until 24th September)
  • Biodiversity and ecosystems (until 11th September)
  • Black people, racism and human rights {(until 11th September)

And you can also find Secre – a small selection (these have longer dates):

  • A call for evidence on a future international regulation strategy
  • Pavement parking
  • Marine energy projects
  • Distributing Covid and flu vaccines
  • Recognition of professional qualifications
  • Marine monitoring
  • Deforestation in UK supply chains
  • Waste management plan for England
  • Front of pack nutrition labelling
  • Review of the Highway Code to improve road safety for cyclist, pedestrians and horse riders

Let us know if you are interested in responding to these or any others.MinisSecre

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

New paper by Assoc Prof Dr Jayne Caudwell

 

 

Congratulations to Associate Professor Dr Jayne Caudwell of the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work and Centre for Seldom Heard Voices who has published new research on transgender and non-binary swimming and sociologies of space and safety! The paper can be accessed following this link https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2020.00064/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE

 

Responsible Project Management recommended for delivering UK Government Major Projects

Knowledge Exchange

A team led by Dr Karen Thompson from Bournemouth University Business School and Dr Nigel Williams, Reader of Project Management at the University of Portsmouth, have been developing the concept of Responsible Project Management (RPM).  Their work has now been recommended for Government projects.

In written evidence to the HOUSE OF COMMONS PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE, the Chartered Body for the Project Profession in the UK – the Association for Project Management (APM) – suggested that the UK Government should “focus on Responsible Project Management”.

The APM’s submission to the Select Committee and included in their July 2020 Report ‘Delivering the Government’s infrastructure commitments through major projects’ used the definition from the Guide to Responsible Project Management (2019) published by BU:

“Responsible Project Management … is the concept of managing projects with specific attention to the intended and unintended impacts of the project and its outcomes, in both the short and long term, thereby delivering economic, social and environmental impact.”

Interest in Responsible Project Management (RPM) has been growing rapidly.  An initial social learning workshop was held at BU in 2018 and brought together professional project managers, educators, researchers and project management students from universities across the UK and Europe to explore the concept.  The Manifesto for Responsible Project Management was developed in 2019 and launched at BU in July.  Later in July, Karen and Nigel were guest bloggers for UK Major Projects Knowledge Hub and wrote for the International Project Management Association Blog.  In November, Sir Peter Bonfield, Vice Chancellor of the University of Westminster introduced the London launch of the Manifesto and signed up to RPM.  At the 2019 Awards of the largest global professional body for project management – the Project Management Institute (PMI) – the work was recognised with the UK Award for Innovation in Project Management and the UK Award for Community Advancement (Social Good).

By February 2020 there were more than 100 signatories to the Manifesto from across the UK, Europe and USA, and the team were receiving invitations to deliver sessions at conferences and at branch events of both APM and PMI.

Signing ceremony at Gleeds, London

Early in March 2020 the team were invited to deliver a presentation at the London office of Gleeds, Global Property and Construction Consultants.  This was followed by a corporate signing ceremony where the Manifesto was signed by Graham Harle, Gleeds Global Chief Executive, representing c2,000 project professionals.

 

 

Responsible Project Management is underpinned by the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and incorporates the UN’s Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) to which the BU Business School is an Advanced Signatory.  RPM now has 16 Ambassadors worldwide.

The RPM Team have recently been awarded HEIF-6 funding to study the competencies required for sustainable project behaviour using virtual reality and will work with colleagues in BU’s Faculty of Science and Technology on this project.

Since the UK lockdown for COVID-19 RPM work has continued virtually.  From April until July the Team hosted a regular series of virtual ‘Lunch and Learn’ Meetups to support project professionals around the world.   Currently they are collaborating with a range of project organisations on developing a Guide for Project Sponsors and a new syllabus to focus on developing new competencies for sustainable development.  Another response to the current crisis has been an initiative to help recent graduates into work in the face of disappearing job opportunities.  Collaboration with APM and the Major Projects Knowledge Hub has resulted in the launch of a pilot Scheme for Virtual Internships in Responsible Project Management.  Virtual internships may be one way for organisations to create the new structures and operations they will need for a post-pandemic recovery.

New paper from Newton/Ungku Omar research collaboration with Universiti Sains Malaysia

Professors Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Jonathan Parker of the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work and Centre for Seldom Heard Voices have published research  that develops heir Newton/Ungku Omar research with Universiti Sains Malaysia for developing curricular and education for social workers in a time of pandemic.

COVID-19 resulted in massive disruption and changes in every
aspect of our lives. To curb the spread of the virus, many governments
limited the movement of people or imposed full ‘lockdowns’.
This created significant challenges for social workers practising with
people often reliant on interpersonal support such as those at risk
of domestic abuse; with mental health problems or learning disabilities.
Measures to reduce viral spread affected the education
sector at all levels from pre-school to higher education, disrupted
traditional classroom pedagogy and shifted to technologically supported
e-learning to minimise disruption to the students’ education.
In lockdown, online teaching has become the new norm.
E-learning has its limitations for professional curricula such as social
work. Like most countries, field practice represents a compulsory
component of the social work curriculum in Malaysia which measures
the capabilities or competency of students to enable them to
become qualified social workers. When COVID-19 forced universities
and agencies to halt field placements in Malaysia, the immediate
challenge was to find alternative ways of assessing students. This paper aims to provide an overview of field education assessment in Malaysia during the pandemic and to pose questions for future assessment as Malaysian social work drives towards increased professional regulation.

Demystify Author Article Workflow Masterclass

Publishing, writing

How well do you really understand how an academic author is published?

With around three million articles published a year*, authors are under increasing pressures to publish in recognized and credible journals – that’s a lot of articles! Some are publishing for the first time, others publishing their 70th article ‘that’ year.

The presenter will run through the basics of the academic author user journey for pre, during and post-publication workflow. The webinar will also look at their pain points, and opportunities to connect with authors as part of their journey.

Register now to better connect with authors. Can’t make the date? No problem, register and you will be sent access to the recorded version when suits you.

Please click on the link below to sign up to the webinar:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2815983615199/WN_UUMlfAlBSoWY1xYris6-wQ

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

8th September 2020

10th November 2020

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

Supporting integrated theses at BU

PG research

Over the last few months Library and Learning Support has been developing its guidance for integrated theses. This is a  new format for BU which allows a candidate to incorporate material into their PhD already published or which they intend to publish elsewhere.

Orlanda Harvey was the guinea pig for our new guidlines when she submitted her thesis in July. Her title was “Male anabolic androgenic steroid-users: A mixed-methods study” and included articles which had been published as well as some intended for publication in the future.

I caught up with Orlanda recently to see how she had found the process, why she had taken the route of doing her thesis in this way and what advice she had for us in planning support for students doing integrated theses in the future.

You can watch our conversation and see our guidance for submitting an integrated thesis to the library in our Postgraduate Researcher Library Guide.

 

 

Writing Week – support from BUCRU and RDS

Funding opportunities, HSS Our 9 Research Entities, NHS

Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is coming up next week and we wanted to highlight some of the expertise within BUCRU and NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) and remind you that we’re available to provide support for your health or social care research.

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local NHS Trusts.

We do this by:

  • Helping researchers develop high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • Ongoing involvement in funded research projects

How can we help?

BUCRU/RDS can provide help in the following areas:

  • Formulating research questions
  • Building an appropriate team
  • Study design
  • Appropriate methodologies for quantitative research, e.g. statistical issues, health economics
  • Appropriate methodologies for qualitative research, e.g. sampling, analytical strategies
  • Advice on data management and data analysis
  • Identifying suitable funding sources
  • Writing plain English summaries
  • Identifying the resources required for a successful project
  • Critical reviews of proposed grant applications can be obtained through our Project Review Committee before they are sent to a funding body.
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

Over the coming weeks we’ll cover some of these areas in more detail in future blogs and how we can help you.

Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.

If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.

Deadline approaching: Call for Deputy Chair of the Research Impact Funding Panel

The Research Impact Funding Panel is responsible on behalf of the Research Performance and Management Committee for providing internal funding and support to aid the development of research impact at BU.  This will ensure a pipeline of case studies for REF 2021 and beyond. It is responsible for assessing and determining priority areas for impact support and investment.

We are seeking expressions of interest (EoIs) for the Deputy Chair of the Research Impact Funding Panel. Deputy Chairs should be members of the Professoriate (Associate Professors).

EoIs for the Deputy Chair role will be reviewed against selection criterion which includes knowledge and experience of research impact, experience of chairing meetings and plans for leading the impact agenda across the university.

EoIs should consist of a CV and short case (maximum length of one page) outlining suitability for the role. These should be submitted to the Research Impact panel mailbox by the deadline of 5pm on 1 September 2020.

Full details are available on the Staff Intranet: https://staffintranet.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/news/thismonth/researchimpactfundingpanelcallfordeputychair.php

BU Open Access Publication Fund

BU Challenges, open access, Publishing

The BU Open Access Publication Fund policy and procedure has recently been reviewed and revised to reflect changes to this year’s budget. The newly revised policy and checklist can be found here. 

BU now also benefit from various Open Access agreements through JISC deals including with publishers like Wiley, Sage and Springer. Please see the links below for more information about the agreement and eligible journal titles:

SAGE – https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/open-access-agreements-at-sage/united-kingdom

Wiley – https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/affiliation-policies-payments/jisc-agreement.html

Springer Compact – https://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/springer-open-choice/springer-compact/for-uk-authors-intro/731990

Please do check out the various open access deals that BU have with these publishers to make full use of these deals.

For more information, please contact OpenAccess@bournemouth.ac.uk.

 

 

Conversation article: the PPI scandal is far from over – here’s why

Shutterstock/kamui29

Julie Robson, Bournemouth University

The PPI scandal led to the largest consumer redress scheme in British history, with over £38 billion paid to claimants to date. The deadline for customers to submit their claims was set at midnight on August 29 2019. But, almost one year later, hundreds of thousands of registered claims remain outstanding. And to make matters worse for the banks, a swathe of new claims have started rolling in.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) hoped the deadline would bring the scandal to an orderly conclusion and offer protection to consumers while helping to restore market integrity. The banks hoped it would enable them to draw a line under it and move on. But the situation seems to be getting worse.

The problem now comes in the form of unfair commission payments. PPI commission rates were deemed to be unfair for two main reasons: when they were too high or when they were kept secret.

When they were too high they accounted for, on average, 67% of the PPI price. In the most serious cases they accounted for 95% of the cost of a PPI policy.

When secret, they were (obviously) undisclosed to the customer. That customer – had they been better informed – may have queried the value of their PPI policy. Especially if they had they known that the majority of the price was not going to the product provider (for example, the insurer underwriting the protection cover for the loan or credit card) but to the bank who sold the PPI policy to them.

Court judgements

Awareness of the unfair commission payments on PPI policies is not new. But recent court decisions mean that customers can potentially claw back all of the commission they have paid and claim after the 2019 deadline.

The issue first came to light in the November 2014 Supreme Court case, Plevin v Paragon Personal Finance Ltd, after which the FCA changed its guidance on what could be claimed as part of the PPI redress scheme. This change enabled customers to claim commission that accounted for over 50% of the price of the PPI policy and became known as the Plevin rule.

Payments to customers were however restricted to commission that was in excess of 50%. In other words, successful claimants only received part of the commission that had been paid to the banks.

A series of other court cases saw the position change again, as claimants were awarded the full commission where the bank failed to disclose large commission payments to the customer. As almost all PPI policies earned high commission rates, this change was significant and opened the floodgates to new claims.

Customers who have received a partial payment, have had their claims rejected or have not claimed so far can now claim, citing the unfair compensation. Even customers who were not mis-sold PPI and were happy with their policy can potentially claim as the high commission payments may not have been disclosed to them.

The potential for new PPI claims based on the unfair commission payments could not have come at a worse time for the banks as they are still facing a backlog of existing claims to process. A survey conducted in March this year found that 60% of PPI claimants had not heard from their bank about the progress of their claim and half of these had not even received an acknowledgement letter.

Banks were overwhelmed by the volume of claims and although the expected time for banks to respond to such claims is typically eight weeks, the FCA managed this expectation by predicting that most claims would be resolved by summer 2020.

Coronavirus disruption

But this deadline was set before COVID-19 disrupted the world and it now appears unlikely to be met. Now many customers remain frustrated that their cases have not been resolved as the new unfair commission charges issue further aggravates and complicates the issue.

The original PPI scandal severely damaged consumer trust in the banks as a lack of integrity was at the heart of the case. PPI mis-selling was something that the banks could have controlled and was an intentional act as the banks placed profits above their customer welfare.

My own research has shown that when trust is damaged by a lack of integrity, it is difficult to restore. The banks needed to display clear evidence of an intention to get rid of negative influences.

For a start, all banks should have immediately apologised for the mis-selling. Some did, but this was only after they lost a high court case trying to overturn the FCAs ruling on PPI mis-selling. The banks really needed to signal to employees the importance of a customer-centered culture and change employee incentive systems to align with long-term performance, rather than short-term profit.

Banks need to embed ethical values into their routine actions and decisions. So far, the evidence is that not all banks have bothered to take such steps.

Julie Robson, Associate Professor Marketing, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Productive week CMMPH

international, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Some weeks are more productive than others and this week the  academics in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) have been very busy.   Professor Hundley published  a paper  ‘The initiation of labour at term gestation: physiology and practice implications’ with two midwifery colleagues [1].   The further two CMMPH paper accepted this week were systematic reviews: (a)  Perceived Stress and Diet Quality in Women of Reproductive Age: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis; and (b)  ‘Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature’ [2-3].  Fourthly, CMMPH PhD student Sulochana Dhakal-Rai had a poster accepted at this year’s GLOW conference, which will be held, for the first time, online.  This poster based on her PhD ‘Factors contributing to rising caesarean section rates in South Asia: ​a systematic review’ is supervised by Dr. Juliet Wood, Dr. Pramod Regmi, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and Prof.  Ganesh Dangal (based in Nepal).

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

References:

  1. Hundley V, Downe S, Buckley S (2020) The initiation of labour at term gestation: physiology and practice implications. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynecology 67: 4-18  https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/best-practice-and-research-clinical-obstetrics-and-gynaecology/vol/67/suppl/C

  2. Khaled K, Tsofliou F, Hundley V, Helmreich R, Almilaji O Perceived Stress and Diet Quality in Women of Reproductive Age: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Nutrition (in press) 

  3. Vickery M, van Teijlingen E, Hundley V, Smith GB, Way S, Westward G. Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature.  European Journal of Midwifery (in press)

How Will Emerging Economies Reliant on Tourism Survive the Crisis? 

How Will Emerging Economies Reliant on Tourism Survive the Crisis? 

https://skift.com/2020/08/21/how-will-emerging-economies-reliant-on-tourism-survive-the-crisis/

21 August 2020

Dimitrios Buhalis, a professor of tourism at Bournemouth University, told Skift that countries which can temporarily divert their tourism workforce to other industries, such as to agriculture or fishing, may be able to weather the storm and see their tourism economies pick up where they left off, eventually. He pointed to the example of Bali, Indonesia, where the tourism workforce has largely shifted to more traditional economic means — certainly not without hardship.

But, Buhalis said, “where it’s more difficult is where tourism is 60, 70, 80 percent of the local economy and where you don’t have a local domestic market. Places where the country is small, geography does not support easy accessibility, and the social classes are very structured.” He noted that some Greek islands and countries such as the Maldives fall into this category.

Conversely, Buhalis said the emerging markets that will fare the best during Covid are those that have a large domestic population, an income distribution which means a sizeable percentage of locals can afford to travel, and the geography and infrastructure that allows them to do so.

Though he believes that tourism will recover — “we’ve seen how many people are desperate to travel” — he thinks the current moment represents something of a “fallow period” for tourism, one where governments who have already invested in tourism economies should continue to build up infrastructure and make industries more efficient for what he sees as tourism’s inevitable return.

“Apart from the health crisis we’re about to experience a major global recession beyond belief and that will damage tourism and will create a range of initiatives to prepare us for the next day,” Buhalis said. “We need to improve efficiency and we need to improve the way that we manage tourism.”

HE policy update 20th August 2020

international, NHS, Student Engagement, student research

Well, things happened while we were away!  This is a results and admissions special, with some research news too.  We’ll see what happens next before committing to our next update.

Results!

The withdrawal of BTEC results at 4.30 on Wednesday evening when L1 and L2 results they were due to be published alongside GCSEs on Thursday morning, was “just” another spin in this chaotic results cycle.

With the DfE having (finally) learned that it helps to address obvious concerns before issuing results, GCSE results were issued today with students seeing only the upside from the Ofqual algorithm.  As for A levels, this is not the promised “triple lock” but a double lock  -with students getting the better of the algorithmic grade and the centre assessed grade (CAG).

Hot off the press for university admissions, the caps on numbers for medicine and dentistry are being abolished (although placement and other restrictions may mean it doesn’t make that much difference).   The Minister has announced extra teaching grant for universities with more students on high cost courses.  And in a letter to universities (for once issued during the working day instead of late at night or at the weekend) she promises lots of “working together”.  It all seems a bit late.  The Minister has also published a letter to students.

And there is another story, about the impact next year on the current year 12.  Deferrals will reduce the number of places available next year. Although there can still be appeals, there are expected to be fewer, however there will still be some students choosing to take their exams in person in the autumn – and despite requests for flexibility most of these students will need to wait until 2021/22 to start university, unless they can find programmes with a January start.  This will include private and resit candidates who did not get CAGs.

And it is all so inconsistent with recent government positions and ministerial announcements.  After suggesting that disadvantaged students shouldn’t bother going to university because they are being ripped off, the Minster has told universities to prioritise these students when allocating remaining places on over-subscribed courses.  That’s a good thing, of course, but it demonstrates that the government is worried about the impact of the grades fiasco on the stats next year, so they have realised they do care about WP after all.  And after abandoning the 50% participation target (again) and pressing the “too many students go to university” line (again), the Minister and Secretary of State are now urging universities to be as flexible as possible and let as many students as possible in.   So much for them all doing vocational courses in FE colleges.  Oh, but that was for other people’s children – not the constituents who have written protesting about their children losing their chances to go to university.

Those arguments haven’t gone away, though.  Predictably with no story about GCSE unfairness, the story today is therefore about grade inflation and the risk of students who will struggle to succeed in whatever they do next because they have done better than they “should have”.    There is a similar line for A levels too.  There is already a government and regulatory focus on continuation and outcomes but it will be particularly charged for the cohort of 2020/21.

But it’s all going to be ok, because the Minister has established a task force.  Having failed to consult the sector while all this was playing out, a task force was set up on Wednesday, meeting daily.  UUK wrote to Gavin Williamson on Tuesday to set out the potential problems in all this. The result is a letter to students and VCs, and a press release.  To quote, the action taken so far:

  • Yesterday’s (19 August) daily meeting of the Government’s Higher Education Taskforce agreed to honouring all offers across courses to students who meet their conditions this coming year wherever possible, or if maximum capacity is reached to offer an alternative course or a deferred place.
  • To support this commitment, the Government has lifted the cap on domestic medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and undergraduate teacher training places. Additional teaching grant funding will also be provided to increase capacity in medical, nursing, STEM and other high-cost subjects which are vital to the country’s social needs and economy.
  • ….There are no Government caps on university nursing places, and the Government is working rapidly to build capacity in the nursing sector to support recruitment to the country’s vital public services.
  • On Monday, the Government also confirmed it intends to remove temporary student number controls for the 2020/21 academic year to build capacity to admit students this coming year. 

We will see what they do next.  UUK have responded to the first set of announcements.

Meanwhile the blame game is continuing with officials saying they warned Ministers weeks ago, with allegations that Ministers were not on top of the detail, with Ministers at least hinting that it is all Ofqual’s fault because they said it would all be ok, officials at the DfE coming under fire, and the Office for Statistics Regulation announcing a review.  The House of Commons Education Committee also raised these issues in early July.

Further reading:

  • UCAS update from Wednesday evening:
    • Our initial analysis shows approximately 15,000 of these students who were originally rejected by their original firm choice university with their moderated grades, will now meet the A level conditions of their offer with their centre assessed grades (CAGs).
    • Approximately 100,000 students who had their grades upgraded were already placed at their first choice university on A level results day last Thursday.
    • Of the remaining 60,000 students with higher grades from CAGs, around one in four (approximately 15,000) will now meet the A level offer conditions of their original first choice university. 90% of these students made their original firm choice at a higher tariff provider.
    • UCAS has conducted further analysis into these 15,000 students, and found 7% of this group are from disadvantaged backgrounds (POLAR4 Q1). This follows a record breaking year for disadvantaged students gaining places at high tariff providers, which at this point in the admissions cycle stands at 6,090 (compared with 5,290 at the same point last year for UK 18 year olds).
  • Coverage on Wonkhe: today’s update on “a great new deal for universities and applicants” with analysis (of course) of the impact of the grade changes.
  • There’s an IfS blog about what went wrong:
    • The method used to assign grades makes some sense. Schools were asked to rank their students in each subject. Then information on earlier grades within the schools, and earlier attainment at GCSE, was used to assign grades to each student this year. The resulting distribution of grades looks comparable to the distribution in previous years. Indeed, there are rather more higher grades than in the past.
    • There are two obvious problems with what Ofqual did. I suspect that there are more, but it will require many more hours of study to discover them.
    • First, and most obvious, the process adopted favours schools with small numbers of students sitting any individual A Level. That is, it favours private schools. If you have up to five students doing an A Level, you simply get the grades predicted by the teacher. If between five and fifteen, teacher-assigned grades get some weight. More than 15 and they get no weight. Teacher predictions are always optimistic. Result: there was a near-five percentage point increase in the fraction of entries from private schools graded at A or A*. In contrast, sixth-form and further education colleges saw their A and A* grades barely rise — up only 0.3 per cent since 2019 and down since 2018. This is a manifest injustice. No sixth-form or FE college has the funding to support classes of fifteen, let alone five. The result, as Chris Cook, a journalist and education expert, has written: “Two university officials have told me they have the poshest cohorts ever this year because privately educated kids got their grades, the universities filled and there’s no adjustment/clearing places left.”
    • Second, the algorithm used makes it almost impossible for students at historically poor-performing sixth forms to get top grades, even if the candidates themselves had an outstanding record at GCSE. For reasons that are entirely beyond me, the regulator did not use the full information on GCSE performance. Rather than use data that could help to identify when there are truly outstanding candidates, the model simply records what tenth of the distribution GCSE scores were in. There is a huge difference between the 91st and 99th percentiles, yet they are treated the same. There is little difference between the 89th and 91st, yet they are treated differently.
    • … Then there appears to be a more general lack of common sense applied to the results of the model. If it predicts a U grade (a fail) for a subject in a school, then some poor sucker is going to fail, deserved or not. That’s why some seem to have been awarded Us despite predicted grades of C.
  • Education Committee report on 7th July. The Ofqual response is here.
  • You will remember the Royal Statistical Society for their heroic critique of the TEF in their response to the Pearce Review (as a side bar, the TEF metrics will be very peculiar next year – benchmarking will be an interesting process). They offered to help but refused to sign a restrictive non disclosure agreement and so were not involved.  Their CEO is quoted in the FT and the article is worth reading.
  • Jo Johnson in the Spectator being pleased that the numbers cap has been abolished:
    • Before the exams meltdown, universities were losing both friends and influence on the Tory benches. They were deemed to be on the ‘wrong’ side of the referendum and then enemy combatants in a low-level culture war. The ministerial message to young people was shifting from the sensible ‘you don’t have to do a degree’ to the openly discouraging ‘too many go to university’. The high watermark of uni-phobia perhaps came last month when cabinet ministers denounced Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent of children going to university and warned that any institution finding itself in financial difficulties would be ‘restructured’. To say our universities feel unloved by this government is an understatement.
    • But the furore over the botched exam results has shown that most people are still very keen on universities. MPs have been besieged by thousands of families worried about their children’s future and enraged by grade downgrades and missed university offers. Are ministers really going to respond by telling kids (other people’s obviously) to take short vocational courses instead? Does any MP seriously relish the failure of a university in his patch? I doubt it.
    • There’s another IfS blog about the impact:
      • …it looks like amongst UK students holding offers at Oxford or Cambridge, around 10% more than expected (or around 500 extra students) may now have achieved their offers. 
      • Lower down the rankings, the effect on numbers is less clear: more applicants will have met their offers, but fewer will end up going to their insurance choice or finding a place via Clearing after missing their offers. But it seems plausible that for most higher-ranking universities, domestic student numbers will be higher than they expected.  
      • To allow for this, the government has lifted the student numbers caps that it had temporarily brought back for this year in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. But universities will still face physical capacity constraints in teaching and housing students. These constraints may not bind if many international and EU students do not take up their places as a result of the COVID-19 crisis: extra domestic students could just take their spots. But universities still don’t know how many of these students will turn up. They have made offers and will have to honour them if the international students do come.
      • … These problems were entirely avoidable. A Level results should never have been released before being subject to scrutiny beyond Ofqual. The government should not have had to rely on shocked 18-year-olds on results day to realise there was a problem. And the allocation of places should not have happened immediately – the government should have released the results in advance and allowed an appeals process on grades before allowing universities to finalise places. 
      • Allocating A Level grades to students who did not sit exams was never going to be easy. But the government’s solution is a clear fail. This will have repercussions for universities and students, now and in the coming years.
    • Pearson update on BTECs from Wednesday afternoon:
      • Following our review and your feedback we have decided to apply Ofqual’s principles for students receiving BTECs this summer.  
      • This means we will now be regrading all the following BTECs – BTEC Level 3 Nationals (2010 QCF and 2016 RQF), BTEC Level 1/2 Tech Awards, BTEC Level 2 Technicals and BTEC Level 1/2 Firsts.  
      • BTEC qualification results have been generally consistent with teacher and learner expectations, but we have become concerned about unfairness in relation to what are now significantly higher outcomes for GCSE and A Levels.  
      • Although we generally accepted Centre Assessment Grades for internal (i.e. coursework) units, we subsequently calculated the grades for the examined units using historical performance data with a view of maintaining overall outcomes over time. Our review will remove these calculated grades and apply consistency across teacher assessed internal grades and examined grades that students were unable to sit.  
      • We will work urgently with you to reissue these grades and will update you as soon as we possibly can. We want to reassure students that no grades will go down as part of this review.  
      • We appreciate this will cause additional uncertainty for students and we are sorry about this. Our priority is to ensure fair outcomes for BTEC students in relation to A Levels and GCSEs and that no BTEC student is disadvantaged.  

    Meanwhile….

    The IfS have a report on the impact of school closures:

    • Learning time was dramatically lower during the lockdown than prior to it. On average, primary school students spent 4.5 hours learning on a typical school day during the lockdown, down from 6.0 hours before the lockdown (25% reduction). For secondary schools, the absolute and proportionate drops are even larger, from 6.6 hours a day before the lockdown to 4.5 hours a day during the lockdown (32% reduction). 
    • Learning time has also become more unequal, especially at primary school. Figure 1 shows the changesin total daily learning time, including both time in class and time on other educational activities, during a typical term week between 2014–15 and the lockdown period. It compares children from the poorest, middle and richest fifth of households (in the case of the 2020 data, based on their pre-pandemic earnings).
    • For primary school children, the lockdown has created new inequalities in learning time. Before the pandemic, there was essentially no difference between the time that children from the poorest and richest households spent on educational activities. But, during the lockdown, learning time fell by less among primary school children from the richest families than among their less well-off peers. The end result is that, during the lockdown, the richest students spent 75 minutes a day longer on educational activities than their peers in the poorest families – an extra 31% of learning time.  
    • At secondary school, though, the picture looks very different. While the size of the gap between children from the poorest and the richest households during the lockdown, at 73 minutes a day, is almost precisely the same size as the gap for primary students, this inequality has much deeper roots; even before the lockdown, secondary school pupils from the richest fifth of families spent almost an hour a day more time on education than their worst-off peers. And, unlike at primary school, this is not just a story about the rich and the rest; the inequalities between the middle and the bottom are just as pronounced as those between the middle and the top.
    • Existing research has shown that extra learning time leads to better educational outcomes. The widening of the socio-economic learning-time gap during the lockdown therefore suggests that the lockdown could worsen educational inequalities between children from poorer and richer backgrounds, especially among primary school students.

    Research news

    UKRI have announced that international students can apply for UKRI funded postgraduate studentships in the next academic year.

    Dame Ottoline Leyser, the new head of UKRI was interviewed in Nature:

    • The thing that I think is most important is the focus on people and on research culture, because the whole research system critically depends not just on researchers, but on all the people around them who support the research endeavour. [Research] is also a system now which is in a lot of stress. There are lots of bad behaviours, which are arguably driven by the huge stress and we need to think hard about shifting that.
    • Poor cultural practices are a real problem in terms of bullying and harassment, research integrity and keeping the widest range of people in the system, to drive the creative and dynamic system that we need. Getting to a place where people are enjoying the work that they’re doing, where they’re all appreciated and valued, to me, is crucial. Many of those other things I think will flow from that.
    • … We put a huge emphasis on a researcher’s publication and funding record, for example. We have put much less emphasis on things like their care for the next generation, leadership skills and the wider contributions people are making to the research system — which are absolutely essential for the system to function — and how they are engaging more widely. I think those are things that every researcher should be doing. It’s a whole range of things that we need to try to address to make research fun again, because it really should be.
    • .. The way we’ve typically thought about equality, diversity and inclusion has been that you collect up the numbers and then you try to put in place things that ‘fix’ the minority in some way — for example, you make it easier for women to work in a system. To me, that’s not going to work. You have to create a system that genuinely supports diversity, and what that means is something quite uncomfortable. True diversity and inclusion is about valuing difference, not about creating some level playing field and pretending everybody’s the same and therefore they can all succeed on that playing field.
    • Particularly in research, difference is where all the good stuff is. Disagreement is where all the new and exciting ideas come from. We have to build research cultures where difference is considered a good thing. In our funding portfolio as UKRI, we need to ask ourselves, are we funding a wide range of different types of thing or are we just funding more of the same?

    And she also did an interview in the THE:

    • Many hope that Dame Ottoline – known for her critiques of the research excellence framework and science’s failure to introduce more family-friendly policies – will provide a more robust challenge to government policy, having been far closer to the science coalface than most long-serving administrators.
    • Will she continue to be as forthright as she has been? “I’m certainly not going to pussyfoot about,” said Dame Ottoline on her upcoming dealings with the key players in government.
    • That said, the recent pro-science moves by Boris Johnson’s administration, which last month reconfirmed its ambition to double research spending to £22 billion a year by 2024, mean that an adversarial stance is probably not the best approach, she explained.
    • … She was not, however, keen on the idea of forcing institutions to adopt certain practices by making them a condition of UKRI funding in the same way that, in 2015, the chief medical officer, then Dame Sally Davies, made an Athena SWAN diversity award a prerequisite for receiving NHS medical research funding.
    • “Mandating particular approaches will not deliver the diversity that we need,” insisted Dame Ottoline, who said many scientists felt the decision to make Athena SWAN mandatory “undermined some of the core principles [of the scheme] and how institutions think about diversity”.

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