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Staff Survey – An investigation into cyber crime threats against Universities

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Hello all, as part of my MSc in Cybercrime Investigation studies, I am conducting a staff survey regarding the perceptions of cybercrime amongst Bournemouth University staff.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. If you would like to take part in the survey, it will take around 15 minutes to complete. To be eligible, participants must be current Bournemouth University staff members. Your survey responses will be submitted anonymously.

You do not need to be an expert in cybercrime/cyber security to complete the survey. More information can be found on the survey, or by contacting Catherine Charles (Assistant TEL Developer, Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation & Excellence) – ccharles@bournemouth.ac.uk, 01202 961303.

Thank you,

The link to the survey is accessible here:

https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8nLLvIOdStkdLc9

The Wellbeing Thesis

PG research

Image result for the wellbeing thesis

An online resource for postgraduate research students to support your wellbeing, learning and research.

Explore the website and find; research, top tips, videos and downloadable action plans. Whether at the beginning, middle or end of your research, there will be something here for you.

The Wellbeing Thesis content has been developed by the University of Derby, King’s College London, Student Minds and PGR student co-creation panels.

HE policy update for the w/e 17th January 2020

HEIF, Industry collaboration, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

Another busy week  in HE policy– with consultations and a very short timeline for the KEF.  Everyone has hit the ground running in 2020!

The third leg of the HE stool arrives: KEF has landed

The outcome of the KEF consultation in 2019 has come out. UKRI have published the “Decisions for the first iteration”.  They have given a very short timeline for the publication of the first set of data and narratives from institutions – they will all be published this summer.  Narratives have to be submitted by May.  Data will be published for everyone, whether they submit narratives or not.

They have also indicated that it is likely that from 2020/21 institutions will have to submit narratives for the KEF to be eligible for Research England funding.

  • This first iteration of the KEF will take place in the current academic year 2019/20. All Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) eligible to receive Research England Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding in this current academic year are in scope for this exercise.
  • The KEF is taking a metrics-led approach, although it also includes a narrative component. As previously advised, all proposed KEF metrics use existing data sources that are already collected via existing statutory returns or other means. …. This reflects the minimal burden of this exercise as there is no need for any institution to gather or submit new metrics for this iteration of the KEF.
  • The narrative component of the KEF will consist of three brief narrative statements … we intend to publish in summer 2020 the KEF metrics of all institutions in receipt of HEIF in this 2019/20 academic year. Therefore, institutions in receipt of HEIF in this academic year 2019/20 are strongly encouraged to submit narrative information to contextualise their results….
  • This report will be followed by publication of the narrative templates and final cluster membership in February 2020. If institutions in scope for this exercise wish to have their narrative templates published alongside their results, the completed templates should be returned on Friday 15 May 2020.
  • …Research England will provide further contextual information about the external environment in which the HEI operates that should be considered when interpreting results. This contextual information will be in the form a standard set of indicators at the LEP-region level.
  • Results will be presented through an online visualisation platform displaying perspectives and underlying metrics, as well as narrative statements and contextual information

The metrics will be reported against “clusters”. They have changed their original cluster proposals somewhat, removing the Social Science and Business specialist cluster – final cluster membership will be published in February with the templates. These clusters have been designed to allow meaningful comparison.  When BU responded to the consultation we suggested that it is unhelpful to introduce a third methodology for comparison – the TEF uses institutional benchmarks, something that has challenges itself, and the REF is of course organised by subject.  We remain concerned that this will be confusing and not very meaningful for businesses and other organisations (the declared target for this information) who may not find the cluster comparison useful if they only have limited experience with a small number of universities.

You will recall that the metrics are grouped into seven “perspectives” – only two will require narratives.  The consultation looked at additional metrics but has discounted any that are not already “gathered through existing statutory returns, or available from other UKRI or external sources”.  This is because they want to make it a “low burden” exercise.

Public and Community Engagement narrative – a statement:

  • identifying the public and community groups served by the institution and how their needs have been identified;
  • description of the targeted activities that are undertaken to meet these needs;
  • evidence that needs have been met and tangible outcomes achieved.

Local Growth and Regeneration narrative – a statement:

  • identifying the geographical area(s) that the institution considers to be its local area;
  • explanation of how needs of the local area(s) that relate to economic growth and regeneration are identified;
  • description of the targeted activities undertaken by the institution to meet those needs and any outcomes achieved.

The third narrative will be an institutional context narrative – “setting out the geographic, economic and social context within which the higher education institution is operating…. The information contained within this statement will not be used to normalise any of the metrics or perspectives across clusters.”

David Kernohan has written for Wonkhe about it:

  • “The Knowledge Exchange Framework is not (like REF and TEF are) an “excellence framework”. It doesn’t make any judgement on the quality of business and community interaction, just on the proportional volume and likely output of a number of activities described in the HE-BCI survey data. Neither is it of use to professional or armchair rankers – it doesn’t offer named awards or simple stepped gradations that demonstrate one thing is unfailingly better than another.
  • It may eventually be used to support the allocation of the £200m Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which is currently allocated using similar data. But for the first year (2020-21) it is for entertainment and edification purposes only.”

David summarises the pages of normalisation methodology in the document nicely: “Metrics are a three-year average, mostly …as ratios, which are converted at perspective level into deciles. This reduces a great deal of data and analysis into what amounts to a set of marks out of 10, which are compared to an average mark from comparable institutions (the infamous clusters)”.

And the visualisation approach: “Research England has a grand plan to use spider graphs to show institutional scores alongside cluster averages, with an option to drill down into more detailed data on each metric. I’m not as struck by this as they are – the exercise is designed to support comparisons and spider diagrams are an unwieldy way to do this. I also feel like the individual metrics are still fairly abstract, you have to go quite a long way back down the methodology to get something that the mind can easily take hold of.”

Erasmus after Brexit

After the social media storm last week when Parliament didn’t approve the Erasmus amendment to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (it doesn’t mean we can’t be in it, it just means that government won’t be bound by the new Bill to make sure we are in it), there have been a few questions this week.

Douglas Chapman (SNP) said that the end of Erasmus scheme was an “utter disaster, culturally and socially” and asked the PM to comment on the end of the participation of the scheme. Boris’ response implied that the UK would continue to participate in the scheme.

And there were several questions on Erasmus (see this one and this one) – all with similar response – that the Government is including it within the Brexit negotiations and is working towards remaining within the scheme.  The House of Commons Library have released this briefing paper on Erasmus to inform MPs ahead of Monday’s scheduled Education debate.

New HESA data

HESA have published higher education statistics for 2018/19.  Interestingly, the OfS focussed on grade inflation in their response –and nothing else.

Sex of students

  • Of all HE students 57% were female in 2018/19 (see Figure 4), this has been the same since 2016/17.
  • A larger proportion of part-time students were female than full-time students.
  • For other undergraduate students, 64% were female, compared with 49% of postgraduate (research) students.

Age of students

  • The overall number of first year students aged 30 and over has increased in 2018/19 after a decreasing trend in previous years.
  • The number of first year students aged 21-24 has increased from 2015/16 to 2018/19.
  • The number of first year full-time students aged 30 and over has increased every year since 2014/15.
  • Numbers of full-time students aged 20 and under have increased year on year since 2012/13.

Student disability status

  • The overall number of students with a known disability is increasing year on year. The main reason for this increase is students identified as having a mental health condition.
  • Of students with a known disability in 2018/19 the category of specific learning difficulty is the largest group accounting for 36% of the total.

Ethnicity of students

  • The percentage of UK domiciled students that are White has decreased over the last five years. However, the percentage that are Asian, Mixed and from Other ethnic backgrounds has increased.
  • HE providers in England show the largest decrease and the lowest proportion of UK domiciled students that are White compared to HE providers in all other countries of the UK.

Within the European Union:

  • Italy has seen a notable rise to become the top European Union country sending students to the UK, overtaking three other countries in the last five years.
  • Germany is the top European Union country to send students to Wales and Scotland, and Ireland is top in sending students to Northern Ireland.

Outside the European Union:

  • China sent more students to the UK than any other overseas country. In 2018/19, 35% of all non-EU students were from China. The number of students from China was also 34% higher in 2018/19 than in 2014/15, increasing from 89,540 to 120,385 in the five year span.
  • Student numbers from India increased from 18,325 in 2014/15 to 26,685 in 2018/19.
  • The other countries in the chart are more in line with European Union student numbers.
  • Nigeria has seen a 41% decline in student numbers coming to the UK over the five year period, dropping behind the United States, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
  • For more recent trends in international student visa applications and granted visas, refer toTable 1 of Immigration statistics published by the Home Office in November 2019. Please note that although on a similar theme, these statistics are not directly comparable. Home Office statistics cover further education as well as higher education, and immigration data provides an indication of the number of people who have an intention to enter the UK for study reasons, not whether, or when, an individual actually arrived in the UK, or what they did on arrival to the UK.

Of those gaining a classified first degree:

  • The percentage of students achieving a first class honours remains stable at 28% for both 2017/18 and 2018/19. This follows an increase year on year since 2009/10 where 14% of students achieved this classification.
  • A larger proportion of female students gained a first or upper second class honours than male students.
  • Full-time students had a larger proportion of first or upper second class honours than part-time students.

Subjects

In 2018/19:

  • More qualifications were awarded in business & administrative studies than any other subject area.
  • Amongst part-time students, more qualifications were awarded in subjects allied to medicine than any other subject area.

Over the five year period 2014/15 – 2018/19:

  • There has been an overall increase in the number of qualifications gained in biological sciences and social studies.
  • There has been a decline in the number of qualifications gained in languages and education.

Mental Health

Student Minds has launched The Wellbeing Thesis, a website designed to support postgraduate research students to maintain their mental wellbeing.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield has presented a Bill in the House of Lords which would amend the Education Act 2002 and the Academies Act 2010 for schools to promote the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils. The Bill will proceed to a second reading at a future date.

And some Parliamentary questions:

Q – Conor McGinn: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to (a) reduce the level of social stigma in relation to mental health and (b) promote awareness of mental health issues among young people.

A – Nick Gibb:

  • The Department is making teaching about mental health part of compulsory health education in all state-funded schools in England from September 2020. The statutory guidance sets out that pupils will be taught about the importance of good physical and mental health including the steps pupils can take to protect and support their own health and mental wellbeing. The content will also cover understanding emotions; identifying where someone is experiencing signs of poor mental health; simple self-care; and how and when to seek support.
  • The Department is also working with the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families to pilot setting up peer support approaches in schools and colleges that allow young people to play an active part of creating a mentally healthy and supportive environment. The findings from the programme’s external evaluation will be shared nationally, to help more schools to develop or improve their own mental health peer support programmes.
  • To support school staff, the Department has set up Expert Advisory Group on teacher and leader wellbeing which has a remit to advise the Department on what it can do to help schools and colleges promote good wellbeing, including tackling stigma around mental health.

Labour leadership

Monday was the closing date for Labour leadership candidates to secure the 22 nominations from MPs to run for party leader. Chris Lewis and Barry Gardiner did not secure the required amount. The following candidates will progress to the next round (number of nominations received noted in brackets):

  • Keir Starmer (89)
  • Rebecca Long Bailey (33)
  • Lisa Nandy (31)
  • Jess Phillips (23)
  • Emily Thornberry (23)

Candidates for deputy leader:

  • Angela Rayner (88)
  • Ian Murray (34)
  • Dawn Butler (29)
  • Rosena Allin-Khan (23)
  • Richard Burgon (22)

We explained the leadership contest process in detail in last week’s policy update. However, here is a quick recap: the next phase requires the candidates to seek nominations from Constituency Labour Parties and the Unions by 15th Jan – to carry on they need support of 5% of the constituency parties (the BBC said 30) OR 3 affiliate organisations, including 2 trade unions.  The members’ ballot opens on 21st Feb and runs to 2nd April.  Votes are redistributed if there is no clear winner.  Results announced on 4th April

An interesting background briefing on the Labour leadership candidates prepared by Dods is available here. It is worth a read to get to know the candidates better.

Fees and funding

The House of Commons Library has a new briefing paper on the Augar Review (Post 18 Education and Funding Review). The paper considers the recommendations of the Augar Review and the (page 26) initial responses to it from major HE bodies. The Government is rumoured to have made the decision on how they will respond (which parts they will adopt) of the Augar Review and intend to release their response at a suitable point (soon-ish!). Most likely the briefing paper has been produced because Education Questions will take place in Parliament next Monday.

And some Parliamentary questions:

Q -Baroness Bennett Of Manor Castle: following the announcement that nursing bursaries are to be reintroduced, what plans [the Government] have to support nurses, midwifes and other healthcare professionals with any debt incurred before the reintroduction to support their study and training.

A -Baroness Blackwood Of North Oxford:

  • We have committed to 50,000 more nurses in the National Health Service by 2025 and our new financial support package is crucial to delivering this.
  • Eligible pre-registration students on nursing, midwifery and many allied health students’ courses at English universities from September 2020 will benefit from additional support of at least £5,000 of non-repayable funding, with up to £3,000 additional funding for some students, who choose to study in regions or specialisms struggling to recruit, or to help with childcare costs, which they will not have to pay back.
  • The Government has no plans to introduce a scheme that will backdate the offer for students who completed courses in earlier years.

Q – Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon): To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to introduce Sharia compliant student loans.

A – Chris Skidmore (Kingswood): The government remains committed to introducing an Alternative Student Finance product for tuition fee and maintenance loans. Details on implementation will follow the conclusion of the review of post-18 education and funding.

Select Committees

Parliamentary business has been laid to commence the election of the select committee chairs now the new Parliament has formed. We anticipate the chairs will be announced early in February.  Below is a diagram stating which party will chair each select committee.

There are several committees where the previous chairman has vacated their position through losing their seat, or where the chairmanship has switched from Labour to Tory to reflect Parliament’s new arithmetic (the number of chairs for each party is proportionate to the size of the party in Parliament).  These include the Treasury, health, transport and work and pensions committees.

There is a potential change on the horizon. In the past when a parliamentary session ends the chairmanship and membership of a select committee ceases – as it did when the 2019 general election was called. However, a parliamentary motion introduced this week seeks to remove the limit on the maximum length of time an individual can chair a committee. This would allow parliamentarians to become long-serving chairs. There is also a clause which stipulates that the Brexit committee will continue for another year, even though the department it shadows — DExEU — is being wound up at the end of January.

Education Debate

There was a major Education and Local Government debate within the House of Commons this week led by Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education. On schools the debate covered content on: the minimum school funding (per pupil), rolling out free schools (Midlands, North and South West), extra funding to Councils to support children in care, capital funding for childcare provision within schools (for school aged children), an arts activities premium for secondary schools from 2021, school building safety – following advice in the independent Hackitt review,

Gavin Williamson also said:

  • The Government’s £3bn national skills fund would build on ongoing work to develop a national retraining scheme in underpinning economic prosperity.
  • Capital investment of £1.8bn into the further education estate.
  • The Government plans to create more mayors across England to devolve power away from Westminster via a devolution white paper.

Angela Rayner challenged the Government on the lack of response to the Augar review, particularly in relation to decision on the regulation of home education. She said: “While we are on the subject of Bills that are missing in action…The Augar review went from being a flagship to a ghost ship”.

SNP Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Carol Monaghan, asked the Minister whether a fee change would be forthcoming, further to the Augar review recommendations. She also raised concerns over the implications of Brexit on HE staff, research funding, infrastructure and collaboration: “A recent report from the Royal Society has shown that the UK’s share of EU funding has fallen by €500 million since 2015. There has also been a drop of 40% in UK applications to Horizon 2020. We are still in it just now, but we have had that drop because people do not have any certainty. The UK is now seen as a less attractive place to come and do research, with 35% fewer scientists coming to the UK through key schemes. That is of concern, as is Erasmus and what Brexit will mean for that programme”.

David Davis (Conservative) criticised the university tuition fees and loans scheme for delivering poor-quality education, high levels of expectations and low levels of outcome. He called for concerted action to tackle low productivity, including translational research, but also, “investment, education, infrastructure, magnet cities and garden villages”.

Previous chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon welcomes the Queen’s Speech and said that he believes that “skills, social justice, standards and support for the profession should be the four interlocking foundations of this Government’s education programme.” He called on the Government to turbocharge adult learning, citing that adult learning is at its lowest since 1996 and that this county needs a world-class apprenticeships programme.

Halfon also raised concerns about disadvantaged pupils who are often 19 months behind by the time they reach their GCSEs, he called on the Government to have a “bold, assertive agenda that has compassion and aspiration right at its core.” Halfon told the chamber that the Government should offer top-quality childcare, to help plug the gap of disadvantaged children who are already left behind when they start primary school.

Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland Karin Smyth told the house that the Government has got it wrong in its implementation of apprenticeships, particularly by making the process more complicated for small and medium sized enterprises.

Janet Daby (Labour, Lewisham East) raised a number of concerns surrounding the funding of schools and local authorities. She told the house that “in the midst of a mental health crisis in young adults, we must do more to address the increasing lack of support in further education colleges.”

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak) welcomed the Secretary of State’s admission of the problems faced by pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. He also hoped that the new student visa would make it easier for people to come here to study, but noted that PhD students did not find it particularly easy to stay after they completed their doctorates.

Alex Norris (Labour/Co-op, Nottingham North) spoke about the educational trouble faced by working class boys, saying that it was caused by a cocktail of poor discipline, irregular attendance and below par curriculums. He called on the Government to have better curriculums based on international best practice; specific, targeted resource to augment the pupil premium; a focus on catching up for boys who fall behind at key stage 1; and the deployment of the best teachers in the most challenged schools, incentivised to work in the hard environments.

Bambos Charalambous (Labour) said there wasn’t enough school funding to reverse cuts on areas like school maintenance and a lack of further education.

You can read the debate in full here.

Skills gap

The Local Government Association (LGA) published a report (compiled by the Learning and Work Institute) considering 2030 projected skills gaps in England. It considers eight areas and quantifies potential loss of economic output due to the skills gaps. They conclude that 6 million people in England risk being without a job or in work they are over-qualified for by 2030. This is a similar message to the Government’s line on upskilling the workforce to plug business needs due to insufficient skills within the workforce. However, the LGA imagine a more localised solution to the skills gaps.  Key points:

  • 1 million low-skilled people chasing 2 million low-skilled jobs – a surplus of 3.1 million low-skilled workers
  • 7 million people with intermediate skills chasing 9.5 million jobs – a surplus of 3.1 million people
  • 4 million high-skilled jobs with only 14.8 million high-skilled workers – a deficit of 2.5 million

This note looks at the extent and nature of the potential skills gap that could be faced in the future through to 2030 – at both the level of England as a whole and in eight selected local areas:

  • Nottingham City
  • Staffordshire
  • Gloucestershire
  • Greater Lincolnshire
  • Essex, Southend and Thurrock
  • Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark
  • North of Tyne
  • Southampton and Portsmouth

The LGA are critical of the current centrally-governed skills and employment system whereby £10.5 billion a year is spent by eight government departments and agencies across 20 different national schemes. Unsurprisingly the LGA is calling for the Government to use the Budget to devolve all back-to-work, skills, apprenticeship, careers advice, and business support schemes and funding to the local areas in which they are used. They envisage groups of councils across England with the power and funding to deliver a one-stop ‘Work Local’ service for skills, apprenticeship, employment, careers advice and business support provision. Bringing together local skills planning, overseeing job support including Jobcentre Plus and the Work and Health Programme and coordinate careers advice and guidance for young people and adults.

Cllr Kevin Bentley, Chairman of the LGA’s People and Places Board, said:

  • Millions of people face a future where they have skills mismatched for jobs at a huge cost to people’s lives and the local and national economy. Councils are ideally placed to lead efforts to help the Government bring growth and jobs to all parts of the country and ensure everyone is fully equipped with the skills they need to compete for future jobs.

Stephen Evans, Chief Executive of Learning and Work Institute, said:

  • Improving skills is central to making the 2020s a decade of growth. Other countries have continued to invest in skills, while progress in England has stalled over the last decade, the result of large cuts in England’s adult education budget which has left us lagging behind other countries and the number of adults improving their skills at a record low. We now need a decade of investment, in order to boost life chances,

Widening participation

A thought provoking HEPI blog considers the last 20 years of research published on addressing widening participation (WP) aims. It covers all the expected current topics from the BME attainment gap to the non-participation in HE by costal and/or rural areas. It highlights international approaches such as that from Australia and Canada explaining how studies addressed the same enduring gaps as the UK has now. Overall there are no magic solutions but the blog is reinvigorating in the way it brings all the WP themes together for fresh reconsideration. You can read the full blog here.

At Prime Minister’s Questions this week previous Head of the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon said that despite improvement in educational standards and funding, white working-class boys underperform at every stage of education system. He questioned whether, in the context of large infrastructure projects expected, and the high value apprenticeships associated, whether the apprenticeship levy could be reformed to enable such young people to climb the skills ladder of opportunity. Boris responded that the House should follow Halfon’s advice and reform the apprenticeship levy, and intimated that the Education Secretary would update the House on this in due course.

And some Parliamentary questions:

Q – Lord Bourne Of Aberystwyth: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in improving education outcomes for Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities.

A – Lord Agnew Of Oulton:

  • The latest published data, including breakdowns for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) pupils, relates to 2019 at key stage 2 and 2018 at key stage 4. At both stages, the data showed a small improvement in headline attainment measures for this group compared to the previous year. At key stage 2, the percentage of GRT pupils attaining the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics rose from 19% in 2018 to 20% in 2019. At key stage 4, the percentage achieving grades 9-4 in English and mathematics rose from 11.8% in 2017 to 13.1% in 2018.
  • The government is taking significant steps forward to support attainment and progression for all pupils, including GRT pupils. Our education reforms, including those aimed at improving teaching; encouraging good attendance and behaviour; and strengthening the curriculum and examination system, are designed to improve opportunity and standards for all pupils. These reforms are underpinned by school accountability measures, which are intended to encourage schools to focus more closely on the attainment of all their pupils.
  • Through the pupil premium; we are addressing low economic circumstances. This is a key factor that predicts future educational outcomes, and affects a high proportion of GRT children. Since 2011, we have provided over £15 billion of this additional funding, with a further £2.4 billion being distributed in this financial year.

Life Sciences

Medical Science is one of BU’s strategic investment areas (SIA). Colleagues with an interest in this SIA area will be interested in the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy update which highlights progress in delivering the strategy since 2017. It covers:

  • NHS collaboration
  • Business environment
  • Reinforcing the UK science offer, including clinical research, data and genomics
  • Skills
  • Advanced therapies, including developing advanced therapies and advanced therapies manufacturing

The report notes very substantial progress in making the UK a more attractive place for life sciences companies to succeed and grow. These developments are the result of a strong collaboration between all aspects of this diverse industry – pharma, biotech, medtech, digital and diagnostics – the wider research community in the UK, the NHS and government. And states A substantial majority of the objectives in the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy have been met and more are being delivered now. Page 5 details the key achievements and page 10 onwards details the health and clinical research and development. Page 20 covers growing the skills base and workforce to deliver the life sciences industrial strategy. However, the content is limited and mainly covers AI and existing initiatives. It does not that the 2030 Skills Strategy will be published this year so we can expect more detail in the new future facing document. Page 21 briefly touches on commercialisation of university research.  You can read the sections that interest you most here.

Other news

Unconditional offers: Nottingham Trent have followed their public discussion on grade inflation last year by collaborating with The Times and publishing detail of their defence on conditional unconditional offers.  Wonkhe had an article by Mike Ratcliffe, their Academic Registrar.

Care Students: The Scottish Funding Council has published its National Ambition for Care-Experienced Students, which outlines its commitment to equal outcomes for those students by 2030.

Languages: The Financial Times responds to the HEPI language report, arguing that foreign language study should be made compulsory.

Social Commuting: The Guardian have a short, to the point, piece advising commuter students how to balance a social life with their commuting arrangements.

R&D – extending definition to cover the Creative Industries: Last week there was an interesting mini-debate following this question by Baroness Bull: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to adopting a broader definition of research and development that includes, and incentivises, research and development investment in the creative industries. You can read the debate responses and follow on questions here.

Universities and Crime – a Parliamentary question

Q – Lord Taylor Of Warwick: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with UK Universities about reports that universities are not reporting crime statistics.

A – Baroness Berridge:

  • Criminal acts and misconduct are unacceptable in our world-leading universities, which should be safe and inclusive environments. Universities are autonomous institutions, and it is for each provider to determine what information should be collected and reported. Institutions have no statutory requirement to report crime statistics but have a responsibility to ensure students feel safe and able to report incidents, and to provide robust policies and procedures to address all forms of misconduct.
  • Current recorded crime statistics cover incidents reported to police. Where an institution (or the victim themselves) report the matter to the police it will be recorded and therefore captured in crime statistics. The government is aware that third party organisations collate data relating to incidents reported as taking place in Higher Education Providers (HEPs) and officials monitor this information.
  • The government expects providers to keep records of incidents disclosed to them and act swiftly to investigate and address them, with police involvement where necessary. Effective data collection processes enable HEPs to review and analyse reported incidents and complaints to inform continuous improvement. HEPs should continue to break down barriers to reporting, to ensure students and staff feel safe and able to report incidents.
  • The government continues to work closely with Universities UK (UUK) on implementing its Changing the Culture framework. The most recent progress report, published in October 2019, showed that 72% of responding institutions had developed or improved recording of data on incidents with a more centralised approach. UUK are also supporting HEPs in handling misconduct and criminal offences, including working with the Police Association of Higher Education Liaison Officers to explore how to best support information sharing between police forces and universities, and government officials meet regularly with UUK representatives.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

NCCR Research Seminar. Britain: the myths we learn and the myths we tell ourselves

The latest NCCR seminar took place on 15 January when we welcomed the Head of the Comparative Politics and Media Centre, Professor Darren Lilleker.

 

Professor Lilleker’s talk drew on analysis of the lexis used on social media to argue that an embedded underlying myth of Britishness informed much of the debate around the EU Referendum. The Leave EU lexicon was characterised by terms such as ‘free’ and ‘rule’, with words such as ‘traitor’ and ‘betray’ attached to Jeremy Corbyn by the Brexit Party. Links with traditional British anthems such as ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, and ‘Rule Britannia’ were explored (alongside reference to ‘Jerusalem’) and analysed against a model of British particularism (Dowling) which privileges qualities such as strength, superiority, benevolence, and exceptionality. The way that this set of qualities is reinforced through British secondary school curriculum (textbooks such as Crowther, The History of Britain) was discussed, noting that the GCSE history curriculum is fragmented and one-sided, with key moments in British history being explored devoid of context, and framed to sustain a view of empire (such as Henry VIII who ‘freed us from the Church of Rome’, Elizabeth I who ruled the waves, or the Pilgrim Fathers who established the USA). Without linkage or linearity, British schooling thus provides a selective view of its history. Similarly, the adoption of an ‘Anglo Saxon’ origin excludes all the other nationalities that form the British ancestry, and allows for clear linkages to be made with Germany (relevant to the British Royal family) as well as oppositions with countries such as France. These elements sustain the presence of myths of empire, particularism, and power.

 

The session was very well-attended and produced some thoughtful discussion, which explored various definitions of myth (Barthes, Levi-Strauss) and its role as a mediating narrative or therapeutic alternative to history, debated why people might feel compelled to identify with these (dignity, history), noted the essential nature of a mythic past to fascist ideology (Stanham), and the consistent recirculation of such myths (e.g. in war films), the relevance of the manner in which an empire ends and the subject status of British citizens, the role of the literary market in selling textbooks that must appeal to the buyer, and reflected on the etymology of ‘Great’ Britain, which in other languages also carries traces of particularism, such as Chinese where it is directly translated as ‘brave’.

REF 2021 Declaration of Staff Circumstances – Deadline Friday 17th January

REF Subjects

The REF Guidance on Submissions sets out the measures that HEIs are required to put in place to support staff with individual circumstances, recognising that circumstances can have an impact on productivity. This includes creating safe and supportive structures for enabling staff to declare voluntarily any relevant circumstances, putting in place processes to adjust expectations of an individual’s contribution to the unit’s output pool (where the individual is entitled to a reduction), and ensuring staff are treated fairly.

BU’s REF Code of Practice (CoP) contains established procedures to ensure that individuals are able to voluntarily disclose their individual circumstances so that we can take account in preparing our submission. As a consequence we are contacting every REF eligible member of staff  to give them the opportunity to make a voluntary disclosure.

The Staff Disclosure Form for Individual Circumstances can also be downloaded here. We wish to encourage colleagues to submit a form if they believe individual circumstances have affected their ability to undertake research effectively during the period.

Completion and return of the form is voluntary; individuals will not be required to do so if they do not wish to. This form is the only means by which we will be gathering this information; we will not be consulting any hardcopy or electronic records held by Human Resources, contract start dates, etc. You should therefore complete and return the form if any of the circumstances apply and you are willing to provide the associated information.

The form provides guidance on the purpose for collecting the information, applicable individual circumstances, the steps we will take to ensure confidentiality and how to submit the form.

If you have any questions regarding individual circumstances you can email REFcirc@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Forms should be submitted to the REF circumstances mailbox at REFCirc@bournemouth.ac.uk no later than midnight Friday 17 January 2020. Alternatively the form may be posted, marked confidential and for my attention, to Human Resources, Melbury House, 1-3 Oxford Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8ES.

 If you wish to receive the form in an alternative format please email REFCirc@bournemouth.ac.uk or phone 01202 961133.

A second window for disclosing individual circumstances will open during 2020 and the dates for this will be confirmed in due course. This second window will be primarily aimed at capturing any disclosures from staff appointed between November 2019 and July 2020, and from staff whose circumstances have changed.

You can access information about BU’s REF preparation via the Research Blog and if you have any general enquiries regarding the REF you can email ref@bournemouth.ac.uk. For more information about the REF 2021 nationally please visit http://ref.ac.uk/.

 

Sally Driver, Human Resources / Chair of the REF Circumstances Board

REF2021: the importance of Open Access compliance

BRIAN, BU Challenges, Guidance, open access, Publishing, Research assessment

      

Introduction

The four main HE funding bodies in the UK believe that ‘the outputs of publicly funded research should be freely accessible and widely available.’ The REF2021 Open Access Policy was introduced as a requirement for the next REF and it states that – all journal articles and conference contributions (with ISSN) accepted for publication from 1 April 2016 and published on or before 31 December 2020 must comply with the policy to be eligible for submission to the REF.

What does this mean?

Any non-compliant outputs that do not satisfy the policy requirements will NOT be eligible for the next REF.

What are the policy requirements?

  • The outputs must be available open access (via the gold or green open access routes), three months after their acceptance date;
  • The outputs must be discoverable through search engines on the internet, and free to download
  • The outputs must also be in a format where they allow anyone with internet access to search electronically within the texts, to read and to download them

What does this mean to you at BU?

Once you’ve received an official notification from your publisher that your manuscript has been accepted, you should take action right away!

First of all, you should ensure that the publication record is created in BRIAN – Bournemouth Research Information and Networking, clearly specifying the acceptance date. Once you’ve created a record, following instructions on the screen, click on the BURO deposit page as shown below –

To comply with the REF Open Access Policy, you only need to upload/deposit the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript (and not the final published version). However, depending on individual publisher copyright and policies, this is not always the case. To verify the publisher copyright policies and to decide which version of your manuscript you should use, you can do so through the SHERPA RoMEO online resource, which is a reliable source of information recommended by Research England.

Some of these deposited manuscripts may also be subjected to a period of embargo before they can be made available. Again, this would depend on the publisher copyright policies, which you can also check out on SHERPA RoMEO.

On the ‘Deposit’ page in BRIAN, you will see this message –

BURO, which stands for Bournemouth University Research Online is the University’s Institutional Repository. All manuscripts uploaded on BRIAN will be deposited in BURO and are available to anyone in the world with internet access (subject to embargo).

BURO is supported by a team of colleagues from the Faculty Library Team. The BURO team is available to support and advise you through the open access compliance process and to ensure that you are compliant with all publisher copyright and policies.

Do remember, this process has to be done within three months of your publication acceptance date! Please see this video for more guidance.

What do embargo periods mean for compliance?

As mentioned above, use SHERPA RoMEO to find out more about deposit policies and embargo periods.  As long as your manuscript is deposited within 3 months of the acceptance date, the REF2021 Open Access Policy allows for an embargo period of up to 12 months for the REF Panels A & B and 24 months for the REF Panels C & D.

What if the output doesn’t meet the compliance requirements?

In some circumstances, some outputs cannot meet the open access policy requirements due to deposit, access, technical or other issues (for more information see here). If these circumstances fall under the permitted exceptions in accordance with the REF Open Access policy, these outputs may still be submitted to the REF. If you are unsure, please seek advice and guidance from ref@bournemouth.ac.uk as early as possible.

If you have questions regarding REF2021 or Open Access compliance, please feel free to contact ref@bournemouth.ac.uk or if you have questions specific to uploading of your manuscript, please contact BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk.

HSS January Lunch Time Seminar

Join us today 15 January 2020 for the HSS Lunch Time Seminar Series

1-2pm in B226

 

Presentations by:

Sue Green, Living with an Enteral Tube

Roger Baker, Developing the Emotional Processing Paradigm

Hina Tariq, Development and Validation of Contracture Assessment Screening Tool

Learning to Observe: Approximating Human Perceptual Thresholds for Detection of Suprathreshold Image Transformations

We would like to invite you to the next research seminar for the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: Learning to Observe: Approximating Human Perceptual Thresholds for Detection of Suprathreshold Image Transformations

Speaker: Dr Carlo Harvey (Birmingham City University)

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 29 January 2020

Room: F310 (Fusion Building)

Abstract: Many tasks in computer vision are often calibrated and evaluated relative to human perception.

This talk presents a technique to directly approximate the perceptual function performed by human observers completing a visual detection task. Specifically, we present a novel methodology for learning to detect image transformations visible to human observers through approximating perceptual thresholds. To do this, we carry out a subjective two-alternative forced choice study to estimate perceptual thresholds of human observers detecting local exposure shifts in images. We then leverage transformation equivariant representation learning to overcome issues of limited perceptual data. This representation is then used to train a dense convolutional classifier capable of detecting local suprathreshold exposure shifts – a distortion common to image composites. In this context, our model is able to approximate perceptual thresholds with an average error of 0.1148 exposure stops between empirical and predicted thresholds. It can also be trained to detect a range of different pixel-wise transformation.

We hope to see you there!

Having Problems with Home Deliveries? We need more staff to complete our Campus Delivery Survey

Research indicates there is a high carbon footprint associated with missed parcel deliveries to the home due to repeat courier visits and personal mileage to collect parcels. An innovative solution is work place delivery where a work place reception receives parcels and a small payment for this service. At large organisations, like a University, this could significantly reduce van mileage and be economically viable. Our study will explore views on this option and use data from a questionnaire to analyse business models to understand financial viability and savings in greenhouse gas emissions.

The research is being undertaken by Bournemouth University and University of Southampton as part of a project funded by Southampton City Council (SCC) and has the support of Neil Smith (BU Sustainability Manager).

You can take the survey by clicking on this link: https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/34845

The questionnaire is completely confidential and will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Once you fully complete the survey, if you provide your contact email address, you will be entered into the prize draw to win one of ten £25 on-line shopping vouchers.

More information can be found if you click on the survey link, alternatively contact Professor Janet Dickinson (jdickinson@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Hello all, as part of my MSc in Cybercrime Investigation studies, I am conducting a staff survey regarding the perceptions of cybercrime amongst Bournemouth University staff.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. If you would like to take part in the survey, it will take around 15 minutes to complete. To be eligible, participants must be current Bournemouth University staff members. Your survey responses will be submitted anonymously.

You do not need to be an expert in cybercrime/cyber security to complete the survey. More information can be found on the survey, or by contacting Catherine Charles (Assistant TEL Developer, Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation & Excellence) – ccharles@bournemouth.ac.uk, 01202 961303.

Thank you,

The link to the survey is accessible here:

https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8nLLvIOdStkdLc9

NIHR resources – Patient and Public Involvement and Social Media Toolkit

Guidance, Knowledge Exchange, NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Two resources are now available on the NIHR Learn website for researchers –

  • Patient and Public Involvement: Inspiring New Researchers – an online course developed by the Department of Health and NIHR. It is intended to help researchers to understand the benefits of good Patient and Public involvement into their research.
  • Social Media Toolkit – a combination of practical resources on how to get started and real case studies from how colleagues across the NIHR Clinical Research Network are currently using social media to support their work.

To access the above resources you will need to have access to the NIHR Learn website. Once you have an account select the tab ‘Health Research Innovations’ and then click on ‘NIHR Endorsed Learning’. Both courses are free and do not require an enrolment key.

Remember – support and guidance is on offer at BU if you are thinking of conducting clinical research, whether in the NHS, private healthcare or social care  – get in touch with Research Ethics. You can also take a look at the Clinical Governance blog for resources and updates.

Conversation article: 3D printing of body parts is coming fast – but regulations are not ready

In the last few years, the use of 3D printing has exploded in medicine. Engineers and medical professionals now routinely 3D print prosthetic hands and surgical tools. But 3D printing has only just begun to transform the field.

Today, a quickly emerging set of technologies known as bioprinting is poised to push the boundaries further. Bioprinting uses 3D printers and techniques to fabricate the three-dimensional structures of biological materials, from cells to biochemicals, through precise layer-by-layer positioning. The ultimate goal is to replicate functioning tissue and material, such as organs, which can then be transplanted into human beings.

We have been mapping the adoption of 3D printing technologies in the field of health care, and particularly bioprinting, in a collaboration between the law schools of Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom and Saint Louis University in the United States. While the future looks promising from a technical and scientific perspective, it’s far from clear how bioprinting and its products will be regulated. Such uncertainty can be problematic for manufacturers and patients alike, and could prevent bioprinting from living up to its promise.

From 3D printing to bioprinting

Bioprinting has its origins in 3D printing. Generally, 3D printing refers to all technologies that use a process of joining materials, usually layer upon layer, to make objects from data described in a digital 3D model. Though the technology initially had limited applications, it is now a widely recognized manufacturing system that is used across a broad range of industrial sectors. Companies are now 3D printing car parts, education tools like frog dissection kits and even 3D-printed houses. Both the United States Air Force and British Airways are developing ways of 3D printing airplane parts.

The NIH in the U.S. has a program to develop bioprinted tissue that’s similar to human tissue to speed up drug screening.
Paige Derr and Kristy Derr, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

In medicine, doctors and researchers use 3D printing for several purposes. It can be used to generate accurate replicas of a patient’s body part. In reconstructive and plastic surgeries, implants can be specifically customized for patients using “biomodels” made possible by special software tools. Human heart valves, for instance, are now being 3D printed through several different processes although none have been transplanted into people yet. And there have been significant advances in 3D print methods and software in areas like dentistry over the past few years. Visit sites like https://cloud9.software/how-to-manage-successful-dental-practice/ to know more about dental software.

Bioprinting’s rapid emergence is built on recent advances in 3D printing techniques to engineer different types of products involving biological components, including human tissue and, more recently, vaccines.

While bioprinting is not entirely a new field because it is derived from general 3D printing principles, it is a novel concept for legal and regulatory purposes. And that is where the field could get tripped up if regulators cannot decide how to approach it.

State of the art in bioprinting

Scientists are still far from accomplishing 3D-printed organs because it’s incredibly difficult to connect printed structures to the vascular systems that carry life-sustaining blood and lymph throughout our bodies. But they have been successful in printing nonvascularized tissue like certain types of cartilage. They have also been able to produce ceramic and metal scaffolds that support bone tissue by using different types of bioprintable materials, such as gels and certain nanomaterials. A number of promising animal studies, some involving cardiac tissue, blood vessels and skin, suggest that the field is getting closer to its ultimate goal of transplantable organs.

Researchers explain ongoing work to make 3d-printed tissue that could one day be transplanted into a human body.

We expect that advancements in bioprinting will increase at a steady pace, even with current technological limitations, potentially improving the lives of many patients. In 2019 alone, several research teams reported a number of breakthroughs. Bioengineers at Rice and Washington Universities, for example, used hydrogels to successfully print the first series of complex vascular networks. Scientists at Tel Aviv University managed to produce the first 3D-printed heart. It included “cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers” and used cells and biological materials from a human patient. In the United Kingdom, a team from Swansea University developed a bioprinting process to create an artificial bone matrix, using durable, regenerative biomaterial.

‘Cloneprinting’

Though the future looks promising from a technical and scientific perspective, current regulations around bioprinting pose some hurdles. From a conceptual point of view, it is hard to determine what bioprinting effectively is.

Consider the case of a 3D-printed heart: Is it best described as an organ or a product? Or should regulators look at it more like a medical device?

Regulators have a number of questions to answer. To begin with, they need to decide whether bioprinting should be regulated under new or existing frameworks, and if the latter, which ones. For instance, should they apply regulations for biologics, a class of complex pharmaceuticals that includes treatments for cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, because biologic materials are involved, as is the case with 3D-printed vaccines? Or should there be a regulatory framework for medical devices better suited to the task of customizing 3D-printed products like splints for newborns suffering from life-threatening medical conditions?

In Europe and the U.S., scholars and commentators have questioned whether bioprinted materials should enjoy patent protection because of the moral issues they raise. An analogy can be drawn from the famed Dolly the sheep over 20 years ago. In this case, it was held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that cloned sheep cannot be patented because they were identical copies of naturally occurring sheep. This is a clear example of the parallels that exist between cloning and bioprinting. Some people speculate in the future there will be ‘cloneprinting,’ which has the potential for reviving extinct species or solving the organ transplant shortage.

Dolly the sheep’s example illustrates the court’s reluctance to traverse this path. Therefore, if, at some point in the future, bioprinters or indeed cloneprinters can be used to replicate not simply organs but also human beings using cloning technologies, a patent application of this nature could potentially fail, based on the current law. A study funded by the European Commission, led by Bournemouth University and due for completion in early 2020 aims to provide legal guidance on the various intellectual property and regulatory issues surrounding such issues, among others.

On the other hand, if European regulators classify the product of bioprinting as a medical device, there will be at least some degree of legal clarity, as a regulatory regime for medical devices has long been in place. In the United States, the FDA has issued guidance on 3D-printed medical devices, but not on the specifics of bioprinting. More important, such guidance is not binding and only represents the thinking of a particular agency at a point in time.

Cloudy regulatory outlook

Those are not the only uncertainties that are racking the field. Consider the recent progress surrounding 3D-printed organs, particularly the example of a 3D-printed heart. If a functioning 3D-printed heart becomes available, which body of law should apply beyond the realm of FDA regulations? In the United States, should the National Organ Transplant Act, which was written with human organs in mind, apply? Or do we need to amend the law, or even create a separate set of rules for 3D-printed organs?

We have no doubt that 3D printing in general, and bioprinting specifically, will advance rapidly in the coming years. Policymakers should be paying closer attention to the field to ensure that its progress does not outstrip their capacity to safely and effectively regulate it. If they succeed, it could usher in a new era in medicine that could improve the lives of countless patients.

Conversation article: You’re probably more susceptible to misinformation than you think

Online misinformation works, or so it would seem. One of the more interesting statistics from the 2019 UK general election was that 88% of advertisements posted on social media by the Conservative Party pushed figures that had already been deemed misleading by the UK’s leading fact-checking organisation, Full Fact. And, of course, the Conservatives won the election by a comfortable margin.

Internet firms such as Facebook and Google are taking some steps to limit political misinformation. But with Donald Trump aiming for reelection in 2020, it seems likely we’ll see just as many false or misleading statements online this year as in the past. The internet, and social media in particular, has effectively become a space where anyone can spread any claim they like regardless of its veracity.

Yet to what degree do people actually believe what they read online, and what influence does misinformation really have? Ask people directly and most will tell you they don’t trust the news they see on social media. And a landmark study in 2019 found 43% of social media users admitted to sharing inaccurate content themselves. So people are certainly aware in principle that misinformation is common online.

But ask people where they learned about the “facts” that support their political opinions, and the answer will often be social media. A more complex analysis of the situation suggests that for many people the source of political information is simply less important than how it fits with their existing views.

Spurious thinking

Research into the UK Brexit referendum and 2017 general election found that voters often reported making their decisions based on highly spurious arguments. For example, one voter argued that Brexit would stop the takeover of the British high street by foreign companies such as Costa Coffee (which was British at the time). Similarly, a Remain voter spoke of mass deportations of any non-UK born resident if the country left the EU, a much more extreme policy than anything actually put forward by politicians during the campaign.

During the 2017 election, various claims were made by survey respondents that unfairly questioned Conservative leader Theresa May’s humanity. For example, some falsely argued she enacted laws that led to flammable cladding being placed on the exterior of Grenfell Tower, the London block of flats that caught fire in June 2017, killing 72 people. Others called her Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser, or a victim of a conspiracy to discredit him by the military and industrial elites. The common thread was that these voters gained the information to support their arguments from social media.

How do we explain the apparent paradox of knowing social media is full of misinformation and yet relying on it to form political opinions? We need to look more widely at what has become known as the post-truth environment. This involves a scepticism of all official sources of news, a reliance on existing beliefs and biases formed from deeply held prejudices, and a search for information that confirms bias as opposed to critical thinking.

 

People judge information on whether they find it believable as opposed to whether it is backed by evidence. Sociologist Lisbet van Zoonen calls this the replacement of epistemology – the science of knowledge – with “i-pistemology” – the practice of making personal judgements.

A lack of trust in elite sources, in particular politicians and journalists, doesn’t fully explain this large-scale rejection of critical thinking. But psychology can provide some potential answers. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Twersky developed a series of experiments that explored under what conditions humans are most likely to jump to conclusions about a specific topic. They argue intelligence has little impact on making ill-informed judgements.

Intelligence tests demonstrate the capacity to perform logical reasoning, but cannot predict that it will be performed at every moment it is needed. As I have argued, we need to understand the context of people’s decisions.

Everyone wants your attention.
Andrew E Gardener/Shutterstock

The average undecided voter is bombarded with arguments from political leaders, especially in marginal seats or swing states that can make a difference to the outcome of an election. Every politician offers a redacted account of their or their opponents’ policies. And voters are aware that each of these politicians is trying to persuade them and so they retain a healthy scepticism.

The average voter also has a busy life. They have a job, perhaps a family, bills to pay and hundreds of pressing issues to address in their daily lives. They know the importance of voting and making the right decision but struggle to navigate the contested election communication they receive. They want a simple answer to that age-old conundrum, who most or who least deserves my vote.

So instead of conducting a systematic critical analysis of every piece of evidence they encounter, they look for specific issues that they see as driving a wedge between the competing politicians. This is where fake news and disinformation can be powerful. As much as we like to think we’re good at spotting fake news and being sceptical of what we’re told, we’re ultimately susceptible to whatever information makes it easiest to make a decision that seems right, even if in the long term it may be wrong.The Conversation

Darren Lilleker, Associate Professor of Political Communication, Bournemouth University

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

HE Policy Update for the w/e 10th January 2020

Student Engagement

Welcome to all our new readers! Parliament is back in the swing, the Labour leadership contest kicks off and the OfS has been VERY busy.

Parliamentary News

Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge, has been elected the new chair of the all-party parliamentary group for universities.

The Budget has been scheduled for Wednesday 11 March 2020.

Parliamentary Questions

Now that Parliament is regaining its stride relevant parliamentary questions will become more frequent (albeit on the usual topics).

Working Class | Educational Standards

At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Rt Hon Sir David Evennett raised concern about the lack of educational achievement amongst working class boys. He asked whether the Government would prioritise ensuring that “all school children are given the opportunities to maximise their talents.” PM Boris stated the Government were investing “record sums” in early education and would shortly be setting up a National Skills Fund. Local MP Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) welcomed the additional funding for education, but noted that equally important were disciplines and standards, and asked whether there will be a continuous focus on most disadvantaged, especially on literacy and numeracy. Boris agreed more needed to be done and that was why they were investing more.

Free Speech

Q – Dr Matthew Offord: Secretary of State for Education, what steps he will take to promote (a) diversity of thought and (b) freedom of expression on university campuses.

  • A – Chris Skidmore: This government will ensure that our universities are places where free speech can thrive, and will strengthen academic freedoms. The freedom to express views openly, challenge ideas and engage in robust debate is crucial to the student experience and to democracy. Individuals should never be in a position where they can be stopped from, or are made to feel inhibited in, expressing an opinion perfectly lawfully. Similarly, universities should be places where students are exposed to a range of views, including those which may be controversial, and are encouraged to debate and challenge them.
  • Free speech is protected in universities by law and is embedded in the Office for Students’ Regulatory Framework. Under the Education (No 2) Act 1986, universities have a specific duty to take reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech within the law for staff, students and visiting speakers. The government worked with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who published new guidance in February 2019 on freedom of speech in higher education to support higher education providers and students’ unions in delivering their duties.
  • The government will be looking closely at how well higher education providers are meeting these obligations and will consider whether further action is needed, working with a range of partners.

Admissions/Productivity

Q – Lord Patten: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what analysis, if any, they have conducted into whether there is any relationship between increases in the number of university students in the UK and levels of productivity over the last 20 years; and what were the results of any such analysis.

  • A – Lord Duncan Of Springbank: The Office of National Statistics estimates that around a fifth of the rise in productivity between 1994 and 2019 can be attributed to improvements in the quality of the workforce. This is largely as a result of an increase in the share of overall hours worked by people with higher education qualifications. That is to say: more graduates in the labour market has led to an increase in productivity. This is consistent with other studies.
  • Productivity is the main driver of long-run economic growth, and a key determinant of standards of living; in the long-run, the UK’s ability to improve living standards is almost entirely dependent on its ability to raise productivity. The Government’s Industrial Strategy sets out a long-term plan to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure. The Government recently published the Business Productivity Review in response to the Industrial Strategy’s core priority of addressing the UK’s productivity issue.
  • The Government is investing £406 million in STEM and technical education and an additional £400 million in further education; the Government is also considering the recommendations of the Post 18 education funding review panel chaired by Sir Phillip Augar. This looked at how the post 18 education system can help deliver the skills the economy needs and improve UK productivity.

Q – Lord Taylor Of Warwick: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with UK universities about combating the student wealth divide in those applying to university.

  • A – Baroness Berridge: This government believes that a university education should be available to everyone who has the potential to benefit from it, and that higher education providers must continue to take steps to level the playing field for those from disadvantaged backgrounds and other under-represented groups. All providers wishing to charge tuition fees above the basic fee level must have an access and participation plan agreed by the higher education regulator, the Office for Students. Through these plans, providers set out the targets and their planned activity to support improved access and successful participation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups.
  • The current student finance system removes financial barriers for those hoping to study and is backed by the taxpayer. The government provides maintenance loans and supplementary grants to help with the costs of living, targeting the most support at those from the lowest income families. Living costs support increased by 10.3% for eligible students on the lowest incomes in 2016/17 compared to the previous system. Further inflationary increases in living costs support have been made in each academic year since with a further increase of 2.9% announced for the 2020/21 academic year taking the support available for the lowest income students to record levels. Student loan repayments are linked to income, not to interest rates or the amount borrowed. The repayment system is designed to be progressive and borrowers on lower incomes are not obliged to repay their loans, with outstanding debt written off after 30 years

OfS updates

The OfS have confirmed they will develop a new framework for the TEF during 2020. The new framework will take account of the forthcoming recommendations in Dame Shirley Pearce’s independent review of the TEF (not yet released), the government’s response to it, and the findings of the latest subject-level TEF pilot. There will be a consultation following the publication of the new framework (expected in April) and there will not be a TEF round in 2020.

OfS have also confirmed they will publish their Insight Briefs on student information, regulation and mature students within the next six months. In addition there will be a January report covering the Access and Participation Plan commitments, a consultation on student protection plans, and the subject level TEF findings will be published.

February will see the OfS student engagement strategy, more reports on Access and Participation – particularly surrounding financial support, and an admissions call for evidence.

A highlight in March will be the OfS report into grade inflation, a student contract consultation in April, the future (recurrent) funding review, the OfS Business Plan, and a report into unconditional offers. In June OfS will report on the Access and Participation Plan monitoring outcomes and publish their OfS annual report and accounts.

Buckle up it’s not just Boris who is making changes!

Harassment and Sexual Misconduct

The OfS has been particularly active this week including publishing new expectations on how universities and colleges should deal with harassment and sexual misconduct relating to students. The published expectations form part of a consultation which is open for response until 27 March. The expectations have been shaped considering input from NUS and UUK. They cover the definition, policy and process standards, and the support expected across the cycle – before, during and after disclosure and formal investigation. They also state the OfS powers to intervene when a provider fails to handle a complaint or investigation adequately.

Wonkhe have a blog and a range of media have covered the release – ITV, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independent, and TES. Later in the week The Guardian published a series of letters by academics responding to the report and the OfS ran a blog by Ann Olivarius (American lawyer focusing on sexual assault) which discussed the Equality Act 2010.

Erasmus

The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement was read in Parliament this week and one of the amendments selected for debate sought to enshrine within law a compulsion for the Government to make staying part of the Erasmus scheme a priority within the Brexit negotiations. The amendment was not successful however as Wonkhe state “Chris Skidmore clarified on Twitter that this does not necessarily end or prevent the UK participating in the Erasmus+ scheme after Brexit, instead stating that the UK’s participation in the scheme will be part of future negotiations with the EU.”  And that…he noted later that participation in the scheme is protected under the Withdrawal Agreement until 2021. In essence Erasmus participation will still be negotiated but not as a priority measure. Wonkhe have compiled the media coverage: BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Metro, Channel 4, the New European, and TES. The Guardian and i News also publish pieces by Erasmus alumni about how the scheme affected their lives.

Funding Cuts

The Government have informed the OfS that there will be a reduction in the HE teaching funding allocation of 0.5%, which the OfS administer, and they set out the Government’s priorities for provision and providers that the OfS should continue to fund, namely:

  • High cost subjects (clinical years for medicine, dentistry and veterinary)
  • World leading small and specialist institutions
  • The student premium (supporting WP students identified through the POLAR metric)

“all of which have an important role to play in maintaining the high quality of teaching and in supporting successful participation for underrepresented students”

  • RE: value for money protect those areas of the grant where the evidence base for need is strongest, and where there is clear alignment with priority activities, working closely with the DfE to identify these areas.
  • Consider how to fund London premium costs in the fairest and most efficient way (especially high-cost subjects within inner London).

OfS released a statement explaining how they will handle the reduction and explained that there are some areas this year where additional funds are needed:

  • increases in intakes to pre-registration medical degrees and the continuing effects of the transfer of funding responsibility for pre-registration courses in nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. This means the underlying cut in recurrent funding is greater – at around £70 million (5 per cent) in cash terms, although this should be viewed alongside an increase in capital funding of £50 million.
  • The OfS has already allocated the large majority of our funding for academic year 2019-20 and wishes to avoid as far as possible having to reduce grants already announced. Instead, we believe we can secure the savings required in academic year 2019-20 from as yet unallocated funds and by deferring some activities into academic year 2020-21.

OfS are launching a consultation next week to gather opinion on their proposed approach to implement the required savings. They have also confirmed there will be a full review of the funding method from 2021-22 financial year in April 2020. Remember the Budget will take place on 11th March. The timing of the full review is unlikely to be coincidental.

The SoS also mentioned the full review in his letter and asked the OfS to prioritise:

  • Streamlining the grant allocations to be more efficiently targeted and to represent an overall strategic approach to supporting priorities such as the Industrial Strategy, access and participation and specialist institutions;
  • Consideration of how to make sure the Student Premium is best targeted to support access, participation and successful outcomes for disadvantaged students, using the most up-to-date and relevant metrics;
  • Developing a new framework for evaluation and assurance of the Teaching Grant, working closely with the DfE over the coming months to agree this.

Wonkhe have a blog on the funding reduction – David Kernohan predicts that cuts are likely to come from the £51 million national facilities and regulatory initiatives pot (such as the Learning Gain pilot, phase 3 of the Catalyst Fund, and pilot metrics work). The one David doesn’t mention that will presumably escape the hatchet is NCOP.

Research

The House of Commons Library has published figures on the rise in research and development spending. In 2017 total R&D expenditure was £34.8bn (1.7% of GDP) from £17.6bn in 1981. This is a real terms increase of 94% but in 1981 the £17.6bn represented 2% of GDP. The library publication projects what is needed to reach the Government’s R&D target of 2.4%.

Key facts:

  • 251,000 people in UK are employed in R&D related roles.
  • The UK R&D expenditure of 1.7% of GDP is below the OECD average of 2.4%.
  • R&D expenditure in Germany is the equivalent of 3.0% of GDP, in the US it is 2.8% and in France it is 2.2%.

Worklessness – An Educational Story

The Resolution Foundation have published an interesting briefing on adults who have never held a stable paying job (holiday and casual work is discounted). While population employment levels are currently at a record high it still remains that 8.2% of the adult population have never had paid employment. 60% of this figure are young students, and as the statistic counts from age 16 to 64, a percentage of the never worked is skewed by those understandably within full time study. Yet this doesn’t explain all – there has been a rise in those aged 25+ that have never worked and are not currently studying.

The report pulls out several ‘key shifts’ that are interesting for the student population.

  • The death of the Saturday teenage job – the employment rate of 16-17 year olds has almost halved over the past two decades – from 48.1% 1997-99 to 25.4% in 2017-19. Increased participation in education only explains a small part of this decline – two-thirds of the fall is driven by a declining employment rate among 16-17 year olds studying full time at school or college. The types of work done by this age group have changed too.  52% of 16-17 year olds now work within catering, waiting tables or as retail assistants. In the past this age group did a wider range of work and the jobs that have declined most sharply are as retail cashiers, shelf stackers, factory packing work and as postal workers. Previous research by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills into the ‘death of the Saturday job’ confirmed that focusing on their studies was the main driver of the decline in earning while learning. Other reasons were that fewer young people wanted a job than in the past and some cited a lack of suitable jobs that fitted around study commitments. This ran alongside the strong opposition from schools and colleges who frowned on their students doing paid work – and raised that employers were similarly opposed to employing young people who are trying to juggle work and studying. The report highlights this as a concern stating the decline is despite evidence of clear benefits for teenagers who work while studying. Those who combine work with full-time education are 4-6% less likely to be not in employment, education or training – and earn 12-15% more – five years down the line than those just in education.
  • Less work whilst studying (FE & HE) – there has been a sharp fall in the employment rate of 18-24 year olds in FE and HE. A 25% fall in the employment rate of 18-19 year olds working while studying for degrees from the early 2000’s peak, a 15% per cent fall among 20-21 year old university students, and a 33% fall among 18-19 year olds studying for non-degree qualifications. Later the report acknowledges that most groups of students are less likely to be in employment post-financial crisis. The report continues with familiar themes: “again, this is despite evidence that working while studying at university improves long-term educational and labour market outcomes. (However, above a certain number of hours – perhaps 15-20 – work becomes an impediment to good grades, and students working only for financial reasons are less likely to get the best degrees. What explains this decline in working while in further or higher education? It’s possible that the growth in tuition fee and maintenance loans has improved university student incomes such that they don’t feel the need to work. Alternatively, tuition fees may have increased the salience of the individual costs of higher education and driven an increased focus on getting the best educational outcomes, at the expense of paid employment. Another potential factor – which would also relate to the decline in work among 16-17 year olds discussed above – may be the introduction of minimum wages reducing employers’ appetite or ability to make jobs available to those with the least experience. While there is little evidence that the UK minimum wage has harmed employment overall, there is some limited evidence that minimum wages reduce the employment prospects of the youngest and least experienced workers. Beyond these suggestions, it is possible that the social and cultural expectations among students, parents, employers and educational institutions are mitigating against earning while learning, as they have at sixth-form age.”
  • Getting a first paid job after completing full-time education takes longer than it used to. In the late 1990s, 56% of young education leavers who had never previously worked got a paid job within the first year after leaving. Today that figure has fallen to 44%.Again the report suggests more negative employer attitudes (as described above) alongside less work at sixth-form age, declining geographic mobility and an increase in living within the parental home as a young adult have an influence.The report goes on to discuss how delaying employment to focus on studies can be dangerous for future employment prospects
  • Motherhood and ill-health in early adulthood effectively ‘lock in’ a lack of paid work experience for those who have not had any up to that point. The proportion of 25-39 year old mothers who have never worked has increased from 3.3% in the late 1990s to 6.5% today.
    The proportion of 25-39 year old men with health problems who have never worked has increased from 4.8% to 7.6%. This triggers alarm bells because there have been big increases in health issues (particularly mental health) among young adults.

The report recommends that

  • Policy makers should pay more attention to the factors that have driven a rising likelihood of working-age adults in Britain never having had a paid job. Rather than cutting benefits, they should consider the extent to which earning while studying is encouraged (given evidence that, if not excessive, doing so improves long-term educational and labour market outcomes); the systems that support education-to-work transitions; and the factors driving the growth in ill-health among younger working-age adults.
  • Rather than cutting benefits, we need to explore and perhaps challenge the economic, social and cultural drivers mitigating against earning while learning at school, college and university, while boosting evidence on the types of work that are complementary to studying rather than detrimental. Our evidence underscores the particular challenge that the new T level qualifications are seeking to address for those taking the non-university route, and the importance of getting the work experience component of these right. In particular, this means ensuring that sufficient numbers of employers are willing and able to deliver work experience. And this analysis suggests that a much sharper focus on the advice and support systems that help people move from full-time education to the first stage of their career is required. Finally, our findings underscore the need for continued policy action to address the labour market disadvantages that women face when they have children, and to better understand how the growing group of relatively young adults with health problems and disabilities can be supported to actively participate in the labour market.
  • Lazy interpretations related to workshy Brits are clear very far wide of the mark. Instead, a full investigation of the rise in the proportion of working-age adults who have never had a paid job tells us much about the challenges of parenthood and disability, but above all about the complex choices many young people are facing in trying to get the most out of a perhaps increasingly high-pressured education.
  • …In conclusion, the story of a rising likelihood of working-age adults never having had a paid job is a lifecycle story that is strongly related to what happens during the education years.

Labour Shadow Cabinet

After the Government’s very minor reshuffle which kept most of the major ministers in their pre-election posts (see previous policy update) we are not anticipating any further changes until after Brexit. Other parties are reshuffling and Labour has announced several of the Shadow Cabinet roles. Most notable is that Emma Hardy has been appointed Shadow Minister for HE and FE (previous Shadow HE Minister Gordon Marsden lost his seat). TES cover her background and experience nicely including her membership of the Commons Education Select Committee, her support for scrapping tuition fees and restoring the EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance), alongside her 10-year teaching career and time at the NEU teaching union. She supports the Augar proposals to increase the funding levels of FE colleges.  TES report Emma stated:

  • “This is going to be an interesting Parliament, and this Parliament even more so than the last, we are going to need to really strongly hold the government to account and expose what they’re doing and the impact they’re having.”

In other roles:

  • Former Shadow Minister for Early Years, Tracy Brabin has been appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
  • Luke Pollard has been appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
  • Rachel Maskell has been appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights.
  • Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi has been appointed PPS to Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition.

Leadership Contest

The Labour leadership contest has kicked off and the winner is to be announced on 4 April 2020. Six contenders have already announced their intention to stand – Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Sir Keir Starmer; Emily Thornberry; and Rebecca Long Bailey. The candidate nomination process remains open until 13 January so more MPs could still make a leadership bid. However, candidates have to be backed by a minimum of 10% of the Labour MPs/MEPs. Following this hurdle the candidates have to receive support for their leadership bid from either 5% of the constituency labour parties or three affiliate organisations such as a trade union or socialist society associated with the party. As 2 in 3 affiliate organisations are trade unions this gives them significant influence over the selection process. Following this round the final ballot opens on 21 Feb (until 2 April). The voter ranks the candidates in order of preference and any candidate securing 50% of the votes wins. If no candidate secures 50% the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated and the second choice on the ballot paper is allocated the vote instead. The elimination of the lowest scoring candidate continues until a candidate receives over 50% of the vote. A special Labour conference will take place on Saturday 4 April to announce the new Labour leader.

YouGov have already begun polling on the outcome of the contest, their results:

  • 36% of the membership said their top preference was Keir Starmer
  • 23% Rebecca Long Bailey
  • 12% Jess Philips
  • Emily Thornberry, Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper, and Clive Lewis all poll in single figures.

Note – 12% of party members did not respond to the survey. And the affiliate organisation round will affect which candidates progress to the actual ballot. YouGov also found that Kier Starmer benefited from the preferential voting system (see the chart here).

Private Members’ Bills

We’ve been here before…excitement at the fresh legislation that individual MP’s have the opportunity to introduce to Parliament…then the election was called and all Private Members’ Bill (PMBs) action  was over before it began. A new ballot has taken place and we’ve a new crop of 20 providential MPs who have the opportunity to introduce their legislation. The top seven are the most likely to succeed as they have the most parliamentary time. The new PMBs will be first read (presented) on Wed 5 Feb, and then further considered during the first seven sitting Fridays within the House of Commons. When the PMBs are debated on the sitting Fridays a minimum of 40 MPs must vote for the Bill to progress. Often the Government or the Opposition vote PMBs down. However, during the 2017-19 parliamentary session 9 PMBs became law.

(We explained the private members’ bill process and purpose in these policy updates: 11 Oct 2018 and 25 Oct 2018 (page 5).)

  1. Mike Amesbury (Labour) interests: leaseholder reform, effective public transport.
  2. Darren Jones (Labour) interests: NHS anti-privatisation, job creation for local economy, tech, climate change, clean growth and human trafficking. Darren is a lawyer, has already rebelled and voted against the party whip, and is the first ever Darren in Parliament!
  3. Anna McMorrin (Labour) interests: climate change, sustainable development, dementia, mental health.
  4. Laura Trott (Conservative) – new MP – political interests not known but previously worked for David Cameron focussing on education and family policy.
  5. Chris Loder (Conservative) – new MP – replaced Oliver Letwin as West Dorset MP. Has a background in the rail industry and publically took time away from his election campaign to volunteer as a platform manager to keep trains running during the South West train strikes. He has welcomed suggestions from the West Dorset constituents for his PMB. His political interests are rural economy, transport, and the environment – all as expected given his constituency demographics.
  6. Paula Barker (Labour) – new MP – interests: green spaces, council housing. Paula is a long term trade unionist and has family ties to the NHS and her regional clinical commissioning group.
  7. Philip Dunne (Conservative) has a personal interest in diabetes and stated political interests in agriculture, small business, economics and financial services.
  8. Dame Cheryl Gillian (Conservative) previously introduced the Autism Act as a previous PMB (2008). Recently she has been outspoken against High Speed 2 and environmental concerns.

Of the rest  – at place number 10 Dr Ben Spencer (psychiatrist) has a particular interest in young mental health; number 11 Bim Afolami is focussed on education (pro-grammar schools and the meritocratic system); and number 15 Mary Foy has a background as a carer to her daughter and it is speculated her PMB may focus on the caring role.

Decline in language study

HEPI have published A Languages Crisis? discussing the drop in learning an additional language and how far the UK lags behind the rest of the world for languages. The key points are:

  • Only 32% of British 16-to-30-year olds feel confident reading and writing in another language (in Europe it is 89%).
  • A decreasing proportion of international research is published in English – the UK’s position as an academic and scientific world leader is at risk.
  • Traditional language uptake at HE level has declined. Between 2010/11 and 2016/17, student numbers for French declined by 45%, German declined by 43% and Italian 63%. Languages provision, particularly for heritage languages, is vulnerable to departmental closures and downsizing.
  • Additional language learning, such as facilitating students on all courses taking language modules to count towards course credits and / or as an extracurricular activity, is a key area that UK higher education should protect and expand.
  • The author believes part of the problem begins at school following the 2004 reforms repealing the compulsory requirement to study an additional language.

The report recommends:

  • GCSE and A-Level courses should be more varied and appealing, featuring coursework as well as examination assessment.
  • Learning an ancient or modern foreign language should be made compulsory up to Key Stage 4 (KS4), with accreditation (either a GCSE / National, or alternative vocational or community language qualification) encouraged but optional.
  • Policymakers should introduce measures to increase teaching staff numbers, such as conditional financial incentives, and including all language teachers on the Shortage Occupations List.
  • Where tuition fees exist, they should be supplemented with additional government funding to safeguard provision of minority languages, and facilitate free additional language learning for any students and staff members.

The Times, the Guardian, ITV, and the Mail cover the report.

Megan Bowler, the author of the report, is a third-year Classics undergraduate at the University of Oxford. She said: “The cultural and political implications of Brexit mean it is more urgent than ever that we re-evaluate our attitudes towards languages. Learning a language develops an analytical and empathetic mindset, and is valuable for individuals of all ages, interests and abilities. It was a big mistake to scrap compulsory foreign languages at GCSE. Rather than continuing to present languages as not suitable for everyone, we need to include a broader range of pupils learning through a variety of qualifications geared to different needs. Given the shortage of language skills in the workforce, we should safeguard higher education language courses, particularly those involving less widely-taught languages, and prioritise extra-curricular language learning opportunities for students from all disciplines”.

Responding to the report, Professor Neil Kenny, Languages Lead at the British Academy, said: Last year…we called on Government to adopt and implement a UK-wide languages strategy to revive modern language learning (coordinating with existing strategies in Scotland and Wales). With Brexit just around the corner, we need linguists more than ever. Languages are vital for effective trade, diplomacy and soft power, for social cohesion, social mobility, and educational attainment, all of which will be essential to the UK’s future success”.

T Levels

The successful election majority enables the Government to push ahead with the introduction of T Levels. They have announced that another 8 new T Levels will be introduced and taught from 2022 (10 currently planned to be introduced in 2020 and 2021 across 100 FE providers). A Government press release invites ‘high performing’ providers to apply to teach the third wave of the new 8 programmes. These include Legal, Accounting, and Manufacturing, Processing and Control. To recap – T levels are technical qualifications presented as an alternative to A levels which combine classroom taught theory, practical learning and a 45 day industry placement. They are aimed to establish a parity of esteem for the vocational route against the academic A level route and to meet Britain’s industry and employment needs and skills gaps.

Other news

Emotional Fitness: Wonkhe write about a new app being trialled at several universities which draws on positive psychological principles by focusing on mentally healthy processing (called emotional fitness) from the outset rather than reacting to poor mental health after it occurs. The Fika app divides emotional fitness into seven areas:

  • motivation, purpose, stress, confidence, connection, positivity and focus, all of which are linked, in theory, to overall life satisfaction, wellbeing and success. The aim is to improve students’ personal agency, and avoid “self-efficacy spirals” in which, for example, a period of low motivation leads to non-submission of work, which creates stress and panic, which leads to avoidance of issues, which then multiply until they are beyond the student’s powers to bring back under control.

The creator believes starting with HE is the mechanism to bring about real change within wider society

  • HE partners have a big part to play in how wider culture is shaped. Influencing this generation of students means shaping future culture, new businesses, expectations of society and being in society. And that, if successful, the principles can be weaved throughout university life: Longer term, the plan is to integrate more closely with university curricula through developing exercises for personal tutoring, peer mentoring or group work. Focused work on particular issues and student groups – including BAME, international and commuter students, and student employability, is also on the cards. The article concludes by stating the app isn’t a substitute for specialist mental health services.

Medical Science research: Wonkhe cover a report by the Academy of Medical Sciences which highlights the growing number of research active NHS staff who struggle to fit research in among other responsibilities. A widening gap between universities and the NHS is suggested as a possible cause. The report offers six recommendations:

  • the integration of research teams between academia and the NHS
  • providing dedicated research time for research active NHS staff
  • incorporating flexibility into postgraduate pathways
  • ensuring undergraduate studies equip healthcare graduate staff with skills to engage with research
  • streamlining research through joint research and development offices
  • creating a healthcare system that truly values research

Links to download the full documents are on the left hand side of this page.

European study tour: Wonkhe and five student union representatives visited a number of universities across Europe (Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia). There are four blogs covering the learning tour.

Mental Health: The House of Commons Library published a briefing on English mental health policy.

Admissions: Wonkhe report on the new HEPI blog on the debate about academic selection, asking why many experts wish to abolish grammar schools while strengthening selection at the university level.

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Opportunity to Contribute to two new books :Smart Cities and Sharing Economy CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Contribute to two new books :

Smart Cities and Sharing Economy CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Published by Goodfellow Publishers

Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities |
Editors: Dimitrios Buhalis, Babak Taheri, and Roya Rahimi https://easychair.org/cfp/SC1

The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Editors: Babak Taheri, Roya Rahimi, and Dimitrios Buhalis https://easychair.org/cfp/SE1

Important dates:
Abstract Deadline: 15th Jan 2020
Chapter Submission Deadline: 12 June 2020
Feedback deadlines: 8 August 2020
Submitting revised chapters: 30 October 2020
Review by editors: October to December 2020
Submitting final chapters: 18 December 2020
Submitting to Publisher: 12 February 2021

Action required – Guidelines for proposal submissions:

  • A 500-1,000 word proposal
  • Title page: title of the paper, full name of the author(s), affiliation and contact information
  • One diagram describing your contribution to the topic.
  • A short bio (around 150-250 words) for each author
  • Soft copy as Word document attachment should be uploaded to the links

_____________________________________________________________________Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities
Editors: Dimitrios Buhalis, Babak Taheri, and Roya Rahimi
https://easychair.org/cfp/SC1

This book will provide a new insight for the current issues and opportunities on smart cities and related concepts in the next generation of urban evolution. It will provide a better understanding of city services but also the enhancement and evaluation of locals’ (and visitors) experience and city decision making processes by creating liveable environments and business solutions. The book will serve as a main reference point for smart cities researchers, scholars, students and practitioners state-of-art knowledge depository on marketing management (and related areas e.g., urban studies) from a new modern perspective within the smart cities.

PROVISIONAL AND INDICATIVE LIST OF CHAPTERS (SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!)
Ch 1. Introduction to Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities
Ch 2. Co-creating smart experiences (defining co-creation of value and related concepts in contemporary age)
Ch 3. Current challenges for smart cities, tourism and urbanisation (challenges in cities which leads to need to smart cities opportunities)
Ch 4. Value co-creation in smart cities (defining smart cities and related concepts)
Ch 5. Digital transformation (in relation to smart cities and digital world)
Ch 6. Smart sustainable environment and cities (CSR and sustainability)
Ch 7. Smart people (Human capital: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 8. Smart economy (Investment: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 9. Smart mobility (Transportation: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 10. Smart living (Community engagement: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 11. Smart governance (Politics and government engagement)
Ch 12. Smart Business models, co-creation of experiences and smart cities
Ch 13. Smart trends in the tourism and hospitality industry
Ch 14. The Smart future: stakeholders, catalysts, opportunities and challenges
Ch 15. Case studies (this chapter will have a case study for each of 14 chapters)

_____________________________________________________________________The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Editors: Prof. Babak Taheri, Dr. Roya Rahimi, and Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=se1

This book will focus on the sharing economy from a marketing and managerial perspective and will explore implications area of tourism marketing and management, services marketing and urban studies. It will encourage new theoretical and empirical development on sharing economy studies in the service industries field and offers a new insight to indicate potential research opportunities and areas of interest different aspects of sharing economy. Target readership will be higher level undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG).

PROVISIONAL AND INDICATIVE LIST OF CHAPTERS (SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!)
Ch 1. Introduction The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Ch 2. Exploration of service platforms and marketplaces (defining platform services, adventuristic start-ups)
Ch 3. Sharing economy (defining sharing economy and related concepts)
Ch 4. Application of co-creation of value: Two-sided markets (locals vs. visitors)
Ch 5. Gig economies (defining gig economy and related concepts)
Ch 6. National culture and sharing economy (matchmaking, and studies within other culture/context)
Ch 7. Overarching theories on sharing economy (e.g., social exchange theory, complexity theory, norm activation model, etc)
Ch 8. Models of platform-based sharing economy businesses (defining customer lifetime value (e.g., business to customer model; P2P: peer to peer model, etc.); plus for-fee models (e.g., Uber, Airbnb) or no-fee models (e.g., TripAdvisor, Instagram, Wikipedia)
Ch 9. Big data and digital marketing (the importance of digital marketing within the sharing economy)
Ch 10. Operations management in sharing economy (operations and process in sharing economy)
Ch 11. The law of sharing economy (regulations, licensing, roles of state governments etc)
Ch 12. Ethics and sustainability in sharing economy (CSR and sustainability issues)
Ch 13. Future of sharing economy
Ch 14. Case studies (this chapter will have a case study for each of 13 chapters)