Category / EU

Welcome to the EU section of the blog! Emily Cieciura (BU’s Research Facilitator – EU and International), Jo Garrad (Funding Development Manager) and Dianne Goodman (Funding Development Co-ordinator) together try to take the pain out of finding and applying for EU funding by horizon scanning many sources and placing the most important information on this page.

We blog as often as possible on everything from calls for proposals and partner searches, to networking event opportunities, all the latest on Horizon 2020 and international funding. We also use the blog to disseminate information on EUADS (BU’s EU academic training initiative), how to write brilliant proposals, how to find partners and other top tips!

HE Policy Update for the w/e 20th December 2019

EU, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, policy, Student Engagement

It’s our last update until the New Year – we give you the Queen’s speech (not that one, the one at the State opening) and the OfS annual review, to get you ready for what will be coming in the New Year. At the time of writing MPs are expected to pass the second reading of the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill, paving the way for the more detailed third reading stage in January.

Happy Christmas and a happy new year to all our readers, and thank you for your patience in what has been a very interesting year!

Queen’s speech (again)

You can read the Queen’s Speech here along with the PM’s introduction and briefing notes about all the legislation etc. The Executive Summary in this briefing document sets out the legislative programme clearly.

This Queen’s Speech will deliver Brexit on 31 January and allow the Government to deliver on people’s priorities and unleash the country’s potential. The Government’s first priority is to deliver Brexit on 31 January and to negotiate an ambitious free trade agreement with the EU that benefits the whole country This Queen’s Speech sets out how we will seize the opportunities created by Brexit:

  • The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill will ratify the deal secured by the Government in October, delivering Brexit.
  • The Agriculture Bill will reform UK agriculture by improving environmental protections and strengthening transparency and fairness in the supply chain.
  • The Fisheries Bill will enable us to reclaim control over our waters, ensuring the sustainability of our marine life and environment.
  • The Trade Bill will establish the Trade Remedies Authority to protect UK industry from unfair trading practices.
  • We will end free movement and pave the way for a modern, fairer points based immigration system.

You will remember that “The Home Secretary has commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (the MAC) to consider points-based systems, including the Australian immigration system and other international comparators. The MAC is due to report in January 2020.”

And this from the more detailed briefing:

Our new single system will allocate points on a range of criteria in three broad categories and it will be focused on skills and talents, not nationality:

  • Migrants who have received world-leading awards or otherwise demonstrated exceptional talent and sponsored entrepreneurs setting up a new business or investors.
  • Skilled workers who meet the criteria of the points-based system and have a job offer.
  • Sector-specific workers who enter on schemes for low-skilled work, youth mobility or short-term visits. These provide no route to permanent settlement and will be revised on an ongoing basis based on expert advice from the MAC.

Although it isn’t mentioned in the briefing, this was the October 2019 briefing on graduate employment rights

  • A Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill will provide a clear framework for cross-border resolutions for individuals, families and UK businesses involved in international legal disputes.
  • We will provide certainty, stability and new opportunities for the financial services sector.

The Speech sets out a number of proposals to invest in and support our public services:

  • Legislation will enshrine in law the largest cash settlement in the NHS’s history and we will deliver the NHS Long Term Plan in England to ensure our health service is fit for the future.
  • A Medicines and Medical Devices Bill will ensure that our NHS and patients can have faster access to innovative medicines, while supporting the growth of our domestic sector.
  • We will also pursue reforms to make the NHS safer for patients.
  • We will provide extra funding for social care and will urgently seek cross-party consensus for much needed long-term reform so that nobody needing care should be forced to sell their home to pay for it.
  • We will continue work to modernise and reform the Mental Health Act to ensure people get the support they need, with a much greater say in their care.
  • We will increase levels of funding per pupil to ensure all children can access a high quality education.

This is from the more detailed briefing on education

  • The Government is giving schools a multi-billion pound boost, investing a total of ￡14 billion more over three years, on top of ￡5 billion for teacher’s pensions. Overall, that translates to ￡150 million a week. The core schools budget will be ￡7.1 billion higher in 2022-23 compared to this year.
  • Every school will have more money for every child and we will level up minimum per-pupil funding for secondary schools to ￡5,000, and primary schools to ￡3,750 next year, and ￡4,000 the year after.
  • From next year, we will legally require all local authorities to deliver the minimum per-pupil funding in their local area. And that will be an important first step towards delivering this funding directly to schools, through a single national formula, so that it is fair and equitable for every school in the country.
  • It is vital we ensure that the pay offer for teachers is positioned at the top of the graduate labour market – ensuring we recruit and retain a world class profession – and that is why we have announced plans to significantly raise starting pay to ￡30,000 nationally by September 2022.
  • The Government will also continue to expand the successful free schools programme, promoting choice, innovation and higher standards to kick-start wider improvement.
  • The Government wants to bring renewed focus to further and technical education, and will ensure our post-16 education system enables young people and adults to gain the skills required for success and to help the economy.
  • This means an extra ￡400 million for 16-19 year-old education next year, an increase of 7 per cent overall in 16-19 year-old funding and the biggest injection of new money in a single year since 2010.
  • There will also be additional investment in T Levels, supporting continued preparation for these courses with the first three starting from September 2020.
  • The Government will invest an additional ￡3 billion over the course of this Parliament to support the creation of a ‘National Skills Fund’.
  • The Government will invest ￡8 billion over five years in a rebuilding programme to upgrade the entire further education college estate.
  • The Government are also planning to establish 20 Institutes of Technology across England- unique collaborations between further education colleges, universities, and employers –– offering higher technical education and training in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, to give people the skills they need for key sectors such as digital, construction, advanced manufacturing and engineering.
  • The Government is committed to making sure higher education funding reflects a sustainable model that supports high quality provision, maintaining our world-leading reputation for higher education and delivering value for money for both students and the taxpayer.
  • The Government will ensure that our universities are places where free speech can thrive, and will strengthen academic freedoms.
  • The Government wants to ensure we deliver better value for students in post- 18 education, have more options that offer the right education for each individual, and remove barriers to access for disadvantaged young people.
  • The Government is considering the thoughtful recommendations made in the Augar Review carefully.
  • The Government will boost Ofsted inspection so that parents can be confident they have the fullest picture of quality at their child’s school. We will consult on lifting the inspection exemption so that outstanding schools are inspected routinely.
  • To ensure children are getting an active start to life, The Government will invest in primary school PE teaching and ensure that it is being properly delivered. The Government wants to do more to help schools make good use of their sports facilities and to promote physical literacy and competitive sport.

The Speech sets out a variety of measures to support workers and families:

  • An Employment Bill will enhance workers’ rights, supporting flexible working, extending unpaid carers’ entitlement to leave and ensure workers keep their hard earned tips.
  • A Renters’ Reform Bill will enhance renters’ security and improve protections for short-term tenants by abolishing “no-fault” evictions and introducing a lifetime deposit.
  • To ensure residents are safe in their homes, we will bring forward measures to implement the most urgent recommendations from the first phase of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry. We will also publish a draft Building Safety Bill to implement the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of building regulations.
  • Recognising our commitment to making the UK the safest place to be online, we will continue to develop an Online Harms Bill.
  • The Pension Schemes Bill will enable people to better plan their saving for later life and improve the protection of people’s pensions, strengthening the regulator’s powers to tackle irresponsible management of pension schemes.
  • We will reduce the cost of living, including through increases to the National Insurance threshold and the National Living Wage.

The Speech reaffirms our commitment to strengthening the criminal justice system, ensuring it keeps people safe:

  • A Counter Terrorism (Sentencing and Release) Bill will ensure the most serious and dangerous terrorist offenders stay in prison for longer.
  • A Sentencing Bill will ensure the most serious and violent offenders serve more of their sentences in custody.
  • A Serious Violence Bill will place a duty on public bodies to work together to identify and tackle early factors that can lead to crime and ensure the police can more easily stop and search habitual knife carriers.
  • A Police Powers and Protection Bill will establish a Police Covenant and ensure the police are able to fully conduct their duties by providing them with additional support and protection.
  • Recognising the pain felt by victims and their families when offenders refuse to disclose certain information about their crimes, the Prisoners (Disclosure of Information about Victims) Bill will require the Parole Board to take this into account – a version of “Helen’s Law”.
  • The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill will remove unnecessary conflict during the divorce process, in which children are so often caught up, while ensuring that divorce remains a carefully considered decision.
  • We will re-introduce the Domestic Abuse Bill, strengthening protections for victims and providing new enforcement mechanisms.
  • The Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill will empower police officers to immediately arrest someone wanted for a serious crime committed in a trusted country, without having to apply to a court for a warrant first.
  • We will consider proposals to deal more effectively with foreign national offenders, including increasing the maximum penalty for those who return to the UK in breach of a deportation order.
  • We will set up a Royal Commission to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice process.

The Speech sets out how we will improve our infrastructure and level up opportunity across the country:

  • We will invest in public services and infrastructure while keeping borrowing and debt under control and will publish a National Instructure Strategy.
  • We will accelerate the delivery of fast, reliable and secure broadband networks to millions of homes, with legislation to make it easier for telecoms companies to install digital infrastructure and to ensure all new homes are built with reliable and fast internet.
  • The Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill, will maintain our position as a world-leader in aviation by modernising our airspace, making journeys quicker, quieter and cleaner whilst also tackling the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft (drones).
  • Legislation will be brought forward to ensure that minimum levels of service are maintained during transport strikes so that hard-working commuters can still get to work.
  • We will develop measures to ensure people can get home quickly when an airline goes bust.
  • In response to the Williams Review, we will publish a White Paper containing reforms that address passengers needs while providing value for the taxpayer and delivering economic benefits across the UK.
  • A draft National Security and Investment Bill will strengthen the Government’s powers to investigate and intervene in business transactions (takeovers and mergers) to protect national security.
  • To maintain the UK’s position as a global science superpower, we will boost public R&D funding, launch a comprehensive UK Space Strategy and develop proposals for a new funding agency.

The detailed note says:

To build on our world-leading excellence in science and deliver solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges we are:

  • Setting out plans to significantly boost public R&D funding.
  • Backing a new approach to funding high-risk, high-payoff research in emerging fields of research and technology. The Government will work with industry and academics to finalise this proposal.
  • Introducing a new fast-track immigration scheme for the best and brightest scientists and researchers.
  • Reducing bureaucracy in research funding to ensure our brilliant scientists are able to spend as much time as possible creating new ideas.
  • Establishing a new National Space Council and launching a comprehensive UK Space Strategy.
  • The R&D funding plans the Government will unveil will help accelerate our ambition to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP spent on R&D by 2027. This boost in funding will allow the UK to invest strategically in cutting-edge science, while encouraging the world’s most innovative businesses to invest in the UK.
  • Under our new funding plans the Government will prioritise investment in industries of the future where the UK can take a commanding lead – such as life sciences, clean energy, space, design, computing, robotics and artificial intelligence. The Government will drive forward development of these technologies by investing in hubs around world-leading universities.
  • Some of this new R&D spending will go towards a new approach to funding emerging fields of research and technology. It will provide long term funding to support visionary high-risk, high-pay off scientific, engineering, and technology ideas, and will complement the UK’s existing world class research system.
  • The Government will increase the tax credit rate to 13 per cent and review what R&D-related costs qualify for tax credits, so that important investments in cloud computing and data, which boost productivity and innovation, are also incentivised.
  • Removing unnecessary bureaucracy in the science funding system will help ensure all UK investments have the greatest possible impact by cutting the time wasted by scientists filling out forms.
  • The UK’s new fast-track immigration scheme for top scientists and researchers will help significantly enhance the intellectual and knowledge base of the UK. The changes to the immigration system will:
  • Abolish the cap on numbers under the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent Visas;
  • Expand the pool of UK research institutes and universities able to endorse candidates; and
  • Create criteria that confer automatic endorsement, subject to immigration checks.
  • Under the current Tier 1 Visa system, the immigration system already:
  • Ensures dependents have full access to the labour market;
  • Removes the need to hold an offer of employment before arriving; and
  • Provides an accelerated path to settlement.
  • This new immigration scheme will support our world-leading research by ensuring that UK teams can recruit the best skills and talent from abroad. We will continue to collaborate internationally and with the EU on scientific research, including with the EU through Horizon.
  • The Government will unlock long-term capital in pension funds to invest in and commercialise our scientific discoveries, creating a vibrant science-based economy post-Brexit.

 

  • We will publish a White Paper to reiterate our commitment to levelling up opportunities and investment in the regions across England.
  • We will reform business rates to protect high streets and communities from excessive tax hikes and keep town centres vibrant. We will bring forward the next business rates revaluation and make future revaluations in England more frequent.

This Queen’s Speech deepens our commitment to safeguarding the natural environment for future generations:

  • Our landmark Environment Bill will protect and preserve the planet for generations to come. It will establish a new Office for Environmental Protection, increase local powers to tackle air pollution, introduce charges for specified single use plastic items, and ban exports of polluting plastic waste to non-OECD countries.
  • We will also continue to take steps to meet the world-leading target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
  • We will introduce legislation to promote and protect animal welfare, including measures to increase maximum sentences for animal cruelty, to ensure animals are recognised as sentient beings, and ban the import and export of trophies from endangered animals.

The Government will continue to work to strengthen the bonds between the different parts of the UK and to safeguard its constitution and democratic processes:

  • We will continue to uphold the constitutional integrity of the UK, working constructively with the devolved administrations and their legislatures to ensure our Union continues to flourish.
  • We will urgently pursue the restoration of the devolved power-sharing government at Stormont to ensure the people of Northern Ireland have the political leadership of their elected local representatives.
  • We will set up a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission to consider the relationship between Government, Parliament and the courts and to explore whether the checks and balances in our constitution are working for everyone.
  • We will take forward work to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
  • We will protect the integrity of our democracy and elections, tackling electoral fraud through the introduction of voter ID and banning postal vote harvesting.

The Speech confirms our determination to celebrate and support the work of our courageous armed forces and to retain and enhance the UK’s global status and reach as we leave the EU:

  • We will continue to invest in our Armed Forces and honour the Armed Forces Covenant.
  • We will continue to uphold the NATO commitment to spend at least two per cent of national income on defence.
  • We will legislate to bring an end to the unfair pursuit of our Armed Forces through vexatious legislation.
  • We will seek the prompt implementation of the Stormont House Agreement to provide both reconciliation for victims of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and greater certainty for military veterans.
  • The Prime Minister will undertake an Integrated Defence, Security and Foreign Policy Review – the deepest review of these issues since the end of the Cold War.
  • We will secure ambitious new trade deals with our international partners across the world.
  • We will take forward our commitment to ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries.
  • Finally, this Government will champion Conservative values and put a strong United Kingdom front and centre in the world. We will champion the UK’s interests and uphold our values of the rule of law, freedom of expression, and the importance of human rights on the international stage. We will continue to work alongside our international partners to tackle the most pressing global challenges, including terrorism and climate change.

Research funding

We have mentioned the government’s promises on research funding above. Wonkhe have done some analysis

  • The ten-year science and innovation investment framework launched to much fanfare in 2004 made a similar promise, but ultimately didn’t deliver. Given 2.4 per cent is a “whole economy” target, i.e. made up of both public and private sector spending, we’d argue that what really counts this time is the pledge made by the Prime Minister during the election that a returning Conservative government would increase its annual investment in research and development to £18 billion by 2024/25.
  • Clearly that level of investment will need to ramp up over time to address capacity issues in the research sector: the UK will need thousands more research workers in universities, businesses and research institutes and the wider public sector.
  • Interestingly, the Conservatives’ costings document appears to only indicate a rise to just over £14 billion public investment in research and development by 2023/24, so these pledges will also need ongoing scrutiny. And we will need a strategic plan to deliver this level of change and that plan will need to show how the government will leverage private investment, alongside its own, to deliver on the GDP target as soon as possible.

Office for Students Annual Review

The Office for Students have issued an annual review which defends their approach to date and sets out some continuing and  new frontiers for intervention in the sector. The headline lets you know what is coming: England’s universities world class, but pockets of poor provision letting students down.

Before we get stuck into the detail, there is some analysis of this and the OfS board papers from Wonkhe – Jim Dickinson on plans for student protection:

  • The interesting question here is what students actually expect in each of those areas, where they get those expectations from, and what happens if the expectation doesn’t match the reality.
  • For example – a university website that boasts ”there’s lots of support available to you… no problem is too big or no worry too small for our team of experts, and there are plenty of services so you can choose the one that’s best for you” might not be setting an appropriate expectation of its waiting lists to access these services are over a term long.
  • Similarly, a university boasting that “students experience an open, informal study environment with teachers and students usually on a first-name basis… a more collaborative approach, where students are respected as junior colleagues and their opinions valued and encouraged by more experienced peers” sounds great, but may be hard to access if there’s 300 people on all your modules.
  • A student enrolled at a university whose assessment policy says that “you will normally receive work back within three weeks” and claims “you will be allocated a supportive personal tutor” might reasonably have rights to redress if all their marks take six weeks to appear, and if they get to their final year having never met their personal tutor.
  • Much of this sort of stuff isn’t in contracts now, but is certainly implied in prospectuses or university policies – and what this probably points to is providers having to be much more specific about the nature, quality and level of service on offer – both to help students compare, and enable them to enforce their rights if it doesn’t materialise.

And David Kernohan on the OfS board papers – he has a whole advent calendar full of points (26) but we’ve pulled out a few

  • 13) More publications on the way. There’ll be more guidance on value for money transparency expectations in early 2020, which may include a consultation (and thus, we guess, changes to the regulatory framework)
  • 14) We’ll be getting the results of a survey of students and graduates about VfM views in March 2020.
  • 15) There’s a consultation coming very soon, which may mean changes to the regulatory framework to help tackle harassment and sexual misconduct.
  • 19) The Student panel have been getting stuck into TEF, and they reckon the purpose of TEF should be to “incentivise continuous improvement” within providers rather than to guide student choice, which tells its own story. They don’t like the current stratification of awards (Bronze can still mean bad), but they do fancy an increased number of awards to identify providers with greater precision.
  • 20) The panel also “appreciated the level of student engagement” included within the subject-level pilot and supported “increasing the level of direct engagement and introducing more qualitative data to TEF”. There was even support for “less reliance on NSS data” as there was a feeling that “it could be gamed” and that low response rates “can lead to unreliable data which then can’t be used”.

So back to the Review.  Nicola Dandridge says:

  • ‘It is simply wrong to suggest that criticism of poor-quality provision and poor outcomes for students, when appropriate and evidenced, amounts to disloyalty that will damage the reputation of English higher education. Indeed, the reality is exactly the opposite: saying that everything is perfect in every university and college, when it plainly is not, is dishonest and corrosive, and ultimately will do more damage by undermining trust and confidence.
  • ‘More to the point, it is not in the interest of students. The OfS seeks to be honest about the experience students receive, however uncomfortable that may be. That is our job. In this, we take our cue from the principles that underpin the institutions we regulate: universities are places of intellectual exploration and, above all, honest enquiry. By drawing attention to the evidence, and to areas of concern as well as outstanding strength, we aim to offer challenge, support and opportunity for improvement that will make our exceptionally strong higher education sector even stronger

The blog summarises the areas of focus:

  • Within the OfS’s broad agenda, Ms Dandridge highlights three key issues that the OfS will pay particular attention to in the year ahead: admissions and recruitment, the quality of information for prospective students, and improving the quality of teaching and courses. To address the first of these issues, the OfS plans to launch a review of the admissions system. Ms Dandridge says:
  • ‘To the extent that the existing system is not serving students’ needs in a fair, transparent and inclusive way, it must change, and we will consult widely with students, schools, providers and others to understand their views and perspectives.
  • ‘We will also consider ways of addressing increasing concerns about some student recruitment practices. Students can be offered enticements and inducements which are often not in their best interests, at a time when they may be especially vulnerable. In particular, we will continue closely to monitor the impact of the damaging growth of ‘conditional unconditional’ offers that require students to commit to a particular course.’
  • Reforming admissions practices is one way of addressing entrenched gaps in access and participation in higher education which, historically, universities and colleges have been too slow to address. Ms Dandridge continues:
  • ‘What we have seen in the past is ‘slow but steady’ improvement. The trouble is that slow and steady is too slow when people’s livelihoods and opportunities are at stake. That is why we are now looking for a radical improvement in progress.
  • ‘There is work to do to dispel wider, persistent myths and misperceptions about access and participation: that universities and colleges cannot be expected to compensate for poor schooling and wider social inequalities; that contextual admissions are unfair; that disadvantaged students will always do less well in their degrees. Research shows that if students from disadvantaged backgrounds are helped to make the right choice of what and where to study, and given the support that they need during their time in higher education, they can end up performing just as well as, if not better than, their more privileged peers.’
  • The second of three issues identified by Ms Dandridge as priorities for the year ahead is improving the quality and reliability of information available for prospective students:
  • ‘Providers registered with the OfS must demonstrate that the information on their websites and marketing materials is accurate and accessible. At a time when questions are being asked, and concerns raised, about the value of a higher education degree, it is more important than ever that students are able to make informed choices about what and where to study based on clear, correct information. There can be no place for false and misleading advertising in how universities sell themselves to prospective students, or a lack of clarity about their rights.
  • ‘We cannot have a situation where students’ expectations are raised unrealistically before they go to university, only to be dashed when they get there. Such marketing is clearly within the scope of consumer protection law, and we will act swiftly and decisively where we find evidence of breach.’
  • The third priority identified is how universities, colleges and other higher education providers address concerns identified by the new regulatory system – particularly the quality of teaching. Ms Dandridge says:
  • ‘As our attention turns to regulating the providers we have now registered, we now plan to use our regulatory tools to support improved quality of teaching and courses. We plan to consult on whether our requirements for quality are sufficiently demanding to ensure that all students receive a good education.
  • ‘We set numerical baselines for indicators such as continuation, completion and employment as part of our assessment of the outcomes delivered for students. Our view is that a minimum level of performance should be delivered for all students, regardless of their background or what and where they study. We will consult on raising these baselines so that they are progressively more demanding and using our regulatory powers to require providers to improve pockets of weak provision.’

In the main document, there are some interesting points:

Registration:

  • Over 500 applications were received from higher education providers to join the OfS register.
  • A total of 387 providers were registered.
  • Eight providers were refused registration
  • The majority of applications (446) and registrations (330) were for the ‘Approved (fee cap)’ category, which allows providers to charge tuition fees up to the higher limit.
  • The majority of providers on the Register (373) had been regulated under the previous higher education regulatory systems. 14 providers not regulated under the previous systems have been registered

And the process has not been without challenges:

  • The vast majority of registered providers have had some form of regulatory intervention imposed. Some have had more than one intervention applied to them. Only 12 providers had no interventions as part of the registration decision. The total number of interventions applied as of 23 October 2019 was 1,109.
  • Most interventions (615) took the form of a formal communication. There were 464 requirements for enhanced monitoring, and 30 specific ongoing conditions were imposed.
  • As Table 1 on page 23 shows, interventions have been imposed across all of the conditions of registration. The majority relate to the first condition, on access and participation plans. This is in large part a reflection of our level of ambition and challenge in relation to access and participation.
  • Fair access and participation is an important OfS objective, and there is an expectation of continuous improvement in reducing the gaps between the most and least advantaged students in access, student success and progression into further study and employment. Many providers not considered to be at increased risk for other conditions of registration were judged to be at increased risk for this condition. The greatest number of interventions (229) have been made to improve progress on access and participation by those universities and colleges that wish to charge higher tuition fees. 

And what does the future hold:

  • There are notable gaps in the data we collect on students’ wellbeing. We are developing ways of capturing more data and as a first step have produced experimental statistics on background characteristics including sexuality and gender identity, which will cover mental health.
  • We intend to publish a consultation document laying out our expectations for universities and colleges in terms of preventing harassment and sexual misconduct, and dealing appropriately and effectively with reports of infringements
  • We will work to improve the quality of the academic and pastoral experience of students, using our powers of monitoring and intervention where appropriate.
  • We will:
  • Explore expanding the NSS survey to cover all years of a student’s course.
  • Continue to fund and evaluate priority areas such as mental health.
  • Set out our expectations of universities and colleges in preventing and dealing with incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct.
  • Following the outcomes of the independent review of the TEF, develop the scheme to increase its future role in securing high-quality teaching and learning in the sector.
  • To ensure we fully understand students’ ideas about value for money, and to maintain pressure on universities and colleges to deliver it in the future, we will:
  • Consider putting a question in the NSS about value for money.
  • Encourage universities and colleges to be more transparent in their value for money plans about how student fees are spent.
  • Continue to monitor the pay of senior staff, and consider taking action if it is unjustified.

On 20th December, Nicola Dandridge published a blog with similar themes:

  • …students reported valuing the quality of teaching and the learning environment above everything else. This chimes with the discussions I have had with students over the past 18 months, during which the quality of their courses and the academic support on offer was raised again and again – but not always in complimentary terms. Addressing poor quality provision, where it exists, has been one of our top priorities and will continue to be into the future
  • In particular, we are deeply concerned that some students – disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds – are recruited inappropriately on to poor quality courses and left to flounder without the support they need to succeed. Many end up dropping out altogether – a terrible waste of talent.
  • Over the course of the next year, we will champion areas where universities and colleges are doing great things. Where there are examples of good practice from which others can learn, we will promote them. We want to get the balance right between promoting good practice where we can, while never shying away from identifying and addressing poor practice and speaking openly about what we are doing

Prevent statistics

From Wonkhe: The Home Office has published statistics on individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent programme for April 2018 to March 2019. Of 1,887 cases reported by the education sector (the largest single sector in terms of referrals), only 324 linked explicitly to Islamic extremism – 530 cases specified right wing extremism. David Kernohan asks if we should be thinking again.

Nursing bursaries are back

In an announcement trailed in the Conservative manifesto the government has confirmed the reintroduction of maintenance support for nursing (and other healthcare) under=graduates, with more details to follow in the New Year.

Students will receive at least £5,000 a year, with up to £3,000 further funding available for eligible students, including for:

  • specialist disciplines that struggle to recruit, including mental health
  • an additional childcare allowance, on top of the £1,000 already on offer
  • areas of the country which have seen a decrease in people accepted on some nursing, midwifery and allied health courses over the past year

This means that some students could be eligible for up to £8,000 per year, with everyone getting at least £5,000. The funding will be available from next year. Further details on who can access the support will be available in early 2020.

The funding will not have to be repaid by recipients. Students will also be able to continue to access funding for tuition and maintenance loans from the Student Loans Company.

What about the Youthquake?

The day of the election, twitter was full of pictures of long queues of students at University polling stations waiting to vote. Students were encouraged by the Labour party to vote tactically.  HEPI have a blog about the impact and David Kernohan of Wonkhe did some more intensive analysis.

Nick Hillman says:

  • The embers of Labour’s defeat are now being pored over for clues on how they might do better next time. It would be wrong to assume that appealing even more to students is likely to boost Labour significantly at the next election, at least with regard to these seats. This is because, despite the general swing away from Labour, Labour held on to all 18 out of 20 that they already held, with the two Scottish seats staying in the hands of the SNP. When you already hold 90 per cent of the most student-dominated seats, there isn’t much further room for improvement.
  • Indeed, if anything, our tentative results support the idea that Labour’s problem is among less well-educated older people than it is more well-educated younger people.

David asks:

  • Are constituencies with universities in likely to see changes in the size of the majority of the winning party, or changes in voter turnout?
  • Turnout is down on 2017 (with a wet December day certainly playing a part in this trend). Intriguingly, turnout fell more in seats now held by Labour, and less in seats held by the SNP. SNP seats, too, saw a polarisation effect – the majority is higher for the winning party on a higher turn out. Conservative seats tended towards a falling turnout and a rise in polarisation.
  • But there was no way of associating “university seats” with these trends. Behavior was indistinguishable from non-university seats. More generally, if you are looking for an “anyone but the tories” get-the-vote-out pattern in any seat in England you will look in vain. Like other elections before it, 2019 was not the tactical voting election.

Updated UCAS data

UCAS issued more data about the 2019 admissions cycle. There were headlines about unconditional offers (they went up) with some faux outrage associated with it (the bit Ministerial assault on conditional unconditionals came too late for any institution to change its policy for 2019.

From the UCAS reports – main report

  • Clearing acceptances have been on the rise for several years. This continues into 2019. Over 34,000 UK 18 year olds secured a place through Clearing – the highest number on record. This figure accounts for 14% of all placed UK 18 year old applicants.
  • On A level results day this year, almost all UK universities and colleges had courses available in Clearing. This covered over 30,000 courses.
  • Clearing covers a broad range of subject areas. This includes typically highly selective courses, such as preclinical medicine (over 400 placed through Clearing, comprising 7.9% of all UK 18 year old acceptances to this subject) and mathematics (over 600 placed through Clearing – 14% of acceptances to this subject).
  • 2019 also brought the highest ever proportion of places secured through Clearing at higher tariff providers – 9.8%, compared with 8.3% in 2018.
  • New in 2019 was the option for placed applicants to ‘self-release’ online into Clearing. Nearly 16,000 UK 18 year olds with main scheme places took advantage of this option, with over 11,000 of these placed on a new course.

On unconditional offers:

  • In 2019, 20.6% of these applicants selected their conditional unconditional offer as their first choice, compared to 25.6% in 2014. Despite applicants needing to select their conditional unconditional offer as their first choice if they wish it to become unconditional, they are now only marginally more likely (1.3 percentage points) to select their conditional unconditional offer as their first choice than any of their other offers individually.
  • Applicants with unconditional offers were less likely to report feeling stressed when waiting for their exam results. In 2019, over 30,000 English, Welsh, and Northern Irish 18 year old applicants told us how they felt whilst waiting for their exam results. Figure 3 shows applicants with an unconditional offer at their first choice were less likely to feel stressed, worried or uncertain while waiting for results, and more likely to feel calm.
  • Men receiving an unconditional offer are, on average, 15.5 percentage points more likely to miss their predicted attainment by three or more grades than if they had received a conditional offer.
  • Women are, on average, 9 percentage points more likely than if they had received a conditional offer.
  • However, men with conditional offers are less likely to miss their predicted attainment by three or more grades than women with conditional offers. The net effect of the above is that men and women with an unconditional offer have similar attainment relative to predicted grades.
  • Overall, POLAR4 quintile 5 applicants are least likely to miss their predicted attainment by three or more grades (and quintile 1 most likely).
  • However, modelling did not show a significant difference between POLAR4 quintiles in the impact of an unconditional offer on attainment.
  • When the OfS talk about incentives, this is what they mean – UCAS have some data:
    • Based on responses from over 30,000 applicants in 2019, 54% of 18 year old applicants in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales reported receiving an offer with an incentive to select the provider as their first choice.
    • Of those:
    • 56% reported receiving an offer where the provider would change the conditional offer to unconditional (a conditional unconditional offer)
    • 30% reported receiving an offer promising a guaranteed place in university halls
    • 17% reported receiving an offer which would include a scholarship, bursary or cash payment
    • The biggest change in the responses to this question was in the promise of a lower grade offer or entry requirement as an incentive for selecting the provider as their first choice. In 2018, 23% reported receiving this type of offer. In 2019, this proportion has risen to 36%.
    • UCAS’ terms of engagement require providers to communicate their offers through the UCAS system. This promotes transparency and provides consistency in experience for applicants.
    • However, survey data suggests 30% of applicants who received any type of incentivised offer only received them directly from the provider – via post or email.
    • When looking at applicants who received an offer which would be changed from conditional to unconditional if selected as their first choice, 26% reported only receiving it via post or email, and that it was not mentioned in their offer conditions.

    All very interesting stuff for the OfS when doing their review of admissions.

    Wonkhe have an article

    • With only one in five 18 year olds meeting or exceeding their predicted grades in 2019, there are clearly questions to be asked
    • However the margin of error is highly predictable – predictions generally lie within 2-3 points above the actual grades, and this year’s figure is 2.35 points. There are differences based on attainment – higher predicted grades are likely to mean a smaller average difference – and more likelihood that an applicant would meet or exceed predicted grades.
    • ….The emphasis in guidance and reporting is that predicted grades should be seen as one part of a holistic system – a nod to more contextual approaches to admissions playing a wider role. Intriguingly there has been a rise in the acceptance rates for applicants holding three E grades over last year.

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    JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

    Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

HE policy update for the w/e 13th December 2019

EU, international, policy, Student Engagement

It’s a full moon on polling day and the results will be announced on Friday the 13th! Superstitions aside we’re issuing your policy update early this week before the election outcomes are announced so you can focus on all the educational news. Fear not, we’ll bring you all the election fall out and early outcome scenarios in a post-election special edition.

Measuring Up the Educational Manifestos

We’re not including the myriad of speeches and party declarations this week. However, worth a short mention is the Education Policy Institute (EPI) who have (like many others) analysed the five main parties’ manifestos, compared them against EPI costings, and considered what the impact would be from an independent perspective. They conclusions don’t paint the rosiest of futures for the education sector:

  • Although all parties have made bold pledges about reducing opportunity gaps and raising educational attainment, the policies in their manifestos are unlikely to deliver on these aspirations.
  • Despite a large proportion of the attainment gap between poor children and the rest emerging before entry to school, party policies seem to focus on improving childcare for employment and cost of living reasons, rather than focusing on high quality early years education. While Labour and the Liberal Democrats are making major funding commitments in this area, there are serious questions about whether their policies can be delivered effectively and secure high quality and value for money over the limited implementation periods envisaged. The Conservatives give no indication of whether they will take action to improve the quality and progressiveness of early years entitlements.
  • All major parties are pledging additional funding for schools, colleges and special needs education – with Labour and the Greens committing to the biggest increases. This could help to deliver effective interventions and may improve teacher retention. But under Conservative policies, there will be a relative shift in funding away from schools with higher levels of disadvantage – and this attempt to “level up funding” could widen the disadvantage gaps in attainment. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats may have under-estimated the cost of their policies on free school meals, and this could require funding to be diverted from other parts of the schools budget.
  • Large policy differences have opened up between the parties over school inspection, school testing and performance tables. The current system of accountability is in need of improvement, but education research suggests that Labour and Liberal Democrat plans to scrap primary tests and move to lower stakes inspection could damage attainment, and might particularly pose a risk to improving outcomes for the most vulnerable learners. The Conservatives do not commit to improving the current system or addressing any of its negative incentives and impacts.
  • Party policies on post 18 education are particularly disappointing. Labour proposes that its most expensive education policy should be allocating around £7bn to scrap university tuition fees, even though this may not improve participation, or the access of vulnerable groups. The Conservatives offer few policies on higher education, and the one concrete measure (reduced interest rates on student loans) would disproportionately benefit higher earners. The Liberal Democrats appear to be offering a similar “Review” to those included in their two previous manifestos.
  • While all parties are committed to additional education funding over the years ahead, there is a high level of uncertainty about the revenues which have been earmarked for such funding. The Conservative plans assume that the growth impact of Brexit will be moderate; the Labour plans assume the same, and also rely upon large tax revenues from a limited number of sources; meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are banking on a “Remain Bonus”, and revenues from uncertain sources such as tax avoidance. With all parties, it is unclear how education spending plans would be altered if the projected revenues isn’t realised and cuts have to be made.

Natalie Perera, Executive Director and Head of Research at the Education Policy Institute, said:

  • “All of the main parties are united by one thing – bold ambitions to raise attainment and close gaps. However, our analysis shows that while each party has some well-designed and helpful policies, none has a properly evidence-based strategy to meet their ambitions”

A NUS General Election survey with healthcare students found that 68% of students (with a loan) are more likely to vote for a party because they plan to bring back maintenance grants post-election. Claire Sosienski Smith, NUS Vice President (Higher Education) also mentioned the NUS Homes Fit for Study Report which said 1 in 6 students are unable to keep up with their rent payments. She said “we know that a student finance system based on individual debt is fundamentally flawed.” This was reinforced by the recent General Election survey with 2 out of 3 students stating they did not have enough money left to pay for everything once they had paid their rent and 43% rely on their bank overdraft. Healthcare students particularly raised issues of having to fund placement expenses up front, inadequate hardship funding systems and paramedics who are unable to access reimbursement for placements.

Also hitting the news this week are the health care courses at risk due to the bursary removal recruitment crisis – podiatry, radiotherapy, prosthetics, orthoptics, and mental health and learning disability nursing. BU’s Steve Tee, Executive Dean of HSS, is quoted in the article:

  • “Now the bursary has been taken away there are specialist courses with small numbers nationally that have been put at risk. This is intensified if the course is in an area like radiography, which requires expensive kit. Why would a university invest if they are only getting 20 people?”

Grade Inflation

There is an interesting article on Wonkhe by Mark Corver of dataHE. Sarah was lucky enough to hear him speak at Wonkfest and explain how claims about grade inflation rely on inaccurately data.  The data modelling actually suggests grade deflation –a double whammy for students. The article is a little technical but worth a read to understand why the Government’s claims are being refuted. It also has a high number of comments at the bottom of the article showing how engaging it is (and as Wonkhe only publish the ‘most interesting’ comments we can imagine there was a lot more chatter than published). Some excerpts to get you started:

  • It is likely that the true attainment of today’s young people is being seriously underestimated, putting them at a disadvantage, and damaging universities in the process.
  • ..there might be areas where this powerful grade deflation could be causing problems for young people and universities. Here are two examples.
  • The first is the damage from the charge that the sector is “dumbing down”. This has that – in contrast to the past – universities are now admitting people whose attainment is simply not good enough for higher education. That the average A level grades for UCAS acceptances has been going down provide fuel for this view… If you correct for the modelled grade deflation (Figure 8), average grades held by UCAS applicants who get into university have not been going down. They have been going up.
  • The second problem is where post-2010 grade data is used for analysis through time. Particularly so if that analysis is used by government to pursue policy. Which takes us back to those sharply worded complaints of degree grade inflation that the government has levelled at universities, and its calls for action to stop it. These rest on Office for Students statistical models of degree grade inflation. A level attainment is a very powerful factor in that model. And rightly so because the stronger your A level grades the better your odds of getting a higher class degree.
  • But the way the model is built effectively assumes that A level grades are an absolute measure of educational attainment that are stable through time. With this model construction, if universities maintain their academic standards then it is inevitable that the neglected A level grade deflation will pop up as degree grade inflation. But it would be a false signal. Degree quality would be unchanged. It is the measure of the input quality that has changed.
  • Our proposed A level grade deflation might not be a big enough effect to account for all the degree grade increases seen. But it would be a very substantial effect. We think that this, and other potential weaknesses in the model, do amount to reason enough to look again at the models and their conclusions. Meanwhile, government might want to think again about its pressure on universities to make it harder for students to get “good” degrees. Otherwise a double whammy for young people looms: those who have already been hit by deflated A level grades risk being hit again with a lower degree class than their attainment deserves.

Student Finance & Accommodation

Clear Accessible Finance Information throughout the Student Lifecycle

In June UUK and NEON published The Financial Concerns of Students. They said that the available information on tuition fees and the student loan system in England is often inaccessible and unclear, and that students want more information on how universities spend tuition fee income. The main findings were:

  • Prospective and UG students need clearer and better-targeted financial advice on the full implications of taking out a student loan.
  • Prospective students are uncertain what universities spend tuition fee income on.
  • Living costs are a more significant concern for current UG students than the level of tuition fees.
  • Strong agreement that going to university generally helps graduates to earn more money in the longer term (64% of prospective students and 77% of UG students).
  • More than half of students believe they should make some contribution to the cost of their education.

Since the report NEON and UUK ran a student finance information advisory group consisting of sector experts from nationwide leading organisations who work with prospective and current students to communicate student finance information. This week the group published Improving the provision of information on student finance and have proposed a Student Finance National Education Programme which recommends how to ensure student finance is more understandable and accessible for all (including family members). In summary:

  • Student Finance Information should be more coherent and collaborative – government and information providers should develop and sign up to an industry standard of core messages.
  • Teachers, schools and parents vary in their capacity to support prospective students’ decision making – leading to access gaps. Approaches and activities offered to schools should be underpinned by a more robust, funded, national careers policy than exists at present. Specific parental information is important as they are one of the most influential actors on the young person’s decision.
  • Take a student lifecycle approach to the provision of information required. Focus on sharing information during study and post-graduation (differentiated for particular groups of students) as well the prospective student stage.
  • The UK’s student population is larger and more diverse than ever before. A national education programme on student finance must reflect this diversity with a balance of different approaches to information sharing. It should reflect the needs and circumstances of prospective and current students, from school leavers to those in work considering study, and those with caring and other commitments. There is potential to strengthen a range of different approaches, such as online and face-to-face provision, and explore implementing tailored approaches for groups like mature students and care leavers.
  • Policymakers need to adopt a more strategic approach to the provision of information on student finance and be more ambitious in their goals particularly on coherence. A strategy should be developed collaboratively and in consultation with students, those who advise them, and student finance information providers. This strategy should aim to provide more than a basic level of information at the pre-higher education stage and ensure that students have a level of knowledge enabling them to make the right choices for them, based on an understanding of the costs and benefits of higher education prior to, during and after study.

Wonkhe have a blog on the topic: How we communicate student finance needs a re-think.

Accommodation

Wonkhe report that Commercial Estates specialist Cushman and Wakefield have reported on the level of private student accommodation. Key points:

  • 87% of new student beds are delivered by the private sector
  • The average ensuite accommodation is priced at 70% of the level of the maximum student loan. (NUS recommends rent by no more than 50% of maximum available.)
  • There are 23% more places in private halls since 2013
  • Demand for student accommodation rises 30% faster than can be built (although there are huge increases at some providers balanced by decreases elsewhere). Research Professional state – the top five universities for recruitment accounting for 41% of all growth in the last five years while the bottom five universities by student growth have seen a 29% decrease in student numbers.

The Times covers the report in the (very short!) Students struggling to find affordable accommodation.

Research Professional also covered the report in their own way highlighting concerns over absence of affordable student rooms stating that private student accommodation blocks are becoming more luxurious but affordable options remain scarce.

Eva Crossan Jory, vice-president for welfare at NUS echoed this and called for rent controls to stop prices spiralling further. “This is the latest report to confirm the increasing cost of accommodation has created a real affordability problem for students,” she said, adding that “reform is urgently required.”

Social Mobility

HEPI have released a wide range of content this week. Their policy note (prepared by colleagues at Exeter University) on Social Mobility has particularly been picked up by the media.  The note begins by stating

  • Much of the heavy lifting on widening participation in higher education to date has been undertaken by newer and less selective higher education institutions. The access challenge therefore remains greater at more selective institutions. They could learn from the best practice that exists in less selective universities.
  • It will take nearly a century for highly-selective universities in England to raise the participation rate for 18-to-30-year olds from the least advantaged areas to the existing participation rate for 18-to-30-year olds from the most advantaged areas.

Interestingly they state that if the number of degree places at the selective institution remains static (i.e. doesn’t grow) the number of places for advantaged pupils would need to fall by as much as 10,000, which is one-third of current annual intakes [to meet social mobility targets]. To meet the targets highly selective universities would need to double their places over the next 20 years to ensure all young people access the same participation rates as the most advantaged students. An extra 19,400 18-year old students from the least advantaged areas would need to enrol each year at highly-selective universities to equal the current participation rate of 18-year olds from the most advantaged areas.

Other recommendations:

  • Social mobility rankings for universities should be established, measuring outcomes for disadvantaged students.
  • The Office for Students should challenge highly-selective universities to expand student numbers in innovative ways to diversify intakes, including degree apprenticeships, foundation years and courses for part-time and mature learners.
  • Universities should undertake a social mobility audit, benchmarking their work on outreach, access and academic and pastoral support for disadvantaged students.
  • Universities should also consider using random allocation of places for students over a certain minimum academic threshold (as has occurred in other countries).

On Contextual Admissions the report states:

  • Universities have long taken into account the context of prospective students when assessing their potential. Contextual admissions are used in many ways – giving students a taste of university life, establishing which candidates should be interviewed or offering a degree place on lower grades.
  • But too often universities operate in the dark, worried that reduced offers will damage their reputations. ‘How low can we go?’ is the first question, sometimes followed by ‘how can we keep this out of the public eye?’ What is baffling for applicants is that contextual information is used differently from one university department to another. Research suggests that more consistency and transparency is needed.

Later the policy note acknowledges how university league tables have ‘chilling effects’ on universities’ efforts to promote social mobility. But rankings are here to stay.

  • The problem is that league tables punish universities for improving social diversity. Perversely, the tables do not generally measure the gains made by students. Universities gain higher rankings for the higher A-Level entry grades they demand – a direct disincentive to award lower grade contextual offers or consider applicants without traditional academic qualifications. Dropping down the newspaper rankings and losing status can mean fewer future applicants from the very groups a university is trying harder to attract. A succession of government representatives have tried in vain to convince newspaper compilers to reform their rankings.

Instead the policy note authors suggest that social mobility rankings could bring balance to the importance placed on current attainment based ranks.

On the place lottery:

  • Post-qualification applications would open up more radical possibilities. Universities could use random allocation of places for students over a certain threshold of A-Level grades. This is the fairest way of selecting equally-qualified candidates for degree courses. Lotteries have been used widely in education. You might compensate losers in the lottery – such as guaranteeing a place at another institution. Dutch medical schools select the highest academic performers by traditional means, and enter lower achievers into a lottery.
  • The benefit of these schemes is their simplicity. Admissions tutors have amassed a battery of criteria designed to distinguish between thousands of equally well-qualified applicants: personal statements; teacher recommendations; predicted exam grades; essays; university admissions tests; interviews; and much more. But how much of this data add to predicting which candidates are best suited for degree courses? And how much does the complexity alienate potentially excellent applicants?

The policy note concludes:

  • The time has come for a simpler, more transparent, consistent and honest system of university admissions, recognising that A-Level grades (still less predicted grades) are no longer the gold standard of entry.
  • Failing to find ways of expanding university places will prompt acrimonious battles over who secures degree places – a clash of the classes – with politicians, parents and students questioning the fairness of university admissions.
  • Universities need to embrace a cultural shift in the support provided for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, seeing greater diversity as an opportunity to enrich the academic experience for all students and staff.

The Times takes up the HEPI report arguing for most selective universities to allocate places to all those meeting the A level grade criteria threshold by lottery (with a fall back place at another University for students who do not ‘win’ the lottery).

HEPI have also published a reply to the paper on their website by Tim Blackman, VC of the Open University.

  • “‘Elite’ universities are described as such simply because they are so selective. They are the grammar schools of the higher education sector and cause the same problem for other universities as grammar schools cause for other schools. This problem is that they cream off students who have had all the advantages that enable them to be academic high-achievers at school, concentrating these students in institutions that are full of other students like them, making all universities less diverse and denying other universities a mix of abilities that is likely to enrich their learning environment and benefit everyone.
  • Lee is silent about the many, often post-92, universities that have become the secondary moderns of the higher education sector because of the self-perpetuating prestige of highly selective institutions. While the measures he advocates would help diversify these institutions, they would do so at the cost of other universities that do not have the prestige that comes with the academic snobbery that pervades British higher education.
  • Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to address this problem is to return to student number controls at an institutional level and require institutions to use entry quotas banded by grades above a minimum matriculation requirement to create mixed ability intakes across the board. This would be a requirement of their access or outcome agreements. There could be some exceptions; in The Comprehensive University I suggested that a regional distribution of research universities could be excluded on the basis that they explicitly prioritise research over education and the unique open access mission of The Open University would continue to serve a valuable role.
  • …What I do not think is a good idea is to advocate more audits and more league tables. The sector is already creaking under the number of reports and returns it is required to complete, paradoxically never including institutions’ own strategic plans and institutional performance indicators. There are many progressive incremental reforms that can be made – I would add to Lee’s list the scandal of part-time distance learning students being denied access to maintenance loans in England – and in that sense his note is certainly to be welcomed. But there are great dangers in a one-sided argument that frames the debate as one that is just about access to ‘elite’ universities.”

Meanwhile Prospect Magazine takes a differing tack arguing that education is no longer a path out of the social mobility trap and that a greater focus on creating better jobs is a solution.

Finally Wonkhe have a new blog on the transformative experience of HE for care leavers.

Mental Health

Student Minds have created the University Mental Health Charter – a set of principles to ensure student and staff mental health becomes a UK wide university priority. The principles will inform the Charter Award Scheme which will be developed during 2020 to recognise universities promoting with excellent mental health practices. This summary contains the key recommendations under various topics such as transitioning to university, learning and assessment, support services, managing risks, residential accommodation, and proactive interventions. There is a timeline highlighting the next steps as the Charter Award Scheme is developed and piloted. The Scheme is due to launch in Winter 2020.

Student Minds highlight that the Charter has drawn on all the current evidence, research and sector context to ensure its real world validity for the university sector. It states it isn’t intended to be definitive and encourages institutions to combine the elements to fit the local context. Future work will review the Charter and refresh it as new evidence emerges with a major review every 3-5 years. In conclusion Student Minds state:

  • It is not expected that universities will aim to fulfil each of these themes perfectly (no such a thing exists), but we hope they inspire discussion, thought, new interventions, evaluation and learning. The evidence we have suggests that progress on each of these themes will bring us closer to a moment when our universities are mentally healthy environments.
  • Universities are incredible places. Within our universities we have established the basis of science, unravelled the mystery of DNA, discovered stem cells and even located a long lost King under a car park. Improving the mental health of students and staff is within our ability, given time, resource and commitment. We hope the University Mental Health Charter helps to make a contribution to this process.

Mark Fudge, Chair of the University and Colleges Division for the British Association of Counselling, responded to the Charter’s publication:

  • Student Minds’ University Mental Health Charter is a step in the right direction and something for the higher education to sector to aspire to… But higher education leaders need to ensure they invest in counselling services to ensure they have enough resources so student have access to a range of mental health and wellbeing support options while at university.
  • There are thousands of students who are accessing counselling services every year. These services are at the forefront of supporting the most disenfranchised and vulnerable university populations.  They don’t just offer counselling but all sorts of group work, training and other support. They are often under-resourced, but they are having a positive impact on students’ lives and universities need to see that and invest more in them.
  • Universities need to invest in all forms of mental health support so that students have access to a range of options when they need them.”

Immigration

Universities UK has published a public poll (data available here). British adults were interviewed on their attitudes towards the immigration of university staff coming into the UK. Had there not been a purdah period for the General Election the timing of this poll would have hit whilst the Migration Advisory Committee considers how to implement a points-based immigration system and a salary threshold for international staff. Key points:

  • 87% strongly agree that it is more important that the UK’s immigration system attracts university staff who are highly skilled than it being more important that the UK’s immigration system attracts university staff who are highly paid (3% felt high pay was an important factor to allow immigration).
  • 89% agree that scientists, academics and their support staff are valuable to the UK, with half (51%) saying they strongly agree. 3% disagree.
  • 85% agree that it is important for the UK to be a world leader in science and research. 5% disagree.
  • 82% agree that the UK should try to compete with other major economies to attract scientists, academics and their support staff. 7% disagree.
  • 69% said that a UK points-based immigration system should be designed so that scientists, academics and their support staff score highly.

Alistair Jarvis, Chief Executive of Universities UK, commented on the findings:

  • “Technicians, researchers, and language assistants are all vital in supporting both high-quality teaching and innovative research at our universities. These skilled roles are critical to the ongoing success of our universities. As the UK prepares to leave the EU, it is more vital than ever that the UK remains a world leader in science and research and continues to attract international talent at different stages of their careers – from support staff and technicians to Nobel Prize winners.
  • If a new immigration system were to have a salary threshold, Universities UK has called for a threshold of £21,000 which would allow recruitment for most technician and language assistant roles in the higher education sector. This polling shows the strength of feeling among the British public that immigrants should be welcomed into the country on the strength of their skills and potential rather than facing a system that judges them on their income. This is vital for the UK to continue to lead the way in research and education.”

Wonkhe reported that a linked report from Universities Scotland had similar attitudinal findings with 78% of Scottish adults agreeing that the immigration system should support the entry of academics and support staff. The National covers the Scottish perspective.

Other news

Political untruths: Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price published a new draft law on Thursday that would make deliberate lying by politicians a criminal offence. The bill states “It shall be an offence for an elected representative acting in their capacity, or an agent acting on their behalf, to make or publish a statement they know to be misleading, false or deceptive in a material particular”. Adam was interviewed by Sky News highlighting how Parliament had changed: “Unfortunately we are normalising a dishonesty, we used to have conventions, social mores and norms etc. you know people used to resign in parliament if they mislead”. Adam said the push for the lying law was triggered by the misleading and false information such as Conservative HQ rebranding their twitter account to appear to be a fact checking service alongside other politicians Brexit claims which the EU have refuted.

Student Vote denied: The Independent report on the c.200 Cardiff Halls students who registered to vote but were not informed their application was incomplete and have been denied the vote. The student quoted in the article selected her address from a pre-filled drop down list but later discovered it had not registered her because it did not contain her room number. NUS called for Cardiff Council to resolve this unacceptable outcome. The Council said they had not been able to contact the c.200 people who supplied the incomplete addresses to register them in time.

Gamification: A Wonkhe article considers whether gaming could be a positive outreach method (alongside more traditional current efforts) in Simulation games: can gaming break barriers to university?

System Working: NHS Digital has published  a briefing on workforce challenges in the NHS:

  • As part of the drive to offer staff incentives to stay in the system, trusts are seeking to collaborate with local partners to make it easier for staff to move between organisations. Initiatives like rotation agreements and staff ‘passports’ have the dual benefit of creating a varied developmental employment offer for staff who might otherwise look outside of the system for new opportunities, and creating a more efficient mechanism for filling vacancies where they arise.
  • Our workforce has a substantial role to play in driving the progress of system working. How we work with our valued workforce to enable closer relationships between trusts and other health and care organisations, and how we support staff throughout periods of change and transformation, will be an important determinant of how systems work in collaboration to tackle workforce pressures and drive integrated care

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

CMMPH represented at The European Midwives Association (EMA) conference

BRIAN, BU research, conferences, EU, Featured academics, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, Research Centres, Uncategorized

EMA held its 6th triennial education conference in Malmo, Sweden from the 28-29 November 2019. Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Professor Sue Way had three abstracts accepted, two of which highlighted units of learning in our midwifery undergraduate programme (Evaluating the student experience of introducing newborn infant physical theory into a pre-registration midwifery programme in the UK and An evaluation of the student experience of peer facilitated learning) and a further one which was focused on a national collaborative project on grading practice (Developing a set of key principles to achieve consistency in assessing pre-registration midwifery competency in practice in the UK). The opening keynote speaker at the EMA Conference was Fran McConville – Midwifery Expert at WHO.  Fran presented on ‘Strengthening Quality Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030’. Our takeaway message from her presentation was the following important statement: “When midwives are educated to international standards, and midwifery includes the provision of family planning……more than 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths could be averted”.

On the social side we were privileged to a hear a woman from the Sammi tribe in Sweden sing three traditional songs and a tradition adopted from Syracuse in Sicily which was the ‘Santa Lucia’ group of singers celebrating the start of Christmas who sang  Xmas Carols in Swedish. We were also able to network with some significant and contemporary midwifery leaders such as Gill Walton (CEO of the Royal College of Midwives), Fran McConville (WHO) and Grace Thomas, Reader and Lead Midwife for Education (Cardiff University).

Impact of sport training on healthy behaviour in a group of 108 adolescents

BU research, Coffee Morning, conferences, EU, Events, humanities, Impact, research staff, Uncategorized, writing

In the past months, I have been collaborating with the University of Naples Parthenope, and in particular with pedagogy Professor Maria Luisa Iavarone and PhD candidate Ferdinando Ivano Ambra.

We have been working on a conference paper that covers the recent results of the S.M.A.R.T. questionnaire. A questionnaire developed in Italy to look at different aspects of human behaviour (including eating habits, sleeping patterns, relationships, and use of technologies) in the young population.

The abstract was successfully accepted and presented at the 2nd Conference on Well-being in Education Systems. I have asked Ivano to tell us a little bit about the journey he had.

From the 12th to the 15th of November I was in Locarno (Switzerland) to present the results of the research titled “The impact of sport training on healthy behaviour in a group of 108 adolescents: a pilot study using the S.M.A.R.T. questionnaire” at the “2nd Conference on Well-being in Education Systems”.

The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland (SUPSI) organised a very informative conference, giving to all the attenders enough information and materials to follow all three days of presentations.

The aim of the conference was innovation in education and psychology fields. I found of particular interest the work about emotional intelligence and creativity presented by Professor Brandao de Souza and Professor Pasini. I also found very stimulating the symposium of Professor Noto from the University of Padova who discussed the education systems and how it applies to the work-environment in an inclusive way.

The posters session as well offered food for thought, such as the research of Professor Iorio and Professor Ambrosetti on students perception of teachers’ burnout.

During the social event I had the chance to meet the other lecturers part of the scientific panel of the conference: Prof. Castelli, Prof. Marcionetti, Prof. Plata, Dr Ambrosetti and the director of the Center of innovation and Research on Education System (CIRSE) Prof. Egloff.

I am grateful to have had the chance to participate in the conference. It was an occasion of professional growth and personal improvement.

 

If you want to read the paper submitted, it is now fully available on ResearchGate

If you want to discuss the findings with Ivano or the other members of the project, follow the links below

Ferdinando Ivano Ambra

PhD candidate Ferdinando I. Ambra

ivano.ambra@uniparthenope.it

Maria Luisa Iavarone

Professor Maria L. Iavarone

marialuisa.iavarone@uniparthenope.it
Edit photo

Dr Francesco V. Ferraro

fferraro@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

Thank you for your attention,

Dr Ferraro

fferraro@bournemouth.ac.uk

www.ferrarotrainer.com

Horizon 2020 SC6 Online Brokerage Event

EU, Events, Funding opportunities, humanities, Info Days, international, pre-award

An online brokerage event for the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 6 (SC6) ‘Europe in a changing world – Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies‘ will take place on 12 December 2019, from 11:00 to 12:30 CET.

This online event is foreseen for up to 50 participants and registration is open until 8 December.

The event is organised by Net4Society, a network of SC6 National Contacts Points. More information is available on the event’s webpage.

The UK SC6 NCP is also holding an information event in London on 5 December, to support the UK stakeholders interested in the SC6 call. The call is now open with deadline of 12 March 2020.

In a case of no-deal Brexit, the H2020 Guarantee extension covers all successful bids made after EU Exit on schemes that the UK can bid for in its new status as a third-country – above mentioned call falls under this guarantee. H2020 Guarantee extension funding is for the lifetime of the grant as awarded.

HE Policy Update for the w/e 22nd November 2019

EU, policy, Research news

Election fever!!  There is some other news- sector organisations continue to consider the power of the student (young) vote, and social mobility is up for debate.

If you’re interested in the detail of the manifestos, we have done a separate version of our update for BU readers this week. We will update it next week when we have another bunch to report. And here’s a link to the list of parliamentary candidates running for election in the local areas.

Social Mobility

The  Sutton Trust has published analysis  on social mobility in the UK following polls carried out on their behalf by YouGov. Most reported has been the story that (47%) think that today’s young people will have a worse life in comparison with their parents. This negative opinion increased to 1 in 5 responses for respondents aged 25-34

Sutton Trust say the poll counters last week’s report by Civitas which argued that social mobility in the UK is now the ‘norm’ rather than an exception and that 65% of working-class parents have moved up in social class. Civitas’ author, Peter Saunders, Professor of Sociology at Sussex University, said in that report:

‘The failure of our politicians to grasp the truth about social mobility is resulting in damaging policies designed to rectify problems we do not have. Our top universities are not biased against working class applicants, for example; nor do they unfairly favour those educated at private schools. Imposition of targets and quotas is undermining what is currently a meritocratic system.’

Other aspects of the poll revealed that to get ahead in life people believe the most important factors today are a good education, knowing the right people and having well educated parents. And, having ambition was seen as essential. The analysis says that an increasing proportion of the population think that factors beyond talent and drive are vital with coming from a wealthy family seen as important to success, up 14% since the 2009 survey, and ‘knowing the right people’ increased by 21%.

The respondents were also asked to choose which education policy measures would be the most effective in improving social mobility and help disadvantaged young people get on in life. Over a quarter (26%) said focusing on developing ‘life skills’ like confidence and resilience in state schools was key, while 18% thought more high-quality apprenticeships opportunities were important. The third most common answer (13%) was fairer admissions to state schools, so that the best schools are open to those from all backgrounds.

Intergenerational Social Mobility – Wonkhe report that the Centre for Economic Performance has published a pre-election briefing on intergenerational social mobility, calling for radical reform to enable individuals to fulfil their potential and improve living standards for all, irrespective of social background.

Reports issued

The Institute for Public Policy Research North has published a report on devolving Parliament regionally speaking out against centralised Government and addressing regional inequalities ‘that have created such a divided country.’

Carers UK  has published a  report on adults that care unpaid for a loved one

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry  has published  a report on the challenges faced by UK clinical research  it considers how the UK has built on its legacy of medical innovation to become one of the most competitive global hubs for clinical research and how we compare against Europe and the rest of the world.

Size of the sector

David Kernohan has written for Wonkhe on the size of the sector: “The sector in England is growing (and also shrinking)”.

  • The whole idea of the new English regulatory system was to bring new providers into the HE system, to grow choice and competition. But as well as market entry, we are seeing a fair amount of market exit.
  • So far the only view we’ve had of this is via the OfS’ own updates to the register. We know which institutions have made it on to the register, but we only have a partial glimpse of the providers that have either chosen not to register or have refused registration. Thanks tonew data from the Student Loans Company, we can take a closer look.
  • …In February of this year arevised impact assessment predicted 10 less alternative providers and 40 less FECs than the initial prediction in July 2018. At that point the prediction was for 508 providers on the (Approved, or Approved (Fee Cap) parts of the) OfS register, in February 2019 it was 464 – but by November 2019, long after the start of term, OfS have registered only 388 HE providers.
  • …A smaller-than-expected sector means a failure in DfE policy making and OfS implementation. Registered providers are paying more than is expected on mandatory registrations to OfS, and the registration system is proving complex and difficult to negotiate. And, most damningly of all, the legions of high quality alternative providers seeking to disrupt the market – the “Byron Burgers” in Jo Johnson’s once again apt metaphor – simply do not appear to exist.

Complaints

HEPI have a blog by Felicity Mitchell, Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), on student complaints and value for money in HE. The OIA’s role is to review student complaints once they have been through the provider’s internal complaints process. They report an increase on the usual 2,000 complaints per year. In general 23% are ‘service issues’ (consumer-type complaints about things that were promised but not delivered, poor teaching, supervision and facilities).

On value they say:

  • Value is in the eye of the beholder. It means something different for undergraduates and postgraduates, home and international students, students with jobs, degree apprentices, students living at home, students with support needs, students struggling to meet their living costs, in fact for every individual. It is not just value for money. Students value being listened to, treated as an individual and getting help and support when they need it, as well as contact hours, quality teaching, resources and facilities.
  • Even students who are not paying can still feel they did not get good value if the course did not deliver what was promised or what they expected it to deliver.
  • …students need sufficient, clear and accurate information upfront about what they can expect and when. Providers come unstuck if they overpromise and cannot deliver. But they also get into difficulties if they are too vague, so students have to fill in the details themselves.
  • Students in the same cohort sometimes complain to us as a group…At the most serious end, students have missed out on a crucial part of the programme: they have not been taught a specific skill, or the course does not deliver expected professional accreditation.
  • Some students will be more seriously affected than others by things like changes to course structure, assessment methods, teaching venue or supervision arrangements. They might have chosen a course because it was delivered close to home. They might not be able to travel distances, afford extra transport costs or spend more time away from work or caring responsibilities. These are all things we need to consider when looking at whether changes have affected the value of the course for an individual student.

The OIA recommend practical steps for matters to be put right. If this is not possible they may recommending a refund of some or all of the student’s tuition fees and/or compensation for the distress and inconvenience that the student has suffered.

  • This may be because the provider has not communicated effectively, or the student has had to fight hard to make their complaint and the provider has missed opportunities to put things right. We also make ‘good practice’ recommendations, for example to change the programme information or advertising, or to improve the provider’s internal procedures.
  • Value for money is important, but it is not the whole story. We have found that students’ perception of value is more nuanced than a straightforward consumer perspective might suggest. It is influenced by students’ expectations and their individual circumstances and perspectives. Of course providers need to be clear about what they are offering and deliver what they have promised. But they also need to listen and respond to their students’ individual needs to give them a truly valuable higher education experience.

Strike Action: The OIA blog also aims to inform providers how they deal with complaints related to industrial action (in light of the forthcoming sector planned strikes):

  • The complaints we received about last year’s industrial action were more than usually closely related to tuition fees. This may have been influenced by publicity encouraging students to claim compensation for missed teaching. Students tended to present these complaints in overtly consumerist language: ‘I did not get the teaching I paid for and so I want a refund’. From what we have seen, providers tried to make sure that their students were not disadvantaged academically, for example, by changing the content of exams or assessment methods, and giving exam boards discretion to make allowance for unusually poor performance.
  • We also looked at whether the providers had made up for lost learning opportunities. Some delivered missed teaching by other methods, through online resources or allowing students to attend different seminar groups or sit in on later sessions. But some interpreted the student contract very narrowly and decided that they were not obliged to provide a specific number of taught sessions, so the students had suffered no loss. The logical conclusion of that line of argument is that it does not matter what the students have been taught as long as they come out with a degree at the end of it.
  • Our view is that if a student reasonably expects to learn about a specific topic, then the provider cannot make up for not delivering that learning simply by not examining the student on it. They consider the individual: what the provider has done to make up for what has been missed, and whether that has been enough for the individual student. A change in timetabling or assessment or teaching methods may have disadvantaged the student, for example because they have a disability or caring responsibilities. An international student or working student may not be able to attend extra teaching sessions.

And yes…the election

The most important thing: register to vote – the deadline is 26th November.

If you’re interested in the education and research related detail of the manifestos, we have sent a separate e-mail version of our update for BU readers this week (link). We will update it next week when we have another bunch to report.

At the time of writing the Conservative manifesto has not been published.

  • The Green Party were first to publish their GE2019 Manifesto.
  • The Liberal Democrats were next to publish their manifesto (on Wednesday) you can read it in full here or dip into the bitesize version which is arranged topic by topic.
  • Labour published their manifesto on Thursday
  • The Conservative and Unionist Party have not finalised the publication date for their manifesto however it is anticipated to be published over the weekend
  • Plaid Cymru’s manifesto came out on Friday but we haven’t had time to digest it yet – there’s a BBC summary here
  • The Brexit Party announced they aren’t having a manifesto – instead they are offering a contract, also launched on Friday

In terms of commentary, Research Professional covered the Labour plans in the 8am Playbook on22nd November and the Lib Dem plans on 20th November.

Wonkhe have an article by Jim Dickinson on the Labour plans for maintenance grants.

Welsh Electoral Reform: The Welsh Government intends to introduce a bill giving 16 and 17 years olds the right to vote at local council elections (once every 5 years). They intend to automatically add people to the voting register and will allow councils to decide the type of voting system they will use, e.g. first past the post or single transferable vote.

Hung Parliament: Dods have produced a good briefing exploring the what ifs should the election result in a hung parliament. It covers the likelihood and policy alignment of potential cross-party alliances. Worth a 5 minute read.

Campaigning organisations call for action

In the run up to the election period many organisations issue their own statements or manifesto aiming to influence the Government to consider supporting their requests. Last week we mentioned MillionPlus and the British Academy.   Here follows a small selection of organisations that published their calls to action this week.

Impetus: WP organisation Impetus ask that all political parties put the needs of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds at their heart of their commitments. This includes:

  • Schools – entitlement to extra tutoring for those who fall too far behind at primary. They say small group tutoring is one of the most impactful interventions.
  • Universal breakfast provision in primary school
  • FE – extend the pupil premium up to 18
  • HE – protect £900m of widening participation funding
  • OfS to clamp down on marketing tactics that encourage university applicants to pick a specific institution. The OfS should also set an expectation on long term attainment and aspiration raising measures in schools.

NUS: Sunday 17 November was International Students Day and the NUS urged British student voters to think of international students when they make their electoral choices (because international students cannot vote). NUS suggest fair policy proposals to support international students would be:

  • A fair immigration system for all migrants, with an expedited legal guarantee of a post-study work visa lasting at least two years for international students
  • Abolition of the health surcharge levied on international students
  • Protection of inward and outward mobility post-Brexit, with participation in Erasmus+ or any successor schemes

NUS quote UCAS statistics which say that over 500,000 international students study in the UK every year – diversifying our campuses, revitalising our communities and contributing to the social fabric of our society, international students contribute massively to UK higher and further education.

Commenting, NUS UK President Zamzam Ibrahim said:

  • “International students come in their hundreds of thousands to make our education the best, most diverse and enriching system possible. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.  This upcoming general election is our chance to achieve just that. We have had enough of a hostile immigration system that disregards student welfare and potential, limiting our ability to attract the brightest and best to study in the UK. 
  • History shows that when students lead, society wins. We’re asking for students in this election to make sure our campuses remain diverse places into the future, with an expedited legal guarantee of a post-study work visa lasting at least two years for international students, with sweeping reforms to humanise our immigration system, and much more.”

Adult Education: The Centenary Commission on Adult Education has published “Adult Education and Lifelong Learning for 21ST Century Britain”. It recognises that funding for adult learning and apprenticeships has fallen by 45% in real terms since 2009-10 with massive drops in adult education participation. It sees adult education as a national necessity (particularly to address the huge societal divisions and challenges to democracy we currently face). It calls for a Minister for Adult Education and Lifelong Learning, a Government gap reduction participation target, and an annual progress report to Parliament. There are many more recommendations encompassing funding, basic skills, innovation, individual learning accounts and paid time off for learning. You can read a summary and comments from sector figures here.

AgeUK  has published  its general election manifesto 

The Sutton Trust: The Sutton Trust’s Mobility Manifesto outlines practical policies from early years to the workplace which they believe will address Britain’s stubborn social mobility problem. The 10 key recommendations are:

  • Better access to the best early years’ education for disadvantaged pupils by ensuring that early years’ practitioners are well-qualified.
  • Fairer admissions to state schools across the system, with consideration given to ballots and priority for disadvantaged pupils.
  • Independent schools should be opened up, on a voluntary basis, to pupils of all backgrounds.
  • A greater focus on supporting the development of essential life skills in young people, both in and out of the classroom, with time and funding allocated for their development, through the curriculum and extracurricular activities.
  • A significant increase in the number of degree and higher-level apprenticeships available as an alternative to university, and a focus on ensuring young people from low and moderate income backgrounds can access them.
  • A greater – and more transparent – use of contextual admissions by more highly-selective universities to open up access to students form less privileged backgrounds.
  • Post Qualification Applications (PQA) to university should be implemented to allow young people to make an informed choice based on their actual rather than predicted grades.
  • The restoration of maintenance grants for students to at least pre-2016 levels to provide support for those who need it most and reduce the debt burden of the least well-off.
  • A ban on unpaid internships that are over four weeks long so that young people who can’t afford to work for free aren’t excluded from the most competitive career paths

Student Voting Power / Electoral Uncertainties for HE

HEPI have an interesting policy note, Election Briefing.

In the 2017 snap election results the young vote was seen as disrupting the Conservatives majority and HEPI highlight that much has surrounded the student vote for the 2019 election – from the debates over the timing of polling day, through the push for more tactical voting, to the focus on education at the start of the campaign. The policy note highlights that students don’t necessarily prefer to vote labour and in 2014 they favoured the Conservatives and the Greens.

The policy note discussed the complexities in registering students to vote. In 2015 halls were prevented from registering students en masse and recognises how universities have made a huge push (alongside their local councils) to ensure students are aware and do register. HEPI go on:

  • Electoral law relating to students is complicated and poorly understood. Students may register to vote at their home address and their term-time address. At local elections, they can even cast two separate votes, so long as the addresses are in different local authority areas. But general elections count as a single electoral event, so each individual voter may only cast one vote.

On the power of the student vote HEPI highlight the many factors that have to be aligned for students to make a difference:

Overall, however, the impact of student voters is often exaggerated. To make a difference to the result in any individual constituency, students must:

  • be registered to vote;
  • use their vote;
  • reside in a marginal seat;
  • vote as a meaningful bloc;
  • vote differently to how the constituency would vote anyway; and
  • be present in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

The number of seats where students are likely to determine the outcome is therefore limited but, at a very close election, the student vote could affect the overall outcome, such as making the difference between a hung Parliament or a clearer result.

Moreover, while the electoral impact of so-called student issues may have less impact on how students vote than is often supposed, student issues can affect other voters too. For example, student loan repayment rules directly affect graduates and students’ parents and carers are affected by the means-testing of student maintenance support.

On Brexit HEPI highlight that the overwhelming majority of students want the UK to remain in the EU and there is evidence that a large minority of students are prepared to vote tactically over Brexit at the 2019 election.

On fees HEPI suggest a slightly different picture to previous sector rhetoric: Polling of students by HEPI and YouthSight suggests students do not have a strong preference for either the current system of fees capped at £9,250 with a 30-year repayment term or for the Augar report’s preferred model of fees capped at £7,500 with a 40-year repayment term. They do highlight that none of the major parties have suggested reintroducing student number controls. Pages 4-5 track the rise and fall of the real terms per undergraduate funding level since the 1990’s, and Augar’s recommendations would see the student resource frozen resulting in 11% real terms drop against 2018/19. HEPI’s opinion is that universities need to strap in for an upcoming bumpy ride no matter who is elected and remind that if Government subsidy is increased due to a drop in student fee payment it would also change the nature of the sector’s relationship with the Office for Students who were set up as a market regulator not a funding body.

HEPI also say that with widening access gains and the forthcoming population boom 300,000 more full time HE places will be needed by 2030. And this is interesting:

  • The high-fee model in place in England has not led to the drop-off in young full-time entrants that was widely predicted. This has led some policymakers to imply that there is now a record number of people at university. However, this is false. The total number of students remains much lower than the high point achieved in Labour’s last year in office (2009/10). This fall is driven by part-time undergraduate student numbers.
  • If the number of adult learners and part-time learners were to increase, it would diversify the student body. In particular, it could mean higher education institutions educating more local students… if higher education institutions are to educate more mature, part-time and adult learners, then we may need to rebalance away from the expectation that students should change to fit their universities and do even more to recognise that institutions must sometimes need to change to fit their students.

On research HEPI remind that the major parties are all committed to increasing the investment in research (UK currently spends less on R&D than other countries) however current forecasts suggest the target spend level won’t be reached based on the current rate of progress. HEPI say: renewed commitments to such extra research and development activity are necessary to remain competitive. And there have been calls to rebalance research funding by directing more funds towards research institutes and business.  Page 9 lists the key unanswered questions surrounding the increased research spend pledge.

Lastly, it highlights a drop in international students will reduce the level of research that can be undertaken (because the higher international fees cross subsidise Universities’ research spend). Which leads neatly on to internationalisation and the contradictions in Conservative policy. The relaxation of policy to provide post-study work visas has been welcomed, however, this is accompanied by Home Secretary Priti Patel’s points based immigration system which intends to reduce immigration levels (wisely they have learnt not to state a net migration target!). Of course if the value of the pound drops it makes studying in the UK cheaper for international currencies.

HEPI finish their policy note by reminding what was said in last week’s policy update – that election manifestos tend not to cover the entirety (or much!) of the incoming party’s plan for HE.

Nick Hillman, the Director of HEPI said:

  • ‘Every election matters for higher education institutions but this one matters more than most. The main political parties are offering radically different proposals on student fees, loans and grants for English students, which would have knock-on consequences throughout the UK.
  • Politicians across the political spectrum have backed more research and development spending, a high proportion of which is spent in universities. But the UK continues to lag far behind our main competitors and the election could determine if, and how, we raise our game. In particular, there are big unanswered questions on how any extra spending will be distributed.
  • The future vitality of our higher education sector relies not only on positive new commitments but also on policymakers limiting the fallout from any unwise election promises.’

Rachel Hewitt, HEPI’s Director of Policy and Advocacy said:

  • ‘Recent political uncertainty has led to an ever-changing environment for universities. While this may be the “Brexit election”, it is important that the outcome clarifies the fog on higher education policy. Prospective students need certainty on the fees they will pay and the support available to them, as do university leaders. In a post-Brexit world, staff need to know how they can research across borders and how universities will recruit international students. For all stakeholders, including the general public, it is important this election provides some certainty about the role universities will continue to play in society.’

TV Debates & Polling

As we write this, the BBC are preparing for their Question time special with 4 party leaders on Friday evening.

In the end the Lib Dems and SNP were not permitted to take part in the ITV debate earlier in the week. Unsurprisingly, each party felt their leader had ‘won’ the debate.  The post-debate snap polls conducted directly after the leadership debate are interesting (and very close). Viewers gave their opinions on each leader’s performance. YouGov found that when asked who had performed best, on the whole, Boris Johnson came out on top with 51% with Jeremy Corbyn in second with 49%. Contrastingly, the ITV poll on Twitter believed Labour won 78% to 22%. When YouGov asked viewers to rate how well and badly each individual had done. Corbyn came out on top with two thirds believing the opposition leader had been a success and Boris Johnson trailing behind with 59%.

We think it is fair to say that it is unlikely that many people will have changed their minds based on the debate performances.

Target seats: The Guardian has an interactive map of the top target seats for each party and seats to watch on election night.  The BBC has a map of marginal seats too, and the FT has a good round up.  Dorset seats don’t feature…

NHS overtakes Brexit as the most important issue: A poll conducted by Ipsos Mori has shown that the NHS has overtaken Brexit as the most important issue for voters. 1,140 British adults were asked which issues would be very important in helping them decide which party to vote for. 60% of people selected healthcare/NHS/hospitals as the most important issue when thinking about which party to vote for in the election, followed by Brexit (56%). This is a 6% increase prioritising the NHS since last week.

Other news

Exam Diversity: A new Wonkhe blog questions whether Muslim students need exam adjustments during Ramadan, and whether they are supported to the same extent as their non-Muslim peers. The article suggests that the 13% BAME attainment gap can only be addressed by peeling back the layers of intersectionality and considering the additional levels of disadvantage that ‘can complicate a student’s experience’.

Roma: The BBC has an article about the difficulties faced by Roma in accessing higher education due to racial abuse.

Mental Health: The Financial Times has a piece on how academics are acting as a “fourth emergency service” for students dealing with stress and mental health difficulties at university.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

Dr Mark Readman at the Creative Industries Workshop in Istanbul

BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Research communication

Earlier this month I took part in a ‘Creative Industries Workshop’ in Istanbul. This was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Istanbul Development Agency. About 40 of us had won funding to attend – a mixture of UK and Turkish ‘experts’ (academics and industry representatives) – and we were tasked with addressing the challenges faced by Turkey’s creative industries.

The key issue presented to us was how to maximise the potential for growth, diversification and resilience in Turkey by identifying the specific affordances of the creative industries. There is clear ambition in Turkey to “increase the value added of goods and services produced in the country” and the UK is seen as a model for such growth.

The thematic areas which we addressed were: Ecosystem – the structures of finance, networking, collaboration, services, and actors which facilitate growth; Demand – the sensitivity to awareness, ‘customer needs’, and particularly the ways in which other sectors (such as tourism) might complement and stimulate this; Design and value added – the emphasis on digital transformation trends which might ‘intensify user experience’ through improving the quality of life; Data and knowledge – how the creative industries are defined, the relationship between data and policy, and possible research which might produce new models.

The workshop was a very stimulating fusion of different perspectives, and each group presented ‘solutions’ to the funding bodies which drew on our experience and understandings of successful policies and practices. Some of us, however, of a more critical mind set (and I won my funding on the basis of promising to provide this) had further questions that we wanted to pursue, for example: the need to avoid a kind of ‘colonial approach’, dispensing ‘wisdom’ from the UK; the problematic relationship between the creative industries and the craft industries – ways of achieving complementarity without collapsing key differences; the notional affordances of ‘ecosystems’ – some of us suggested that ‘true creativity’ prospered despite, rather than because of ‘ecosystems’; and, ultimately, the nature of this thing called the ‘creative industries’, which is often presented as an ‘ontological category’, but which tends to be a strategic category – some transparency about this seems to be required.

There will be a further call from the AHRC intended to nurture some of the collaborations that were made possible in the workshop, and the challenge will be to maintain this critical stance whilst working together to stimulate worthwhile projects (and we saw some excellent examples of existing initiatives). As we face life post-Brexit, Turkey is likely to be a significant partner, given its position, between Europe and Asia.

Mark Readman, FMC

HE Policy Update for the w/e 25th October 2019

EU, international, policy, Research news

Brexit

So an extension (or flextension) to article 50 has been granted, no-one has died in a ditch and a general election has been called for 12th December. So now what? It is all up to the electorate.

And 10 of the 21 Tory rebels have been reinstated and can stand as Conservative candidates in the election.

Research

New PhDs: BEIS and CDMS have announced investment in new PhDs and researchers as part of a £370 million pledge to transform healthcare, improve mental health diagnosis and build more sustainable transport. Government and private investment means 2,700 new PhD places split between  biosciences and AI will be created.

£200 million will fund 1,000 new PhD places over the next 5 years to study AI which they suggest could help diagnose life threatening diseases like cancer earlier and make industries, including aviation and automotive, more sustainable. The students will work with businesses including AstraZeneca, Google, Rolls-Royce and NHS Trusts.

£170 million will fund 1,700 places to study PhDs in biosciences. These projects are intended to help to tackle issues such as feeding the world’s growing population, developing renewable, low-carbon sources of energy, and helping people stay healthier for longer.

  • PM Boris Johnson said: “The UK has educated, trained and developed some of the best scientists in the world – and we must continue to lead the world in AI and technology with our incredible talent and innovative breakthroughs. That’s why we’re investing millions of pounds to create hundreds of new AI and bioscience PhDs, so new research and development can thrive here in the UK and solve the biggest challenges that face us – from climate change to better healthcare.”
  • Digital Minister Matt Warman said: “The UK has a long-standing reputation for innovation. We are the birthplace of artificial intelligence and home to technology pioneers such as Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace. We are determined to see this continue. “Today we are announcing a bumper investment in skills training to strengthen our workforce and attract, nurture and retain the best talent so we can lead the world in research and development. AI is already being used to improve lives by helping detect fraud quicker and diagnose diseases more accurately. With the brightest minds at the helm we will be able to explore this cutting-edge technology further.”

Universities and Science Minister Chris Skidmore also confirmed the first 5 AI Turing Fellowships. The projects include the impact of digital technologies on mental health and building a sustainable aviation industry. (Link – scroll to bottom to view details on the projects and 5 Fellows from Cambridge, Exeter, Oxford, Warwick and Manchester.) The Minister also called for further top, international academic talent to join these researchers, with £37.5 million in further funding available.

Furthermore,

  • “The government is investing £13 million in innovative Postgraduate programmes, so more people can develop fruitful careers in AI. The new AI conversion courses will allow 2,500 more people to study AI from backgrounds other than science or maths at undergraduate level. This also includes 1,000 new scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds, including women, ethnic minorities and low-income families.
  • Leading technology companies like Accenture, DeepMind, QuantumBlack and Amplyfi, are already sponsoring AI Masters students. The new courses will help build-up a highly skilled workforce in the UK and provide new opportunities for industry and universities to collaborate, ensuring new innovations are transforming industries”

[More detail on the sponsorship of the Industrial AI Masters is at the bottom of this link.]

Ministerial Questions

Select Committees regularly quiz Ministers on their departmental business. This week Chris Skidmore, Universities Minister. was questioned. Here are the key excerpts:

Carol Monaghan MP highlighted the Royal Society report (published last week) which suggested the number of applications to Horizon 2020 had dropped by 40%.

Skidmore responded that said the baseline by which this figure was compared to, was debatable, saying that whilst there was a significant reduction, the UK still gained substantially more grants than the next three countries (Spain, France and Italy) on the list.

Vicky Ford MP asked if associate membership of Horizon Europe was still the government’s preferred option post-Brexit.

Skidmore said that whilst the government (Treasury) formally wanted to assess the value for money case when the project appeared (which he said would be some time next year), his personal view was that Horizon Europe was the future of collaboration for British science. He also disagreed with the Chair’s comments that others in government were less enthusiastic about Horizon Europe collaboration than he was and stated that, in particular, the prime minister was supportive. Although he went on to state, it would be prudent to prepare for a situation where the UK was not part of Horizon Europe. In response to a further question (the target date as to when certainty on Horizon Europe would be reached) Skidmore said it depended on the European Parliament agreeing the overall financial budgets, which could happen as late as Q2 of 2020.

The Minister was asked when the Smith Review on future frameworks for international research collaboration would be published, and how quickly findings could be implemented. Skidmore said he was still discussing final timings for publication but hoped it would be published within the next four weeks. He explained that while it had been submitted in August as it has potentially significant spending implications there was a need to attach it to a budgetary process. He continued that a working group was attempting to ensure all recommendations were possible, including alternatives even if associate membership of Horizon Europe isn’t achieved.

You may remember that when Boris Johnson appointed his brother Jo to the Universities Minister post he was permitted to attend Cabinet. However, this attendance was passed to another Minister when Chris Skidmore took over. The Chair asked Skidmore if he felt the lack of a Cabinet position was downgrading his position. Skidmore diplomatically responded that whilst he would like to attend Cabinet, he noted the prime minister and Dominic Cummings were both highly supportive of science in government.

Stephen Metcalfe MP asked why the Queen’s Speech had suggested an ‘ARPA-style’ funding mechanism, at the expense of UKRI. Skidmore replied that there was still going to be a significant uplift in the science budget, on which UKRI would be the main beneficiary. However that there were also a number of bodies outside of the UKRI model, which he described as a catalyst’ and ‘engine of disruption’ focused on blue-sky research. He added that an ARPA-style model would be a significant addition to the overall funding landscape and that given its focus it would have to sit outside UKRI, to distinguish itself from traditional grant-led application processes. How much money it would have and when it would be established, were all to be decided and the Minister stated there would be a full sectoral consultation before decisions were made around a new ARPA body.

On Tier 1 fast-track visas – the system is in design and any scheme would be implemented in Jan 2021 within the context of the wider points-based system. Furthermore it would be multi-disciplinary e.g. social science as well as STEM. He stated he was not aware of any Government plans to restrict the scheme to non-STEM subjects.

Lastly, on longer degrees which would outstay the three-year temporary leave to remain visa and require a move to a tier 4 visa mid-course the Minister confirmed he had personally written to the Home Secretary to highlight this issue, which may put off international students. However, he has yet to receive a reply from the Home Secretary.

Erasmus – work on a UK-wide scheme has begun, but this would focus on UK students going out rather than EU students coming in (which would have to be determined bilaterally).

An MP raised that the Government’s target to increase research and development spending to 2.4% was not backed up by a firm plan to achieve this. Skidmore responded that the government was working towards a long-term funding plan for science and the pathway to 2.4% would be informed by the Smith Review and UKRI reports. When questioned when firm plans would be available, Skidmore said this was a “live topic” and said BEIS was working with Treasury to develop a funding envelope, with the goal of producing a pathway to 2.4% by “this autumn“.

The questions also covered data-sharing post Brexit (e.g. withdrawal from GDPR) and commenting on the new Aryton Fund Skidmore stated it would cover clean tech and business strategies for climate mitigation in developing countries (and that it was new money on top of the existing budget).

Tuition fees – Chair, Norman Lamb MP, asked if there were any plans to cut HE tuition fees (following Augar’s report) with Universities concerned about reductions to research funding if there is a fee cut. Skidmore replied that the government was still considering the review, and decisions would only be taken when the next Spending Review took place. Adding that if there was any fee reduction, he would strongly make the case that a “way to compensate for that” would have to be found.

Graduate Premium

New research from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and Warwick University shows a reduction in the ‘graduate premium’. The project analysed how the financial return to a degree has changed across two decades in which there has been a large expansion in higher education participation. The research found that graduates born in 1990 earned 11% more than non-graduates at age 26, compared to the 19% graduate premium enjoyed by graduates born in 1970. The research examined the hourly pay and found the impact was most significant on those born after 1987.

Follow up research is planned to examine cohorts born after 1990 to determine whether the reduction is a short-term dip or the beginning of a more general decline. They also plan to continue the study examining earnings as graduates progress through their careers. This is because graduates tend to grow their earning potential more sharply over time compared to non-graduates.

The research partnership also intends to examine financial return by class of degree awarded following the grade inflation debate in future work.

This research is a statistical study and when you read the full report it is unclear if national factors have been fully accounted for despite the carefully controlled analysis. First, there is the impact of the recessions on students graduating within the selected period. Previous national research suggests that graduating in times of recession may permanently damage an individual’s earning prospects. Secondly, there is no mention of the current context of intergenerational fairness – that the younger generations will not have it as ‘easy’ or ‘good’ as older generations in terms of housing and job security. There is also the potential, given the Government’s agenda to get more people into or returning to work and the recent benefits reforms which have led to reduced employment, that more women are entering the workplace (with women receiving 9-12% less in the pay gap compared to men). Plus this finding is set within a national context of stalling social mobility and increased levels in the number of children in poverty. Alongside this more disadvantaged students are accessing HE, with findings that while HE helps they do still have an earnings gap compared to their more advantaged peers on graduation.

While these are current issues, and more recent than the cohorts the study examines, the social inequalities leading to these current topics were brewing (just less prominent) in the years studied. For example, there were more graduates from less disadvantaged backgrounds with greater social capital and class earning potential than in more recent years. A careful read of the full study is important before drawing conclusions solely based on HE expansion, particularly given the Government’s agenda on oversupply of graduates doing non-graduate level roles and the financial investment an individual makes to study at degree level now.

On the study Tej Nathwani, econometrician at HESA stated:

  • “Whilst the benefits of a degree are not solely financial, higher education remains a significant investment decision for young people. Changes in fees and funding have resulted in increased reliance on student loans, which are now treated differently in public sector finances. Consequently, graduate earnings continue to be an important area of research in higher education. This study adds to the available information about the financial benefits that individual students can expect from a degree. We hope to explore this area further in forthcoming years, as new data is released into the public domain.”

Hate, harassment and misconduct

OfS Chief Exec Nicola Dandridge has blogged about the devastating impact that harassment, hate crime, and sexual misconduct can have on students, and the OfS’s role in driving improved prevention and support. The blog covers the history from the 2010 NUS report to the sector’s work in this field (UUK’s  taskforce and Changing the Culture report) concluding that while progress has been made more needs to be done to achieve the necessary culture change. Nicola sees the OfS role as galvanising change – by raising the profile of this issue, targeting funding to address it and sharing effective practice across the sector (alongside intervening if HE provisions are likely to breach registration). The blog goes on to highlight the £10 million student safeguarding catalyst fund which has spawned 119 projects (reports here) focussed on sexual harassment, online harassment, hate crime (including religious hate crime).

The OfS blog was in response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) report following their inquiry into racial harassment in HE. The Commission states:

  • Our inquiry report Tackling racial harassment: universities challengedhas revealed that with racial harassment occurring at an alarmingly high rate across British universities, many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are not only unaware of the scale of the issue but are overconfident in their ability to handle it.
  • The inquiry found that 24% of ethnic minority students have experienced racial harassment on campus.
  • Universities are over confident that individuals will report harassment, with 43% of universities believing that every incident of racial harassment against students was reported, and 56% believing that all incidents against staff were reported. However, two thirds of students who responded to our survey and had experienced racial harassment said that they had not reported the incident to their university. Less than half of all staff who responded to our call for evidence because they had experienced racial harassment, said that they had reported it to their university. Students and staff suggested that they did not come forward about their experiences because they had no confidence that the incident would be addressed. Others said that fear of reprisals also played a part, as two thirds of staff said that better protection from personal repercussions would have made it easier for them to bring a complaint.
  • Despite universities being keen to encourage international students to choose their courses, the research unearthed a strong theme of international students feeling unwelcome, isolated and vulnerable. Some even described feeling like commodities and only wanted for the fees that they bring. Half of the international students who responded to our call for evidence because they had experienced racial harassment, said that they had been made to feel excluded, over half said they had experienced racial micro aggressions, and 44% said they had experienced racist abuse, but 77% of respondents did not report it to the university.

The report notes that 8% of student experiencing racial harassment felt suicidal, and 1 in 20 dropped out because of the harassment, with 3 in 20 staff members leaving their jobs due to harassment.

The report recommends:

  • mandatory duty on employers: the UK Government must reinstate third party harassment protections and introduce a mandatory duty on employers to increase protections for staff from harassment
  • adequate powers for regulators: governments across Britain should ensure the sector regulator and funding councils have adequate powers and that these are used to hold universities to account on their performance to prevent and tackle harassment
  • effective complaints procedures: higher education providers must enable students and staff to report harassment and ensure their complaints procedures are fit for purpose and offer effective redress
  • senior-level action on inclusive cultures: senior leaders should take steps to embed an inclusive culture where staff and students feel confident and supported when making complaints.

The report has led to several MPs asking parliamentary questions on abuse this week (both of below are due for answer after this policy update is issued – the links provided will show the response once it has been published).

Q – Mr Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Minister is taking to ensure that universities investigate all complaints made by students and staff about racism at universities.

Q – Steve McCabe: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to protect university staff from racial abuse.

Q – Paul Farrelly: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report entitled, Tackling harassment: universities challenged; and what steps he is taking to ensure that university staff receive adequate training to deal effectively with racial harassment.

And more questions raised here and here in the same vein.

Crime

Extending prison sentences and being tough on crime are two of PM Boris Johnson’s priorities. Interestingly, there is already a Lords’ inquiry into how conditions in prison were not designed for the increasing numbers of older people now incarcerated, and the problems this is causing. In addition, this week HEPI published a policy note urging politicians to reconsider the barrier which prevents inmates from accessing student loans to undertake HE study until they are within six years of release. The note argues that HE study calms the fractious prison environment, and that the studying prisoners become role models, in addition that HE study reduces the likelihood of reoffending.

Private Members’ Bills

Two weeks ago (see page 2 of link) we mentioned the Common’s Private Members Bills (PMB) and highlighted that they are a way for individuals to make legislation on matters dear to their hearts.

The following MPs were successful in the ballot to table a PMB:

  • Nigel Mills (Conservative, Amber Valley) As the number one in the PMB lottery, Nigel Mills will be very much in demand from a variety of groups vying his attention. However, as someone who has wedded himself closely to the new regime in Downing Street, it is likely that Mills will find his favourable ballot position used for a Government sponsored Bill. Mills may still request an area for which he has an interest, however. As a long-term backbencher, he is prominent on a number of All-Party Parliamentary Groups and his position on APPGs for both Dementia and Pensions could hint at something concerning elderly groups. Alternatively, he could continue his long-held focus on tax issues – prior to his election to Parliament Mills was an accountant and he maintained an interest in the area in the time since.
  • John Stevenson (Conservative, Carlisle)
  • Annelise Dodds (Labour, Oxford East) – Dodds has a wide range of issues she focuses on in Parliament: ranging from taxation; welfare and inequality; to foreign affairs and climate change. She is a firm opponent of a no deal Brexit. Her recent questions in Parliament have focussed heavily on energy provision in housing. Dodds has also raised significant concern around the lack of action taken to prevent anti-abortion campaigners from protesting outside clinics. Dodds has focussed on and taxation since her election – particularly the need to tackle tax avoidance, and offshore or dormant companies. Given her brief in the shadow treasury team, it is possible that a PMB might focus on closing loopholes in existing legislation with regards to this.
  • Anne Marie Morris (Conservative, Newton Abbot) – Chair of the APPG on Access to Medicine and Medical Devices, Anne Marie Morris has been vocal on issues surrounding health. In June 2017 she won a chance to put forward her own Bill, in the Private Members’ Bill ballot (but was too far down the list) it is possible that she would re-table this Bill which called for the regulation of Physician Associates, and to make it a protected title. She regularly tables questions to the Department of Health and Social Care on the Genomic Healthcare Strategy and accessibility of health services for rural populations. Her She has also campaigned against high water charges in the South West and called for a Government subsidy to help householders with their bills. She has also spoken on flooding, accident and emergency services and transport issues including rural bus services and clamping in private car parks. She voted to relax the smoking ban after the closure of thousands of pubs and clubs. She takes a particular interest in small business. She chaired the All-Party Group on micro-businesses and held office on groups on entrepreneurship, life sciences and flood prevention, as well as local enterprise, first aid and pro-bono work. In the past she initiated a debate urging more government help for micro-businesses.
  • Lisa Forbes (Labour, Peterborough) – A relative unknown Lisa only took her Parliamentary seat following a June 2019 by-election. Her interests in her non-political career include the Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee, and she campaigned against the closure of local Children and Play Centres as well as residential homes for the elderly. She also worked for Thomas Cook prior to her election to Parliament and has tabled a number of written regarding the collapse of the company and support for employees. Other questions include school uniforms.
  • James Brokenshire (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup) – Previously Brokenshire held Government positions for most of his time in Parliament where he has been able to push for including the lifting the housing revenue borrowing cap. Yesterday we spoke during the Queen’s Speech NHS debate about the importance of an early diagnosis when it comes to cancer, which is a personal interest matter. His key interests are violent crime, building safety, domestic abuse and health.
  • Sir Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat, Twickenham) – Sir Vince has tweeted he is “inclined” to use his Bill on furthering the debate on assisted dying or lowering the voting age to 16.
  • Frank Field (Independent, Birkenhead) – Frank Is the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee and has used the private members bill mechanism to raise a number of issues in the past including welfare benefits, priority in the housing queue to those with exemplary tenancy record, to automatically register eligible children for free school meals and post-Brexit EU citizens rights. In September 2019 Field used the presentation Bill procedure to introduce a Bill on equality of access to justice. Field said he had wanted to call it “Gina Miller (Poor People’s Access to Courts) Bill” to highlight the differences between the contrast between “poor people waiting to get into benefit appeal tribunals and Gina Miller’s ability to get into court within a week”. Most notable is his longstanding interest in welfare issues. He holds office in several all-party groups in parliament including Conception to Age Two – The First 1001 Days, Listed Properties, Anti-Corruption, Medical Cannabis under Prescription Group, and Young Disabled People.
  • Tracey Brabin (Labour, Batley and Spen) – Is the Shadow Minister for early years. She has been calling for legislation to make the reporting of sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults mandatory across all institutions. She has also previously called for an audit of crime in towns detailing the levels of resolutions in comparison to cities, and for greater transparency on where money is spent. She has also signed an Early Day Motion calling for the Government to bring forward legislation to require companies with more than 250 employees to publish their policies on parental leave and pay. Her political interests are Education, Internet safety, and Parental leave.
  • Sir Michael Fallon (Conservative, Sevenoaks) – Ex Defence Secretary is the Vice-Chair of the British Museum APPG and may choose to use his PMB to influence the ongoing debates within the museum sector. Notable topics include the discussion over the potential repatriation of cultural objects and the slashing of public funding available to smaller museums nationwide. Education is one of Sir Michael’s stated interests.
  • Damien Moore (Conservative, Southport)
  • Anna Turley (Labour, Redcar) – Her priority, which she says is the number one issue on doorsteps, is the lack of jobs in particular for youths. She says there needs to be investment in jobs but also in training and apprenticeships to prepare people for jobs.
  • Damian Hinds (Conservative, East Hampshire) – Dods suggest it is difficult to predict what Hinds might table because he was a long-standing minister with his parliamentary time dictated by Government commitments. However, he is interested in the Catholic education sector and the admissions rules that apply to faith free schools. He has also been a longstanding advocate for social mobility, previously chairing the APPG. Since leaving Government he has been vocal on climate change and critical of motorists for leaving engines on outside schools. Hinds was the Secretary of State for Education before Boris made his appointments.
  • Preet Kaur Gill (Labour, Birmingham, Edgbaston)
  • Kirstene Hair (Conservative, Angus)
  • John Woodcock (Independent, Barrow and Furness)
  • Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)
  • Naz Shah (Labour, Bradford West)- Naz is a disability rights advocate and women’s rights campaigner. She is concerned about domestic abuse especially around services dedicated to women from BAME backgrounds. Another issue she cares about is compelling companies to publish their race pay gap and she could propose a bill to enact that.
  • Vicky Ford (Conservative, Chelmsford)
  • Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour, Poplar and Limehouse) – With thanks to Dods Political Consultants who have analysed the interests of the MPs successful in the ballot to speculate on the Bill topic they may introduce. Only those relevant to BU’s interest and research have been included.

This week the Lords ballot also took place and two items were listed that are relevant to HE. Lord Storey was selected first and will present the HE Cheating Services Prohibition Bill on Thursday 17 October. Much further down the list is Lord Holmes of Richmond who will present the Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) Bill on Wednesday 6 November. Lords Bills are even less likely than those of the Commons to be enshrined in law. Furthermore, the current parliamentary disruption may result in them not even getting off the starting blocks. However, both are topics the Lords have been raising since before the 2017 snap election and the respective Lord seems determined to make a difference and pass legislation on the topic.

Mental Health

This week in our guest blog Sophie Bradfield, SUBU, talks mental health.

There’s been a recent spotlight on mental health following World Mental Health Day last week. In recognition of this, the Department for Education published a report into children and young people’s wellbeing called ‘State of the Nation 2019’. The report looked at children and young people split into two age brackets: 10-15 years old and 16-24 years old. Looking at themes with the data for the older age group, there were overall high levels of life satisfaction however this was in conjunction with a fifth having recently experienced high levels of anxiety. The biggest marker for wellbeing was age; being older was associated with having lower wellbeing (lower average life satisfaction and happiness). Reflecting on other research, this was partly attributed to employment stability, health, family experiences and the quality of friendships. It was also noted that further research could be done into the extent to which decreasing levels of wellbeing with age is linked to biological factors i.e. transitioning into adulthood, or changing social and environmental factors.

Other trends with the older age group (16-24 year olds) found that young women reported higher recent levels of anxiety than young men but also had slightly higher ratings of feeling life was worthwhile than young men. There was also a trend of lower anxiety yet lower life satisfaction in young people from Black/African/Caribbean/Black British backgrounds compared to those young people from white backgrounds however it was noted to interpret this particular trend with caution due to limited comparator sizes.

Looking constructively at how Universities can respond to the recent mental health crisis by creating “safe and supportive environments” to maximise wellbeing, Vice explores a number of recommendations based on consultation with medical professionals, charity workers and other experts including Dr Bridgette Bewick, a psychologist and associate professor in health research at the University of Leeds and Faraz Mughal, a GP in Birmingham and Solihull and clinical fellow in mental health at the Royal College of General Practitioners. Some of these are explored in more detail below along with a quick snapshot of what BU and SUBU currently does in these areas.

Design campuses that support positive wellbeing

Mughal recommends a “campus-wide approach” linking healthy food, exercise and enough sleep to wellbeing. Recommendations for Universities include having food available to students which is nutritious and low cost; accessible exercise on campus; and education around the importance of sleeping well. These are really important staples for wellbeing and BU students often give us feedback about wanting affordable, healthy food and cheap gym membership. These are both things that continue to be worked on by SUBU and BU in response to student feedback.

Develop mindful curriculums

Bewick suggests that University’s look at “how to embed wellbeing into the university curricula”. Specifically, this is around teaching and assessment practices which support positive health and wellbeing as well as future employment. BU’s changes to the 6C policy on Principles of Assessment which SUBU was involved with seek to do just this, underpinned by a ‘principle of assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning’ in line with other good practice in the sector. Student attendance is also no longer linked to attainment, ensuring things such as poor mental health impacting on attendance do not also directly impact on the mark students get.

Don’t keep libraries open 24/7 and Model positive behaviours

Bewick states “we need to ensure people are thinking about how their actions are impacting their wellbeing and mental health. Choice is a positive thing but we need to arm students with the information they need to make informed decisions about how they want to structure and manage their university experience.” This is a really interesting concept as BU students have been calling for 24 hour access to libraries for a long time and we’re not sure imposing restrictions like this is the healthy choice it is framed to be. This seems to be making assumptions around particular working hours being ideal rather than accessible working hours around other time commitments.

Improve living conditions in halls

This is a key issue for the sector at the moment and is not just limited to halls. We’ve all heard the horror stories around the quality of some student accommodation around the UK. In Bournemouth there has been lots of work around the accommodation offerings to students, with new halls being built at Bailey Point for example. Lots of thought is being put into the whole student experience in halls, including alternative and non-alcohol focussed social events. There is however more work to be done around issues with private accommodation.

Teach staff how to talk about mental health problems

The roll-out and support for the Mental Health First Aid programme of training in BU means that over 200 students and staff have been trained (as of May this year). As discussed at the refresher and celebration event in May, it would be fantastic if this number could increase. So many members of BU/SUBU staff present shared stories of how they have used the course to help students and fellow staff members with issues around mental health. Education and conversation on mental health is so important.

Listen to students

Bewick notes the importance of listening to students about the support they receive and how it can be improved. There’s work on this within BU and SUBU but with fewer students declaring whether they have a mental health issue to their University (see ‘The New Realists’ Unite report) perhaps changes to the NSS can help with this. The Office for Students has announced this week that they are exploring new survey questions in the NSS to look at student mental health and wellbeing provisions. Consultation on shaping the NSS ‘for the future’ can be expected in spring 2020.

Inquiries and Consultations

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Other news

Demographic leap: We are all aware of the current demographic dip impacting on recruitment of students, however, birth rates have risen and a demographic spike is expected by 2030. Wonkhe have a new blog by NEON’s Director examining the spike and how it won’t impact on all regions equally. For example, the South West will have the fourth biggest rise with a project 21% change in the number of 18 years old in 2030 and the northern regions will see the least growth. In the article, the author argues that students tend to study in their own region or the one closest to it so the uneven spike will have recruitment implications. It also notes that increases in entering HE are being driven by those from BAME backgrounds. It highlights that London and the South East (which have the biggest regional growth in birth rates) will experience infrastructure pressure and the diversity of students will mean universities need to work harder to ensure students get the rich experience needed. On disadvantage the blog states:

  • There is a silver lining for access as the areas of lowest participation also tend to be the areas where 18 year-olds will increase the least making it, in theory, easier than it could have been to achieve their target to eliminate the geographical gaps in access and student success within 20 years. What demographic changes risk doing though is further divide an already divided system. The crisis that some may experience in coping with the demand for higher education will be one others may look on with envy, as their growth is far more modest.

It is worth reading the comments at the end of the blog as commenters quibble the figures. Although the overall nuance is the same, the alternative figures do predict smaller growth for the South West region.

UTCs: The Council for the Defence of British Universities has a blog on why the set up and comparisons made of University technical colleges is causing them to fail.

Adult Skills and Lifelong Learning: The House of Lords Education Select Committee considered the state of the UK adult education sector and the reduction in available provision over the last 20 years. Read a summary prepared by Dods here. The session specifically mentions the ‘total eradication of adult education departments in universities’.

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UKRO Visit (and Brexit)

BU Challenges, BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, international, Post-award, pre-award, Research news, Research Training, RKE development framework, Training

As usual, RDS will host an annual UK Research Office visit to BU in 2019. This year’s event has been scheduled for November; the reason is obvious – Brexit!

 

All academic staff interested in EU funding are invited to attend the event:

Monday 18th November Fusion Building – FG06 from 11:00 – 14:30. Lunch will be included.

Dr Andreas Kontogeorgos, European Advisor of the UK Research Office will be discussing with us the impact of Brexit on EU funding opportunities. Academics are welcome to submit any other EU funding related topics for discussion to Ainar Blaudums by the end of October.

UKRO delivers subscription-based advisory service for research organisations and provides MSCA and ERC National Contact Point services in the UK. As part of UKRO services, BU members of staff may sign up to receive personalised email alerts and get early access to EU funding related publications on UKRO portal.

Please contact Organisational Development to book a place.

HE Policy Update for the w/e 27th September 2019

Business Engagement, ECR Network, EU, Funding opportunities, HEIF, Impact, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, policy, Research news, Student Engagement

What a week! Parliament is sitting (but not quietly) and there is lots of coverage from the Labour Party conference including the fringe events.

Fresher loneliness

Fresher loneliness: The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and Louise Knowles (Sheffield University) have spoken out on tackling loneliness during the first few weeks when starting university.

  • For many, the thought of Freshers’ Week conjures up images of non-stop partying, a whirlwind introduction to university life and new places, opportunities and friendships. But for some students it also brings a feeling of anxiety, isolation and the start of a long battle against homesickness.
  • Fresher’s Week can be a culture shock. Some students relish this and enjoy the excitement, but others are like a rabbit caught in headlights.
  • Being isolated affects your psychological wellbeing. When they start at university, many students have lost the comfort of home, someone to cook for then, that structure they had, their community of family and friends for support.
  • It’s especially true for marginalised students – such as international, disabled or mature students. They can feel at a loss. They will wonder ‘is there anyone else like me here?’ or ‘where can I get support?’

Having a sense of community can be key to helping a student overcome homesickness.

Sense of belonging

  • “They need to build up that sense of community, that sense of belonging.
  • “Some students can be very reserved. They might not be comfortable in large social groups or going out clubbing all the time with lots of new people. They might find it easier to join smaller, informal groups, and look for activities on a smaller scale to join in.
  • “We have to push ourselves a little bit to put ourselves out there and build a new community, but not to the depths of despair.”

There are university societies to pretty much cover every interest and hobby, as well as for specific groups of students, and they can often help people form a much-needed community to help them settle in.

Preparation

  • “Some students haven’t had much preparation for university. If they’ve accepted a place through clearing they may not even known where they were going until a few weeks before. It does help to familiarise yourself with where you’re going and what life’s going to be like before it’s thrust on you in the first week of term.“

Freshers’ Week and the following few weeks can be a bit of a blur. Some people want to jump in and do everything. Others want to familiarise themselves with university life more slowly. “It’s important students remember to take it at a pace that they are comfortable with.”

Wonkhe have a fresher related blog: Are freshers the new realists when it comes to mental health support?

Initiations: UUK have published a briefing, Initiations at UK Universities, to raise awareness of the dangers associated with initiation tasks and excessive drinking among students. The briefing sets out recommendations and actions they suggest universities should take to prevent and respond to dangerous behaviours and aim to drive a change in attitudes towards these events.

The briefing includes a consensus statement on the best way forward from stakeholders across the university and health sectors and examples of emerging good practice. Here are the key recommendations:

  1. Adopt a clear definition of what constitutes an initiation which focuses on prohibited behaviours
  2. Foster cross-working and a whole university approach. This means including work to prevent initiations as part of strategies to tackle harassment and promote good wellbeing and mental health
  3. Evaluate new initiatives and share knowledge and good practice, continuously assessing progress being made
  4. Update or develop policies and practices to explicitly refer to initiation events and the problems that arise from them
  5. Ensure proportionate disciplinary processes and sanctions are in place, noting that a “zero tolerance approach” is unhelpful as it implies initiations do not happen
  6. Provide clear reporting systems and advertise support available to students
  7. Raise awareness of initiations and their risks among students and staff
  8. Organise appropriate staff training, identifying the levels of training needed for different staff. First responders will need the most training, for example.
  9. Work with the local council, licensees and partners to ensure the campus environment promotes responsible behaviours towards drinking
  10. Work with alumni to encourage an increased sense of responsibility for the safety of student groups and societies of which they were a part

Wonkhe have a new blog exploring the complexities for universities to walk the right balance over initiation.

Parliament is back

The supreme court ruled that PM Johnson was unlawful in his advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament. A summary of the court’s decision is here. In essence:

  • For present purposes, the relevant limit on the power to prorogue is this: that a decision to prorogue (or advise the monarch to prorogue) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In judging any justification which might be put forward, the court must of course be sensitive to the responsibilities and experience of the Prime Minister and proceed with appropriate caution.

The court ruled that Parliament was frustrated and its ability to debate the Brexit change curtailed:

  • This was not a normal prorogation in the run-up to a Queen’s Speech. It prevented Parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for five out of the possible eight weeks between the end of the summer recess and exit day on 31st October. Proroguing Parliament is quite different from Parliament going into recess. While Parliament is prorogued, neither House can meet, debate or pass legislation. Neither House can debate Government policy. Nor may members ask written or oral questions of Ministers or meet and take evidence in committees. In general, Bills which have not yet completed all their stages are lost and will have to start again from scratch after the Queen’s Speech.
  • This prolonged suspension of Parliamentary democracy took place in quite exceptional circumstances: the fundamental change which was due to take place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom on 31st October. Parliament, and in particular the House of Commons as the elected representatives of the people, has a right to a voice in how that change comes about. The effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme. No justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court.
  • The Court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.
  • The prorogation was also void and of no effect. Parliament has not been prorogued. This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 Justices.

So all bills that were previously passing through parliament are resumed and Parliament is sitting again. A recess for the Conservative Conference was not approved.  Next week will be another interesting one.

Fees and funding

Meanwhile, on Monday, Wonkhe reported that the Sunday Times confirmed that ministers have “shelved” implementing the Augar recommendation to cut full-time undergraduate English tuition fees to £7,500. Wonkhe continue:

  • This does not mean that higher education finance will not make its way into a future Conservative election retail offer to students and young people – maintenance grants, expansion of higher technical and apprenticeship qualifications, and interest rates on student loans could all plausibly feature – and would generate fewer direct comparisons to Labour’s free tuition offer. Though other parts of the Augar recommendations will perhaps make it through the month, the “big difference” that education secretary Gavin Williamson claimed the Augar review is making to his thinking, now looks quite a bit smaller.

And there is a new Wonkhe blog on the topic.:

  • The Sunday Times reports that ministers felt there was no parliamentary majority for any legislation. However:
  • Making changes to the fee cap would just require a statutory instrument. From the way HERA has been drafted it is difficult to see what the precise process would be to lower fee caps… but there is no indication that lowering fees would require such a vote.
  • The blog suggests Jo Johnson killed off the fee reduction “Six weeks would be plenty for him to kill off the idea of ill-considered tweaks to his 2017 legislation. He lost his job over opposition to the post 18 review, so given a second chance he was always going to take the opportunity to render it harmless.”

Voter registration

Electoral Registration: With the prospect of an election before the end of 2019 looming an Electoral Commission report holds particular interest for the student voter registration hurdle. They find that local government registers are only 83% complete (so between 8.3 and 9.4 million people are not correctly registered). The greatest risk factors for non or inaccurate registration are:

  • Aged 18-24 years
  • Having lived at current address for less than two years
  • Renting from a private owner
  • Being of ‘other ethnic background’ or ‘mixed background’ ethnicity

Several of the risk factors chime with the HE student demographic, which also has the additional hurdles of understanding the electoral registration process given their dual (home/study address) residence status. Alongside the de-prioritisation of registering to vote against the many other items competing for their attention when they start or return to university.

KEF is coming – and more money for knowledge exchange

A couple of significant announcements were made this week by the Universities Minister.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore has today announced a new strategic direction for university knowledge exchange funding to drive the high performance needed to deliver the government’s commitment to raise research and development investment to 2.4% of GDP.

The measures announced at the Research England Engagement Forum event in London today, Thursday 26 September, include:

  • Confirmation that Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) will rise to £250 million by 2020/21
  • Roll-out of the first iteration of the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), with the first results anticipated in 2020
  • A comprehensive Research England-review of the current HEIF funding method, aiming to put the KEF at the heart of the approach
  • The launch of a joint call with the Office for Students (OfS), making £10m available for projects that evidence the benefits to students of being involved in knowledge exchange

You can find more detail here: Research England

Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, spoke to celebrate the broad range of topics and internationalism within the Future Leaders Fellowships second wave. He also spoke about early career researchers:

  • I also want to highlight what I’ve referred to as the ‘Cinderella subject’ of education and research policy: that surrounding early career research. How can we create an environment that ensures early career researchers are not only better paid, but feel valued, that their work is properly recognised and rewarded?

And on the academic juggle:

  • I also am acutely aware that for all Future Leaders Fellows, the ability to conduct your research unhindered and free from the constraints of what should I say, ‘normal academic life’, is just as important as some of the financial investment that has been made today.
  • Pressure is experienced by us all, but I know myself as a historian, writing books late into the night, that there are few disciplines such as the process of academic thought and research creativity, that can be so adversely affected by the impositions of the outside world.
  • So I’m keen to do all I can to help investigate how to reduce these pressures, to understand where we need to refine our processes and minimise unnecessary paperwork, and find out where additional flexibilities need to be created, to clear the path for researchers to be free to conduct the research they need to.
  • This includes looking again at our various research funding models, ensuring that we are doing everything we can to unlock the creativity and imaginations of everyone working in research, whether they work in universities, research institutes or in industry.
  • It also means focussing on our efforts on that critical point in a researcher’s early career, when they feel most precarious, and when the strictures of an academic career can seem so burdensome that most choose simply to take a different path in life, away from research altogether. 

More detail on the Future Leaders projects can be found here.

Skidmore also spoke on Space and the importance of small business innovation this week.

Lastly, PM Boris visited a school and the BBC captured his talk with the children when he reminisced that he didn’t do enough work at university and frittered too much time at university. He advised them to use their time productively: “Don’t waste your time at university, don’t get drunk…use it well”.

HE Data

The OfS have released a new area based measure of access named TUNDRA (tracking underrepresented students by area). As the name suggests it is a data source derived from the tracking of 16 year old state funded mainstream school pupils in England on an area basis who participate in HE at age 18 or 19. They have also updated the POLAR4 postcode data which measures how likely a young person is to participate in HE based on their postcode. Note: POLAR 4 covers all schooling types as it is an area based measure. However, questions of the validity of any postcode based metric remain due to start discrepancies which mask disadvantage within postcode areas. And Minister Chris Skidmore has been open within his criticism over the shortcomings of this measure. The Government (and OfS) are rumoured to be quietly investing more time in understanding whether the index of multiple deprivation has potential for greater use in the future. Back on the OfS site are also interactive maps selectable by each of the four types of recognised young participation measures (TUNDRA, POLAR 3 & 4, NCOP) and the calculation methodologies for each type of measure are here.

Data guru David Kernohan of Wonkhe gallops through the main features, issues and oddities of TUNDRA in A cold spot on the TUNDRA.

OfS data – Changes in Healthcare Student Numbers

The OfS have published data on healthcare student number changes following the removal of the bursary system (2017 entrants). The data compares 2016-17 to 2017-18 highlighting:

  • An 11% drop in the number of students starting nursing courses (19,790 down to 17,630). Students aged over 21 dropped by 17%
  • A 3% increase in students starting midwifery courses
  • Little overall change in the number of entrants to allied health courses, with some courses growing and others decreasing. E.g. physiotherapy increased by 19% (250 students), while podiatry decreased by 19% (45 students)
  • Overall, the number of young entrants to healthcare courses increased by 8%, BUT the number of mature students decreased by 30%
  • Overall, there was a slight increase in entrants from the lowest POLAR4 quintiles (areas of lowest participation).

They said that the full impact of the reforms will not be evident until more years of data are available.

Yvonne Hawkins, Director of Teaching Excellence and Student Experience, said:

  • The reduction in nursing and healthcare students is a concern for the health workforce of the future. We are working in partnership with universities, Health Education England, NHS England and representative bodies to increase the numbers of healthcare students and there is emerging evidence that this work is starting to have an impact.
  • The OfS is supporting a number of innovative projects to boost take-up and development of specialist healthcare courses – as well as providing direct additional funding for the delivery of high-cost healthcare subjects. This data will help universities to identify gaps and opportunities to increase recruitment and ensure that the country is provided with the next generation of highly-trained health professionals’

Immigration: The Tier 4 Visa list which catalogues the institutions licensed to sponsor migrant students has been updated. It includes information about the category of students a provider is licensed to sponsor and their sponsorship rating.

Students

UCAS have launched the UCAS Hub which aims to bring together all a student’s research about their next steps into one place including HE and apprenticeships. UCAS describe it as: a personalised, digital space for young people considering their post-18 choices, as well as anyone thinking about returning to education.

It seems it is a week for one-stop shops as UK music have launched their own to help students and parents consider a career in the creative industries. Excerpt:

DiscoverCreative.Careers is designed to help students and their parents, guardians and teachers find out more about the careers in industries including advertising, architecture, fashion, film and television, museums and galleries, performing arts and publishing – and the routes to them.

The creative industries are growing three times faster than the UK economy as a whole and to meet the predicted growth, there is a need for more young people to choose a career in one of the UK’s most dynamic sectors. The new site will signpost users to the full range of jobs available to counter an historic dearth of good careers information for the creative sector.
The initiative is part of the Creative Careers Programme being delivered by ScreenSkills, Creative & Cultural Skills and the Creative Industries Federation supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports as part of the Government’s industrial strategy. The lead partners have worked with organisations covering the 12 subsectors of the creative industries to provide expert information on the range of jobs. (More content here.)

HE Participation Stats

The DfE has published statistics on Participation Rates in HE from 2006 to 2018 (and this link gives previous years of data). It shows rise in the Higher Education Initial Participation rate, a stable gap between male and female HE participation and a highest rate of 18 year olds accessing HE.  The detail is explained here.

New Insight: See the OfS press release in our WP and Access section on their new Experimental Statistics which group disadvantaged student demographic characteristics to, hopefully, provide answers to tricky questions such as why certain groups of students are more likely to drop out or encounter difficulties whilst studying.

Widening Participation and Access

Experimental Statistics: The OfS highlight new experimental statistics which consider the interaction of demographic characteristics. Imaginatively named ABCS (Associations Between Characteristics of Students) the OfS state the statistics could offer important insights on the combining factors which leader to non-access or poorer outcomes for disadvantaged students. The OfS press release says:

Associations between characteristics of students’ (ABCS) is a new, experimental set of analyses that seeks to better understand how multiple characteristics – like age, sex, ethnicity and area background – interact to affect students’ outcomes in higher education, including whether they get in to university and, if so, whether they continue beyond their first year.

The methodology could also be used in future to look at the results students achieve and whether they progress to graduate employment, and across all levels of higher education.

The kinds of findings that can be explored using the ABCS methodology include:

  • black Caribbean students aged 21-25 are at higher risk of dropping out than other students, and this risk increases dramatically when looking at those who also report having a mental health condition
  • although young female students are, on the whole, much more likely to go to university than male students of the same age, those who received free school meals were far less likely to go than those who did not.

Chris Millward, OfS Director for Fair Access and Participation, commented:

  • Our guidance encourages universities and other higher education providers to address combinations of characteristics when they are setting targets, choosing measures and evaluating their work to close equality gaps.
  • Our hope is that, in the future, measures such as these will help them better understand these interactions, and therefore target their work more effectively.
  • This work is experimental, so we are looking to users to provide feedback on all aspects of the methodology and measures. This will be crucial to any future development and use of these analyses.

Power of the Parent: FE Week has an article stating the truism that every WP practitioner knows – the power of the influencing parent on a young person considering their HE prospects. Towards the end of the article are some suggestions on how to bring parents on board.

Differentiated Fees: Colin McCaig (Sheffield Hallam) has a policy paper explaining how differentiated fees (e.g. based on higher fees for higher tariff entry points to a course) would significantly undermine widening access for underrepresented social groups. In particular they find that applicants from low income households would gravitate towards lower cost provision rather than accessing the prestigious, high tariff, high cost institutions.

Tricky Target Decisions: The Times letters to the editor contains Degrees of Privilege (scroll to half way down the page to find it) which explores the complexities (and hints towards a fairness question) in widening access targets.

Private Tuition

The Sutton Trust and Ipsos MORI surveyed schools and found that 24% of secondary teachers have offered paid for private tuition, two-thirds did so after direct approach by parents of pupils. In primary school it is 14%.  The survey also found that in 2019 27% of 11-16 year olds have received private tuition at some point during the last four years, up from 18% in the 2005 survey. The duration of the tuition isn’t stated but looking at the data it appears around 10% of the 2019 27% had tuition across multiple years in the last four years.

24% accessed the private tuition for a school entrance exam, and 37% for a specific GCSE subject, 4% because their school doesn’t offer a particular subject they wish to study.

The increase in private tuition is contentious because, unsurprisingly, the young people who receive it come from better off backgrounds (34% from high affluence households, 20% from low affluence households). The Sutton Trust’s press release says:

  • The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the Sutton Trust’s sister charity, has identified one-to-one and small group tuition as a very cost-effective way to boost attainment. To level the playing field outside the classroom, schools should consider prioritising one-to-one and small group tuition in their Pupil Premium spending. The government should also look at ways of funding access to such tuition sustainably, for example through a voucher scheme.
  • The Trust would also like to see more private tuition agencies provide a certain proportion of their tuition to disadvantaged pupils for free, as well as an expansion of non-profit tuition programmes that connect tutors with disadvantaged schools. Agencies like Tutorfair, MyTutor and Tutor Trust operate innovative models in this area.

The Sutton Trust’s other recommendations are available here.  The survey results are available here.

This was a limited scope survey designed to provide a yearly update to the two key questions of how many mainstream teachers are offering private tuition and how many young people are being tutors. The research does not answer questions behind the increase in private tuition, such as whether the Government’s raising of curriculum standards may have been a factor in compelling parents that can afford additional tuition to do so. However, the data shows that accessing private tuition has increased at a steady rate since 2005.

The next challenge – continuation

The Ministers have made a big WP student success speech this week. SoS Education, Gavin Williamson, and Universities Minister Chris Skidmore both spoke out to compel universities to do more to reduce dropout rates, particularly within the disadvantaged student body. The Government news story highlights how the Government are looking to the Access and Participation Plans that all registered providers are required to have as a vehicle for sector movement to improve the drop out disparity. While more disadvantaged students now access university (although students from advantaged areas are still 2.4 times more likely to access HE) there is a gap with students from lower income backgrounds more likely to drop out of university. In 2016/17 6% of advantaged students dropped out compared to 8.8% of disadvantaged. Of concern is that the drop out gap has become wider from the previous year. The news story says:

  • Ahead of… the publication of new statistics on access and participation by university regulator the Office for Students, Mr Williamson has underlined his determination to take action and ensure every student choosing to go to university – regardless of background – is supported to get the most out of the experience….[he will]…say that more needs to be done to make progress on access and participation at our world-class institutions. He will urge all universities to follow in the footsteps of institutions like Kings College and improve their offer for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Education Secretary of State, Gavin Williamson, said:

  • It is not good enough that white working class boys are far less likely to go to university and black students are far less likely to complete their courses than others. We cannot let this wasted potential go unchecked any longer.
  • I want all universities, including the most selective, to do everything they can to help disadvantaged students access a world-class education, but they also need to keep them there and limit the numbers dropping out of courses. My message is clear – up your game and get on with it.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said:

  • Progress is being made to ensure that more disadvantaged young people are going to university than ever before, but it’s not enough to get students through the door – they must then get the right support to complete their courses too.
  • Dropouts will be a key focus of mine as Universities Minister and I will be watching carefully to see how universities respond to this challenge. I fully support the OfS in taking action if providers fail to do all they can to deliver their commitments.

The Government news story concludes:  The Government’s wide-ranging reforms to higher education has led to the publication of access and participation plans…The OfS will closely monitor all these providers to make sure they follow through on their plans.

UUK have responded to the speech – Julia Buckingham, UUK President, said: “there is more work to do” and called on the government to “quicken the progress” by “reintroducing maintenance grants for students most in need”.

Media coverage can be found in iNews and ITV.

Labour Party Conference

32 hour working week: At the Labour Party conference John McDonnell said the next Labour government will reduce the average full time working week to 32 hours within a decade. A shorter working week with no loss of pay. HEPI have a short new blog on what this might mean for university staff and whether it also applies to students who work long hours as part of their course load (medicine, health, architecture and education).

Abolishing Student Fees: Jim Dickinson from Wonkhe highlights the unknowns within Labour’s commitment to abolish student fees:

  • Blimey. Do you remember when the most interesting that happened at Labour Party Conference was Cherie Blair mouthing “the chancellor’s a liar” on her way out of Tony’s speech?
  • For higher education, the inclusion of “no fees” in Labour policy has never really been in doubt, and popped up several times in Brighton. The question is the deeper complexity – would existing debt be wiped? Would the unit of resource be protected? Would more students in England be discouraged from doing higher education in universities rather than FE colleges? What kinds of incentives will get the adults back? Will OfS be scrapped or reformed? The party is unforgivably vague or refreshingly open to ideas, depending on your perspective.
  • Labour’s Lifelong Learning Commission is expected to provide some answers, but has not produced its findings in time for conference. Gordon Marsden is furious that Gavin Williamson has announced subject TEF before the independent review has even been presented to Parliament. But given that every delegate agrees that the system is too “marketised”, the thorniest question was on student numbers. Say out loud that you’d have number caps and you look like an enemy of opportunity. Say you wouldn’t and you rule out the thing that has caused the intensification of competition in the first place. Marsden said neither, of course.

MillionPlus call for maintenance grants to be reinstated: Professor Lynn Dobbs, VC London Metropolitan University was a key speaker at a Labour fringe event. She said under a National Education Service (NES) a Labour government should restore student maintenance grants and guarantee investment, in order to deliver a well-funded tertiary education system for all. She said:

  • Guaranteeing sustainable investment across tertiary education can foster collaboration rather than competition between universities and colleges.
  • Shifting money around within education only moves problems from one part of the sector to the other, and from one set of students to other, does not address the critical issue of a real-terms reduction in investment in all of our students – none of us should EVER settle for that.

She urged for part-time and mature students to become a priority: The need to focus on part-time and mature students is much needed … Despite the populist narrative of ‘too many students’, fewer than 50% of 30 years olds in the UK have had the opportunity to experience any form of higher education – this is a low bar that we should be seeking to leap over. 

Abolishing Ofsted: There were tweets (and another tweet) and news stories from the Guardian and Politics Home on scrapping Ofsted to be replaced by a teaching standards support system. Angela Rayner: Schools will no longer be reduced to a one-word grade or subjected to a system that hounds teachers from the classroom. 

Further Education and the Fair Economy: The Social Market Foundation and the Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL) ran the Further Education and the Fair Economy fringe event. The panel discussed further education and the opportunities it opened for elderly people, as well as disabled students. Time was also spent discussing the impact it had on social mobility and the future economy.

  • Chair James Kirkup, director, Social Market Foundation said that further education was pivotal to the future economy and insisted that politicians needed to increase their engagement in FE considerably.
  • Opinium’s research manager, Priya Minhas provided an overview of public perceptions of vocational qualifications, noting that they were well perceived in terms of practicality. However, she noted that most people saw university degrees as more useful for future careers and linked university education with more than just a skillset – they had an intellectual and social aspect too. Yet, vocational qualifications did have a reputation for helping people get into a job. She discussed the potential for “Nimbyism”, wherein people spoke positively about vocational qualifications but would not want them for their own child. However, the data did not simply support this hypothesis.
  • Lord Bassam of Brighton expressed disappointment at the gradual erosion of funding for FE, which had served to destabilise the sector and restrict access to FE for many people. He praised the Augar Review and said that it was through the review that the Government had realised that they needed to improve their work in the sector. He concluded by emphasising that if the Government truly believed in improving the quality of manufacturing in the UK, then it needed to increase support for FE.
  • Caireen Mitchell of Croydon College said that many colleges, including her own, had been forced into mergers due to financial pressures. She welcomed the announcement of £400m for the FE sector but said that far more was required. The implications of the funding shortage could be extensive, with far lower hours for a “full-time” programme compared to other European countries the primary concern for Mitchell. She also noted that health and mental health support was stretched, and extra-curricular activities were being slashed in favour of other priorities. The college could provide qualifications, Mitchell said, but a wider breadth of education was simply not possible. She linked the lack of funding to a lack of social mobility and productivity, with many low-income students unable to afford to continue in education. She said people on low-incomes needed free access to a rounded education, including subjects that were not “core” such as English and Maths.
  • Gordon Marsden MP (Shadow Minister for HE, FE & Skills) referenced the House of Lords Committee on seaside towns, noting the challenges that people in those areas had in accessing higher education and said that the educational challenges in those areas was “palpable”…The economic and political context was that skills were no longer siloed – the rise of technology meant that skillsets were far more fluid and varied than before. This, Marsden believed, made FE more vital than ever.
  • A representative from the Deaf Children’s Society noted that FE was often a better route for disabled children and asked what more could be done to assist disabled people get the careers they wanted. Gordon Marsden said that Labour had wanted to make provisions in law to put a special emphasis on disabilities generally in education and apprenticeships. The Government had not been willing to work with them so far, he said.

Immigration – What should be in Labour’s manifesto?: The session focussed on immigration policies as a whole and didn’t specifically cover HE.

  • Shadow home secretary Diane Abbot said that there was a lot of interest in immigration and that (following her own experience working in the Home Office after university) it was essential that the culture of the Home Office changed and the language it was having around migration. She highlighted a poll which suggested that in the last few years the UK had had an increasingly positive view of the benefits of immigration, with a poll this year showing that 22% of people believed immigration provided a net benefit to the UK.
  • Abbot said that Labour would look to unpick those policies introduced by both Labour and Conservative governments that tied into the hostile environment, principally that immigrants could not have access to resources once in the UK. Labour would not seek to impose salary limits for access to the UK as the £30,000 figure excluded valued professions like nurses. And that Labour would also entitle family members to join people already in the UK.
  •  Abbot criticised the Home Secretary’s commitment to end freedom of movement from day one and explained that it had to be reserved quickly because it was illegal. Abbot said that Labour would take a more liberal approach to immigration which she said had become increasingly popular.
  • Thom Brooks, professor at Durham University, offered his views on immigration, stating that an EU citizen amnesty should be introduced because the current EU settlement scheme was inadequate. He said he would like the 2014 Immigration Act to be repealed and reviewed with the view that immigration was positive for the UK overall. He also said that the Migration Advisory Committee was too small and should be expanded so there would be more expertise. He called for a Royal Commission to be conducted on immigration, which could form the basis of future immigration policies.
  • Kate Green, chair of the APPG on Migration, said that Ministers in the Home Office should be giving their civil servants a positive message about immigration and affirmed that immigration should be viewed as being beneficial to the UK. Green said that migration would rise across the world because of conflict and climate change and said that it was a shame the UK was leaving the EU because this was an important institution the UK could use to influence global issues.

Industrial Strategy, Skilled Jobs and Education; Run by the Fabian Society and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry this event focused on assessing on how places, communities and regions can all see good work grow. The panel questioned what methods can be undertaken to ensure not only high employment, but also high skilled jobs. There was consensus that stronger regional strategy for providing skilled jobs is needed but also a strategy which guarantees that jobs remain “good” with the implementation of automation and new technology.

Shadow Minister for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Chi Onwurah MP opened the discussion on the topic of skilled jobs everywhere which she said is driving part of the industrial strategy. [Note – Labour have their own version of the Industrial Strategy.]  Key points are:

  • strong cross sector investment and a strong focus on investing in infrastructure so that people have sufficient access to jobs.
  • delivering skilled jobs as part of an industrial strategy, this would allow for some divisions to be healed amongst regions, prosperity would be delivered
  • innovation needs to be a part of the “cultural DNA of our country” and the UK needs to become an “innovation nation”; if this remains a key goal then access to skilled jobs can be broadened to those who are currently excluded
  • there should be the implementation of a National Education Service that champions adult education and enables people to reskill.
  • both the industrial strategy and education strategy should be combined and work alongside each other so that individuals can “realise their dreams”.
  • international talent is vitally important and even those who earn less than £30,000 should have access to work in the UK

Labour’s Anti-Private Schooling Motion:  At the Labour Party Conference a motion was passed intending to dismantle the private school system should Labour win the next general election. Previously Labour said they intended to close the tax loopholes available to elite private schools, redistributing this money to ‘improve the lives of all children’.  However, the motion, spearheaded by the Momentum faction, said the next Labour manifesto should include a: “commitment to integrate all private schools into the state sector…[and]…withdrawal of charitable status and all other public subsidies and tax privileges, including business rate exemption. Plus: “endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically and fairly across the country’s educational institutions”.  It also said that universities only admit 7% of students from private schools, to reflect the proportion of all pupils who attend them. More details are in this Politics Home article. Laura Parker, Momentum’s national co-ordinator, said: “This is a huge step forward in dismantling the privilege of a tiny, Eton-educated elite who are running our country into the ground.

The Letters to the Editor of the Times on Labour’s proposed abolition of private schools provide some interesting questions on how beneficial it would be to society to carry this policy through.

From the Labour NASUWT fringe event on valuing teachers:

  • Dr Patrick Roach, Deputy General Secretary of NASUWT – in some instances, teachers only had a single GCSE in the subject area they were responsible for, which had led, he added, to a culture where “as long as you are one-page ahead in the textbook of the pupils that you are teaching then that is good enough.” He lamented that this is not good enough.
  • Mike Kane, shadow schools minister, said that the Labour Party would bring an end to “toxic testing” and ensure that teachers had proper qualifications in a bid to bring “hope” back to the profession. He proceeded by highlighting how Conservative cuts to university budgets and training courses had led to an influx of unqualified teachers entering schools. He said “far too many teachers in our system are absolutely unqualified. It isn’t a profession, it is becoming more of a trade which you learn on the job”. Kane continued emphasising that forcing teachers to “teach to the test” coupled with a litany of legislation had resulted in plummeting morale.

The Class Ceiling: Barriers to Social Mobility in the UK today.  This event run by Demos and The Investment Association focused on the challenges facing social mobility today. In particular, how aspirations, access to jobs and attitudes can be altered amongst those who have the least opportunity and come from backgrounds that traditionally limits how far people go in life.

  •  Duncan Exley, former director of the Equality Trust, said that during the 20th Century there was more social mobility than in the 21st Century with the odds now greater that individuals will have a lower level job than their parents. He also said that no matter how much individuals are trained and educated, there needs to be an increase in supply of good jobs and homes if social mobility is going to occur. Finally, Exley said that there is a need to support collective wellbeing to encourage social mobility, as this in turn unleashes individual opportunity.
  • Claire Ainsley, Executive Director Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that the perceived social mobility problem is particularly worrying – younger people are less likely to believe that it is hard work and talents that gets them on in life, as most see background and parents as responsible for where they end up. Ainsley argued that this is a problem that needs to be tackled if levels of social mobility are going to improve. She continued that in order to properly address social mobility problems, bright young people from deprived backgrounds aren’t the only ones that need to be given attention, but maybe those who are older too; the lens on social barriers and mobility needs to shift.
  • Seema Malhotra, MP for Feltham and Heston, framed her remarks on social mobility about “creating conditions for success”. She said that there needs to be an increased readiness to learn amongst people, the opportunity to dream and a desire to achieve. Malhotra commented that not only do attitudes towards young people need to change if social mobility is to improve, but she also said that attitudes within families and communities that traditionally hold people back when there is an attempt to create opportunity need to be altered. She explained that young people are experiencing cumulative impact effects, whereby they are absorbing their parents’ anxieties about housing and this in turn is limiting their own mobility; Malhotra attributed this whole issue to poverty and austerity. Malhotra discussed what she called “the pillars of prosperity” –  she said that the education system needs to create conditions for success and that the levers and relationships within communities and society need to assist in creating opportunity.  To conclude she spoke on how there is a “fundamental” issue about human flourishing and providing mechanisms that support this; this is something that must start early in life and should be sustained if social mobility is to improve. Whilst this isn’t really a policy goal currently, she argued that it should be a central approach to the creation of policy.
  • CEO of the Investment Association, Chris Cummings, said industry should be prioritizing ‘potential’ over ‘polish’. Cummings said that financial services specifically has a bad habit of employing the “best” people – those that have good academic qualifications, perform very well at interview and have a high degree of social capital. However, Cummings said that this often leads to a “group thinking” attitude, instead of prioritizing diversity of thought, which in turn can be highly beneficial, and give overall better outcomes and returns. He said that if industry isn’t diverse in the way it thinks then decisions can often become constrained. Cummings described his own organisation as implementing an hour glass model, rather than a pyramid, to provide opportunity to those who can bring a “different dimension” to the world of work.

Labour’s cradle to grave careers service and the quality of careers advice was also discussed.

A guest blog from SUBU

Our guest blog series by Sophie Bradfield of SUBU continues this week

With a new cohort of students joining us this week, Unite’s recent report with HEPI on ‘The New Realists’ can help us gain some insights about prospective students, students enrolling and already enrolled at BU.  The aim of the report is to “investigate young people’s transition to university, their expectations and their experiences in the first year, looking at both academic and non-academic aspects.” There are 4 stages to the research: desk research, online communities, friendship triads, and a quantitative survey. (You can download the full methodology here). Respondents are diverse with a range of genders, nationalities, ethnicities, grades achieved, sexualities and abilities, ensuring a reflective view of the student mind set. 5,108 students were surveyed, with a fairly even split between applicants (2,535) and first year students (2,573). The majority of these respondents are in the 16-19 age bracket (86%) with the remaining 14% in 20+ age bracket. The report has 3 key themes which I have unpicked below.

Key Theme 1: University Provides a Bridge to a Stable Future

One of the key findings from the report is the general belief carried by generation Z that University is a way to foster stability in an unstable world where their futures are otherwise uncertain. 69% of respondents agreed “going to University is the only way to make sure I’ll get the life I want”. 68% felt they would face more challenges than their parents in becoming successful in life which may be because 59% felt there is more “chaos and risk in the world than there was 20 years ago”. ‘Independent but not adults’ is a term used in the report to explain how students felt. I’ve heard BU students refer to themselves as feeling ‘adultish’ which links to the findings of this report and shows how widespread it is. University is a place where students can try new things, challenge themselves and develop their future selves. For many students, University is a key development time to ‘become adults’.

Key Theme 2: Students are more Diverse than ever

The report finds that more than ever, students have diverse individual identities dispelling the myth that there is a ‘typical student’. For example over a fifth (22%) of students in the research study identified as being teetotal, demonstrating a shift away from the drinking culture often associated with the student experience. As noted in the report, this means it is essential that students are continuously listened to so their education experience meets their needs.

With the research depicting a rise in students declaring a disability (including mental health); a higher proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic students (BAME); a rise in students from lower participation neighbourhoods; and a higher proportion of students identifying as LGBT+, higher education institutions are fantastically diverse places for students to develop and grow as open-minded and progressive individuals. Nevertheless, the report finds that respondents from minority and under-represented groups are slightly less likely to see themselves as successful which shows there is still some way to go to level the playing-field for all students, through empowerment and liberation.

The report also finds that over 80% of respondents combined either don’t follow trends or don’t pay attention. We can see this in the political world too; 40% of respondents didn’t identify with a particular political party. Labour came top being supported by 19% of respondents, followed by 8% supporting the Green party; 7% the Conservatives and the remaining gaining 1-3%. We’ve seen this move away from tribal politics over the last few decades but these latest results show how pertinent it will be for political parties to attract the student vote in the anticipated General Election.

Key Theme 3: Peers Play a Pivotal Role in a Successful Student Experience

The report asks students about successful aspects of their student experience.

In SUBU we’ve been asking BU students a similar question for the last 7 years in an annual student experience survey: ‘When you graduate from BU, what are the 3 most important things that will determine whether your time at BU has been as good as it could have been for you?’ With an open text response, students have always chosen the same three themes: Degree Grade, Friends Made; and Employability Prospects. This shows similar themes to the Unite report above.

The report finds that the majority of students report feeling lonely occasionally with a further 22% saying they feel lonely often and 4% saying they feel lonely all the time. The BBC loneliness experiment reported in 2018 found a higher proportion of 16-24 year olds were lonely compared with the oldest in society. Wonkhe reported on this issue earlier in the year too making the link between loneliness, student activities and mental wellbeing. The Unite report also shows that students understand that they can increase their wellbeing through socialising, making friends and taking part in activities, demonstrating the importance of balancing the academic experience with the non-academic experience whilst at University. ‘Freshers’ Week’ events are highlighted as specifically making a positive difference to the experience of students who are estranged from their parents or have been in care. Yet, more can be done ‘to help students connect, make friends and integrate when they first come to University’.

The research shows that students feel ‘pressure to solve their own problems independently or with peers’ connected to ‘transitioning to adult life’. This belief is reflected in their approach to mental health too as despite an increase in students identifying as having a mental health condition, many want to manage it themselves rather than seeking support from University services. Only half of students report their condition to their University and trust their peers far more than their University to reach out to for support. The report found that 47% of respondents considered their mental health condition to be part of who they are, forming part of their identity, however 46% also acknowledge there is still a stigma around mental health. This reluctance to seek support due to stigma and trust is something that continues to be a key area for Universities’ to address in the midst of an ongoing national debate about whose responsibility it is to ensure students get support for mental health issues.

Conclusions

The Unite/HEPI report highlights some very interesting insights from the student perspective, some of which are detailed above. Ultimately it all relates to conversations around transitions and support. There has been lots of research and work around improving the transition of students into University, for example Michelle Morgan developed the Student Engagement Transitions Model for Practitioners to demonstrate the importance of transition at all stages of University. This Unite report highlights this too; the whole University experience is a transitionary experience for many students into ‘adulthood’. As director of HEPI Nick Hillman notes, “Today’s students are not, in the main, going to university because they want to be rich; they are going because they want to absorb the lifelong transferable benefits that degrees continue to confer.” Therefore it seems Universities and Students’ Unions should continue to do all they can to shape and nurture a diverse and malleable University community for students to share, experiment and grow into progressive, engaged citizens of the future.

Inquiries and Consultations

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. There aren’t any new inquiries and consultations this week however, email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the open inquiries or consultations.

Other news

Climate Change Funding: At the United Nations General Assembly on Monday PM Boris announced £1 billion aid funding to develop and test new technology targeted at tackling climate change in developing countries. The innovative new Ayrton Fund to give developing countries access to the latest cutting-edge tech to help reduce their emissions and meet global climate change targets.

The UK is home to some of the world’s best innovators in clean energy technology. Through the Ayrton Fund they and other scientists from around the world can work in partnership with developing countries to transform their energy sectors and reduce emissions by:

  • providing affordable access to electricity for some of the 1 billion people who are still off the grid, including through innovative solar technology for their homes
  • enhancing large-scale battery technology to replace polluting diesel generators and ensure clean energy can be stored and not lost
  • designing clean stoves like electric pressure cookers for some of the 2.7 billion people who still rely on firewood – with the smoke damaging their health as well as the environment
  • working with factories in major polluting industries like iron and steel, petrochemicals and cement to reduce their carbon output
  • improving the technology behind cooling systems so energy isn’t wasted – residential air conditioning alone is expected to raise global temperatures by 0.5°C in the years ahead; and
  • designing low-emission and electric vehicles to cut pollution and make transport systems cleaner and greener

Meanwhile Labour seem to have interwoven the environmental crisis through all their policy areas during their Party Conference this week. For example, when speaking of planned NHS reforms they said their: Green New Deal for our NHS – A Labour government will deliver the greenest health service in the world. As we rebuild our hospitals we’ll invest in solar panels and energy efficiency schemes. We’ll move to a fleet of low emission ambulances. And we’ll guarantee patients and staff a right to green space with an ‘NHS Forest’ – 1 million trees planted across our NHS estate – a tree for every member of staff.

Graduate Employment: The Times describe the biggest graduate recruiters in Top 100 Graduate Employers: bright young things flock to prison careers. In 2019 the Civil Service was the biggest graduate recruiter followed by PwC, Aldi, Google and the NHS. You’ll need to follow another link to find out about the variety of work within the prison service, however, this article talks about how young designers are influencing the prison environment.  And WONKHE have a quick and interesting new blog: Who is responsible for getting a graduate a graduate level job.

Positivity towards TEF (or not): Steven Jones (Manchester) speaks of how to harness TEF for positive gains during the SRHE conference:

  • [The Conference] was full of new ideas. Opposition to metrics wasn’t based on change-resistance and ideological stubbornness. Indeed…we urgently need to measure, understand and close differential attainment gaps in many areas, such as ethnicity. But there was consensus that current proxies for ‘excellence’ were incomplete, and creative thoughts about how they could be complemented. What about capturing graduates’ long-term well-being instead of their short-term satisfaction? Or encouraging institutions to develop their own frameworks based on their specific mission and their students’ needs? How about structural incentives for collaboration rather than competition? And a focus on teaching processes, not teaching outcomes?
  • The argument that the TEF is less about changing pedagogies than manipulating wider discourses shouldn’t bring any comfort to the sector. I tried to show how the dominant logic of teaching excellence primes the sector for more fundamental policy shifts, such as for-profit providers receiving taxpayer subsidy on pedagogical grounds. One delegate spoke to me at the end of the event to offer another example, explaining how employability-minded managers within his institution were squeezing out critical engagement with cultural theory to allow for further skills-based, professional training. The TEF may not change practice directly, but it retains the power to nudge the sector away from its core public roles towards more privatised and instrumental practices.
  • The challenge for us is to articulate a confident and robust defence of all kinds of university teaching. We need to explain how our pedagogies bring lifelong gains both to our students and to wider society, even if initial encounters can be difficult and unsettling. Policy has taken us a long way down the market’s cul-de-sac, but what’s reassuring is that we’re now moving on from TEF-bashing towards a coherent counter-narrative. This event confirmed that universities have more meaningful things to crow about than their fleeting goldenness against a bunch of false proxies.

Apprenticeships Access: The OU surveyed 700 employers in England and have published their Access to Apprenticeships report. Wonkhe describe the report contents: [the report]

  • concludes that many employers need more funding, training and information to support apprentices with declared disabilities. 24 per cent of companies surveyed find it challenging to fund training and development for apprentices with disabilities and 34 per cent of employers surveyed report an increase in entry-level applications from people with declared mental health conditions.
  • The report recommends that the government support employers through providing clearer guidance around hiring apprentices with disabilities, urges the Department for Education to simplify its funding model for providing additional learning support, and advocates the introduction of a training programme for employers recruiting apprentices with disabilities – akin to a Mental Health First Aid course.

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HE policy update for the w/e 13th September 2019

ECR Network, EU, Funding opportunities, HEIF, humanities, Impact, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, policy, Research Concordat, Research news, Student Engagement

Parliament has been prorogued, but did not go quietly and next week will see two court cases on whether it was lawful or not heard together in the Supreme Court.  There were cheers from the sector as Chris Skidmore returned to the University Minister role and Gavin Williamson as Education Secretary also seems to have adopted a more conciliatory role than his predecessor.

Next week sees the start of the party conference season with some interesting HE fringe events for us to report on.  With an election on the horizon, these events take on a heightened significance.

Post Study Work Visa

A Government announcement which outlined new genetics research project also served as the vehicle to announce revised post study work visa arrangements.

Under the scheme, international students to work in the UK for two-years post-graduation. A welcome announcement for the HE sector (although we are awaiting for the full details). The post study work visa was championed by Sajid Javid (in his previous Home Office role) and Jo Johnson.  With Jo Johnson having stepped down, the PM announced it, in a clear break from the approach of his predecessor.  He spoke about ensuring the UK is internationally welcoming and the wisdom of attracting the ‘brightest and best’ to work in the UK. The announcement (so far) overturns the recommendations of the Migration Advisory Committee. Currently overseas students must leave the UK four months after finishing their degree unless they get a separate work visa.

  • It applies to any subject
  • Apparently there is no restriction on type of work, i.e. it doesn’t have to be “graduate level” jobs.
  • There is no cap on the number
  • It talks about graduates from “trusted” providers – not defined but likely to mean those already approved for Tier 4 visas.
  • Initially the announcements said it would apply to students starting their courses in 2020/21, leading to fears of widespread deferrals, but it seems that it will apply to all students studying in the UK on a Tier 4 visa in 2020/21 – including students who start multi-year courses this September.

Chancellor, Sajid Javid tweeted “about time. Should have reserved this silly policy years ago. Britain should always be open to the best talent from across the world.”

  • BBC: Ministers reverse May-era student visa rules
  • Alistair Jarvis, Chief Exec Universities UK, welcomed the move, suggesting it would benefit the UK economy and reinstate the UK as a “first choice study destination. Evidence shows that international students bring significant positive social outcomes to the UK as well as £26bn in economic contributions, but for too long the lack of post-study work opportunities in the UK has put us at a competitive disadvantage in attracting those students“.
  • The Scottish Government have welcomed the announcement. Scottish Minister for FE & HE, Richard Lochhead: The Scottish Government has been consistent in arguing for the reintroduction of a post-study work visa following the decision by the UK Government to end the previous route in 2012. This is a welcome step forward but only one of many measures required. It should not have taken seven years for the UK Government to accept the arguments from partners across Scotland and reverse their decision. It is clearer by the day that Scotland urgently needs a migration policy tailored to our distinct needs and for the devolution of powers to develop, deliver and maintain policies that meet the needs of Scotland’s universities, communities, public services and economy.

Two for one – ministerial speeches

After Jo Johnson resigned and left UUK with a big gap in their annual conference programme, they fixed the problem by having both the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson MP, and the newly (re)appointed Minister for Universities, Chris Skidmore.  Chris Skidmore was welcomed back as Universities Minister on Wednesday after a brief Ministerial stint in the Department for Health (he called it a placement).

The sector is pretty relieved.  Jo Johnson was familiar, and had a positive agenda around international students and participation in EU programmes (see previous story for some of his handiwork), as well as his opposition to the proposed Augar reform of tuition fees but had become rather negative and critical towards the end of his last period in the role.  Chris Skidmore, on the other hand, was positive, constructive and engaging last time round.  Although he wasn’t in the role long he seemed to be genuinely committed to developing research and as a history graduate and former academic he had some credibility amongst those worried for the future of social sciences and humanities in a world where value for money has been paramount (although see below, it seemed to be less of a priority?)

So what did they have to say?

Gavin Williamson went first.

He called the sector as a national treasure

He spoke about “openness to the world”. See the previous section on post-study work visas

  • A recent report by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that after graduation, a single cohort of international students contributes almost £3.2billion in tax over 10 years and plays a key role in filling existing skills shortages in the UK economy. But they bring far more than that. They contribute to the diverse tapestry of our national life; they not only bring the best of the world in, they also help us to look out, and our entire economic and cultural spectrum is the richer for what they bring to our country.
  • In the months and years ahead, the partnerships we make through these international networks will be crucial. Partnerships which I know benefits many of our young people through the exchange of ideas and learning. Many of you are wondering about what’s going to happen to them after we leave the EU. I want to reassure you that my department is open to continuing to be part schemes like Erasmus+. But we have to prepare for every eventuality and it is sensible to consider all options. As such I have asked my officials to provide a truly ambitious scheme if necessary.

He challenged the sector on access and participation – a sign that despite changes of leadership, the big focus on this continues. It was a major part of the Johnson reforms (merging OFFA and HEFCE into the OfS) and key in Theresa May’s social mobility agenda (the current government don’t talk as much about social mobility, but they are still looking for an aspiration story).  The terminology is interesting.  It’s a deal and it isn’t just about access, it’s about working with schools as well.

  • When I took on this job, you told me that you wanted the post-study Graduate visas more than anything else. Indeed whenever I spoke to a vice chancellor the first thing I would hear is visas. Well, we listened and the Prime Minister and I have given you what you asked for, what you wanted most.
  • So I have to ask you for something in return. I see this as a deal. I expect you, in exchange, to drive greater access to your institutions. Young people from deprived backgrounds who have the ability, deserve to benefit from studying for a degree.
  • We cannot forget that ability is evenly spread across this country but opportunity – sadly – is not. We must continue to crusade to put that right.…
  • And I have another challenge for you: I want you to be ambitious in your engagement with the wider education landscape, with schools, colleges, and employers: share your resources and expertise, drive excellence across the sector more widely. You are world leaders but you need to share your expertise with everyone in the country. I’d like to thank those universities like Kings College and Exeter who have set up maths specialist free schools; and other universities that are in the process of doing so. What you are doing will change lives. I encourage others to rise to the challenge. I expect others to rise to the challenge.
  • I see this as a shared effort and I want to work with all of you in the sector to make sure all our children have access to this kind of excellence and expertise….
  • The sector plans to spend around £1billion this year alone on improving access. But we still don’t know enough about what’s working and what isn’t. This is taxpayers money. This is students’ money. This isn’t about virtue signalling. This is about one thing, and one thing only. And that is ensuring that talented young people, from Southend to South Shields, can get on.
  • It is your duty and our duty to make sure that happens. So as a priority, the OfS needs to ensure that evaluation programmes are in place to make sure these schemes are doing what they are supposed to do. I will be watching carefully to see how these are now delivered and I will support the OfS in any action it takes if universities are not delivering against their commitments.

Unconditional offers and grade inflation

  • Unconditional offers have shot up, going from under 3,000 in 2013 to nearly 76,000 this year.
  • Grade inflation has become even more entrenched. When I was at university, you could count the number of students on my course who got firsts on one hand. I am sad to say that I was not one of them. In 1997 – which is when I graduated – 50% of students gained a first or a 2:1; last year 80% of students did so.
  • I’m delighted that some universities have already scrapped making so-called ‘conditional unconditional’ offers and I hope that the rest will soon follow suit.
  • Universities UK and OfS reviews of admissions are an opportunity for the sector to get its house in order here, perhaps by agreeing a minimum predicted grade threshold, or a maximum proportion of students who may be offered one.

[HE Professional explain what that might mean: What he might have meant is that the UUK and OfS reviews on university admissions are looking at options on how to tackle the perceived scourge of conditional offers, and two of the options they are looking at are: reducing the number of unconditional offers made each year to a fixed percentage of total offers; and ensuring everyone is expected to obtain at least a minimum set of grades. The brightest and the best would still be able to get unconditional offers because they would do well in their A levels anyway. Everyone else should at least meet a minimum expectation. “We don’t want to do away with unconditional offers entirely but there is no justification for universities to offer conditional unconditional offers,” he said, looking to his civil servants for help and not finding any. So, in short, conditional unconditional offers are to be unconditionally banned, but unconditional offers are to be conditionally banned. Hope that’s clear.]

  • I want you to know that I will always speak up for your autonomy. I know it’s what helps foster the brilliance of our teaching and our research but I also need to safeguard our reputation, so that everyone knows that they can trust the system. So we need to work together on some of these issues.
  • If we don’t tackle them, your hard-won reputation for excellence will be undermined. Worse still, there is a risk that employers will begin to lose faith in grades and foreign students will think twice about investing their time and money in studying here.

He also mentioned mental health, Institutes of Technology, apprenticeships, civic engagement

Afterwards he told the press that a response on Augar would come “before the end of the winter” (THE article here).  That’s a long way off.

Chris Skidmore’s speech: (apparently he adlibbed a bit)

  • The benefits of the Arts and Humanities
  • Students’ Unions
  • Civic Universities

Research (he gave 4 speeches on this in his last stint in the role)

  • I’ve only been gone from this role less than fifty days, but already we have had key announcements on expanding the government guarantee to fund European Research Council grants, and a crucial restatement of our ambition to raise R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP by 2027…. After outlining my vision in a series of speeches before the summer, I am keenly looking forward to getting this detailed roadmap published this autumn. Let me just offer one early reflection, though. If we want to turn the UK into scientific superpower and achieve our ambition to reach 2.4%, then we need to ramp up capacity and capability in our universities. …
  • Connected to this, I am determined to see renewed focus given to basic research. Funding for blue-skies, curiosity-driven research has been dwindling as a proportion of our overall spend. This is a problem. … I want to see further increases to QR and a significant uplift to response-mode research council funding.  Don’t get me wrong. It is of course essential that we should continue to drive application and impact from our research investments – turning great ideas into real benefits for the UK in the form of better jobs, improved products and services, and real action on issues such as climate change. Let me reassure you that I remain firmly committed to the impact agenda and to knowledge exchange, including support via HEIF and implementation of the Knowledge Exchange Framework.
  • But if we want to succeed in the long term, the really long term, then we need to ensure we are doing everything we can to entice and empower our research community to undertake the most ground-breaking, cutting edge work, raising the UK’s international reputation even higher….
  • And as we approach leaving the European Union, I will continue to make the case loud and clear, that while we are leaving the EU, we are not leaving our European friends and research partners behind. We want to get a deal with the EU which will protect our continuation in Horizon 2020, and will continue our participation in Erasmus+. We will be fully exploring the option of participating in the next Erasmus programme, whilst also developing potential alternatives which are ambitious and truly global. We will protect our participation in Erasmus+ and will be working hard to secure full association with Horizon Europe – I personally will be doing everything in my power to achieve this.

On funding

  • But a well-functioning university culture needs sustainable institutions. And when it comes to ensuring that we have a sustainable university landscape, while it is absolutely right that we focus on post-18 education for all, making investment in Further Education that is desperately needed, we must not lose sight of what we have in the HE sector.
  • We cannot afford as a society to pit FE against HE: as I have argued elsewhere, both are crucial to a unity of purpose in our post-18 landscape that needs to be more flexible, more portable, and one that meets the needs of the learner, not simply those of the provider.

And what didn’t really feature?

  • Update on the Pearce review promised “shortly”
  • Apart from unconditional offers and grade inflation, no mention of quality or student experience
  • Not a big focus on value for money

HEPI released a blog this week sweeping aside the political power plays and Brexit turmoil to refocus on the 6 (+3) key issues that will dominate HE this side of Christmas no matter what happens in national politics. The blog succinctly covers Augar, the SoS Education remit, FE (not) vs HE, OfS (and providers going bust), diversity in university governance, the 2.4% research spend targets, plus three bonus items.

Parliament

To extend or not to extend – that is the question

On Monday the bill aiming to prevent the Prime Minister from leaving the EU without a deal (European Union (Withdrawal) (No 6) Act) received royal assent and became law. The PM is currently refusing to consider asking for an extension, which the law requires him to do, so what are his options?

How the PM can wriggle out of asking for an extension:

  • Semantics – if the Government can find a tenable enough loophole in the badly worded, hastily constructed extension bill. Dominic Raab said: We will adhere to the law but also this is such a bad piece of legislation … we will also want to test to the limit what it does actually lawfully require. We will look very carefully at the implications and our interpretation of it.” In response MPs have threatened an emergency judicial review if the Government seek to contest or ignore elements of the Bill.
  • Send 2 letters – as discussed in the media (an unlikely scenario). The extension letter is sent, however, they append an additional letter making clear that the UK Government does not want the additional extension – making it less likely the EU would grant the extension. However, former supreme court judge, Lord Sumption, argued on the Radio 4 Today programme on Monday that that sending two letters – one requesting an extension and the other asking the EU to reject one – would not be legal.
  • Veto – it would be easier for the Government to block an extension via the back door by asking an EU sceptic ally, such as Hungary, to veto any request for extension. Also France are rumoured to have said they will veto an extension request.
  • Step down – if Boris resigned as PM on 19th October (so he wouldn’t personally request the extension) it is likely the Queen would ask the Opposition to try and form an alternative Government. If successful in forming a caretaker Government then they could request the extension. If not, Britain crashes out of Europe without a deal.
  • Get a deal that Parliament approves. Despite all the noise, this is still possible.

General Election: Boris’ motion for an early general election failed on Monday. However, a YouGov poll has ranked Prime Minister Boris as the most popular Conservative politician (31% positive opinion, 47% negative opinion) and the third most famous. Boris’ fans describe him as conservative, humorous, intelligent, charismatic and clever. The poll included: Theresa May (27%), John Major (23%), Ruth Davidson (22%), William Hague (21%), Kenneth Clarke (20%), Jacob Rees-Mogg (18%) and other prominent figures. Boris was most popular with Baby Boomers and Generation X; Millennials were less keen.

Parliament Prorogued

Parliament is prorogued until 14 October. This means Select Committee, APPGs and all other business will cease. MP’s will return to constituency matters and engage in the party conference during this period. Party conference dates:

  • 14 September – Liberal Democrats (at Bournemouth International Centre)
  • 21 September – Labour (Brighton)
  • 29 September – Conservatives (Manchester)
  • 4 October – Green Party (ICC, Wales)

Later this week Boris’ suspension of the UK Parliament was deemed unlawful by judges at the Scottish highest civil court, overturning an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the Prime Ministers political decision. The exact consequences of this are unclear. It is unlikely Parliament will be recalled, not least because it couldn’t take place before Conference Recess commences (today). The British government will appeal against the Scottish appeal court’s decision, particularly as it contradicts a decision in Johnson’s favour by senior English judges last week, at the supreme court. The supreme court will hear both Scottish and English cases on Tuesday 17 September, alongside a third challenge brought in the courts in Belfast. In practice, not much will change, unless Boris is found to have behaved unlawfully. iNews have an article in which Boris denies misleading the queen about Parliament’s prorogation (and another classic Boris photo pose).

House of Commons Speaker quits: John Bercow announced he would stand down as a Speaker and MP following a promise to his wife for more family time. He will stand down at close of business on Thursday October 31st, saying he doesn’t want to leave the Commons with an inexperience speaker during such a “lively” period.  A ballot for replacement Speaker will be held on 4th November.

Reshuffle

Chris Skidmore will not attend Cabinet, as Jo Johnson did. Instead Boris has given the ‘attends Cabinet’ seat to Zac Goldsmith (his Twitter acceptance) in his existing ministerial role across Environment and International Trade. Zac is a long term supporter of Boris and has experienced his share of controversy in the past – including accusations linking Sadiq Khan with Islamist extremists.

Edward Argar replaces Chris Skidmore as Minister of State at Department of Health and Social Care. Chris Philp moves to the Ministry of Justice and Helen Whately takes up a junior ministerial post at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

The DfE have issued a news story confirming ministerial portfolios on last and this week’s changes here. Last week we told you Michelle Donelan would become Children and Families Minister as maternity cover for Kemi Badenoch. She’ll hold both roles and retain her current position as a Government Whip (Children’s Minister will be additional unpaid role). Michelle was previously a member of the Education Select Committee between July 2015 and October 2018.

The announcement also explained that:

  • Minister of State for School Standards Nick Gibb will take on policy for early education and childcare including funding, support for the early years workforce, curriculum, quality and the early education entitlements. Plus PE, school sport, and the Pupil Premium to his existing portfolio.
  • Minister for the School System, Lord Agnew, will take on responsibility for the FE ‘provider market’, including quality and improvement. He will also lead on EU exit preparation, delivery of the Careers Strategy, the Opportunity Areas programme, school food and safeguarding in schools and post-16 settings, in addition to his existing brief.

Minister for Children and Families Michelle Donelan said:

  • I truly believe that a good education is the key to creating a fair society where everyone, no matter where they come from or their circumstances, has opportunities to succeed.
  • From the earliest years of children’s lives to the point at which they make decisions about their further education or training, I am proud to be joining a department that is focusing its efforts on the most disadvantaged in society.

Given his short stint in the Health Minister role alongside his keen HE interest Chris Skidmore’s response to a parliamentary question on recruiting more nurses is interesting. It sits within party lines, firmly avoids mentioning bursaries but has a different, more collaborative, tone than recent ministers talking of a forthcoming final NHS People Plan which sets out the immediate actions to grow the nursing workforce across the next 5 years.

Access and Success

OfS have published the first 41 approved Access Agreements under their new regime. Wonkhe note that 31 of these 41 are subject to enhance monitoring (but not the pesky B2 additional registration condition). However, this high rate is because these are the early deadline submitters – those with medical schools and conservatoires – so tend the have high entry requirements, and therefore many have poor rates of access by disadvantaged students. And the enhanced monitoring is really just a running check across the year to ensure the institution is delivering on its promises. The OfS announcement – Highly selective universities must follow through on promises to improve access, regulator warns provides more detail, albeit with a positive OfS spin:

 ‘These new plans prove that – following sustained challenge from the OfS – there is genuine ambition and drive among universities to address equality of opportunity. I am pleased they are rising to the challenge…” Chris Millward, Director for Fair Access and Participation at OfS.

Media coverage on this first tranche of new plans from the Independent, the Daily Mail, and the TES.

What’s the point of university?

Universities UK published polling research revealing that only 34% of students and recent graduates decided to go to university to get a higher salary. While 79% agreed that the government should do more to promote the broader benefits of a degree or university study, irrespective of potential salary.

  • Students and recent graduates say that they decided to go to university for a broad range of reasons, including their interest in their chosen degree subject (56%), enjoying studying and learning (48%) and as a first step in building a career (50%).
  • 84% agreed that their future salary was not the only factor they considered when deciding to go to university.
  • 86% of those surveyed agreed that they have met people from diverse backgrounds and with different views to them at university. Suggesting that university plays an important role in social cohesion in communities in the UK.
  • Future earnings are not the top motivation for choosing a career. Work-life balance was their top consideration (53%), followed by earning potential and financial benefits (42%), with the opportunity to take on a variety of interesting work (39%) coming a close third.
  • 84% would recommend university to others as a worthwhile experience.
  • 86% said university had given them the opportunity to think about what they want to achieve in the future and the same proportion said that university had helped them learn to be independent.

The findings are reported as suggesting a need for greater investment in student information – from better careers advice in schools and colleges, through to clearer, more accessible financial guidance.

  • better career information to help in their choice of subject (39%)
  • career experiences – not just salaries – of past graduates in their subject and institution (38%)
  • information on the cost of living while studying (37%)

The poll backs up UUK’s lobby line that earnings potential is an inappropriate tool for defining the value of university degrees, and making funding decisions. However, the TEF gold, silver, bronze classification and the use of LEO metrics (longitudinal education outcomes) which consider the proportion of graduates in sustained employment that are earning over the median salary for 25-29 year olds are currently key metrics institutions are benchmarked against with a view to quality and value for money. UUK are keen to point out that their findings suggest that a range of considerations are underpinning student motivations.

Professor Julia Buckingham, President of Universities UK and Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University London, said: “These results tell us loudly and clearly that policy makers and politicians have got it wrong when it comes to understanding what motivates today’s students and graduates. Students do not judge the value of universities on their future salaries and neither should policymakers. We should all be asking ourselves if we really want to live in a culture that identifies success by salary alone.  It is time to listen and take notice of what students, graduates and society really value about the university experience and consider how we can ensure prospective students have access to the information they want to inform their future decisions. Only then can we ensure that universities are valued by all.”

Nicola Marsh, Head of Social & Political Research at ComRes, said: “Our research demonstrates that university students and graduates recognise value in the range of benefits gained from attending university, including building independence and confidence, exposure to new experiences, and enjoyment of learning. Future earning potential is amongst the benefits considered by students and graduates, but it is not the most important. Quality of life – for example, work/life balance – is the top priority for students and recent graduates when considering what they look for in a career, suggesting that they take a more holistic approach to their careers.”

Value for money – what do students really think?
A guest blog from SUBU’s Sophie Bradfield

Value for money is a phrase we hear a lot in reference to Higher Education and it’s an important conversation point for students. Value for money should surely not be as crude as looking at graduate earning potential, yet TEF continues to use graduate earnings as a metric to measure student outcomes.

As part of the independent review of TEF earlier this year, SUBU responded to a question on student outcomes noting “the very simplistic measurement of Student Outcomes and the focus on graduate salaries does not foster a healthy approach for provider enhancement. Strategies to support employability such as alumni mentoring and specialist programmes for Widening Participation students to address progression enhance student outcomes for providers and recognise an important aspect for students.” (See SUBU’s full response).

Many voices in the Higher Education sector have shared the same concern and finally the Government has evidence from students themselves that future earning potential is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the value of university. A report on the value of university published this week by ComRes on behalf of Universities UK [see above] surveyed students and recent graduates in the last 5-10 years. The report finds that 5 in 6 students or 84% of those surveyed agreed that “my potential future salary wasn’t the only factor I considered when deciding to go to university.” The report further shows that students and recent graduates decided to go to University for a range of different reasons, including 56% saying it was an interest in their chosen degree subject; 48% saying it was because they enjoyed studying and learning; and 50% saying it was the first step in building a career. Furthermore, future earning potential was not the top priority for students when choosing a career; it came second to students wanting a work-life balance.

Back in December 2017 SUBU hosted Nicola Dandridge, the Chief Executive of the Office for Students, for a roundtable discussion with BU students chaired by the Vice President Education (of the time). Nicola asked students who attended why they chose to go to University and many of the students present stated they felt University was an “expected” next step. Nicola further asked students what made their university experience ‘value for money’. The BU students present spoke of the additional opportunities on offer to them alongside studying, such as the opportunities to join a club or society or to take up a leadership position and gain experience. The conversations were around the opportunities available to build a life around their degree, yet they noted this information was not promoted when making decisions between institutions and instead it was something they realised upon going to University.

The ComRes UUK report expands on this. As noted in a summary of the report by Universities UK:

“The poll also reveals the following skills, facilities and other assets which students benefit from at university, including:

  • developing skills such as time management, social skills and teamwork
  • access to academic tutors and experts and libraries
  • improving levels of confidence and becoming more independent
  • making new friends and developing beneficial social networks
  • awareness of social issues and debates”

Providing students with the information they need to make an informed choice about whether to go to University and which one to pick, is something the Office of Students has taken responsibility for. This month they have launched a new student information website to do just that, called ‘Discover Uni’. This is in line with what students are asking for, with the ComRes UUK report findings suggesting a need for “greater investment in student information” (see UUK). However it was shown that this information should extend to careers advice in schools and colleges as well as clearer financial information and guidance.

That students need more information and guidance on finances was highlighted in a report on value for money back in 2018, which was commissioned by the Office for Students and led by a consortium of Students’ Unions in partnership with Trendence UK (see ‘Value for money: the student perspective’). A more recent poll by YouGov commissioned by the Office for Students also shows this is not just an issue for prospective students as 82% of parents in England and Wales are not sure how student loans work (see Research Professional).

The cost of living is a significant area of interest for prospective and current students as they might not be aware of all costs involved in being at University until arriving, especially if they are the first generation in their family to go to University. As many of us are aware, students often need to top up their finances by taking up part time work. The latest Government’s Student income and expenditure survey (SIES) 2014-2015 results showed that over half of full-time students did some form of paid work during the academic year to contribute to their income. (On average full time students were working just over 10 hours per week to account for 10% of their average total income). The more recent NUS Poverty Commission Report 2018 found a significant financial shortfall for students after comparing student loans with living costs (see NUS, page 67) showing that students need to find other ways to top up their finances, whether through part time work or borrowing from friends or relatives (which is not an option for all). Money Saving Expert by Martin Lewis remains the most comprehensive source of information for students and parents on this matter (see MSE) and it highlights how much more needs to be done by the Office for Students on providing information to students and parents about financing a University degree.

Despite all these findings, and as David Kernohan of Wonkhe notes, it is unclear if OfS’ new student information platform ‘Discover Uni’ will extend to providing students with information beyond finding a course and University. What we do know is that the Office for Students is commissioning a lot of research and is currently running an online consultation and going out to visit universities and colleges to see how they should be engaging students ahead of publishing an overall student engagement strategy early next year (see OfS).

Hopefully there will be further changes to come on information and support for students going into HE, driven by all these findings. Regardless, it seems difficult to have conversations about the value of University and whether future earning potential should have any part to play in decision-making, when reports are showing time and time again that students care more about immediate issues such as the cost of going to University.

Research

The Science and Technology Committee has published 43 recommendations to the Balance and effectiveness of research and innovation spending inquiry report.  The recommendations include the 2.4% target, a big data focus to evaluation, QR funding, central link point for all R&D funding streams and opportunities, the tax credit system, and to quickly action the FCA review of patient capital with a further update at Budget 2020.

The final version of the updated Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers has been launched.  The new one is here.

“It sets out three clear Principles of environment and culture, employment, and professional and career development. The principles are underpinned by obligations for the four key stakeholder groups, funders, institutions, researchers and managers of researchers, to realise the aims of the Concordat.”

In other news, Sir Mark Walport has announced he will stand down as CEO of UKRI in 2020.

Parliamentary Questions

Despite only one Parliamentary sitting day this week a whole tranche of HE relevant parliamentary questions were answered.

The Lords also raised a question on student accommodation rent levies by developers – this one was too late and couldn’t be answered before prorogation, however, it is interesting this angle has been picked up.

Consultations and Inquiries

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. As Parliament is prorogued Committee and APPG work ceases so over the coming weeks there will only be new content from sector bodies. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Other news

Joined up schooling: Scotland have announced phase one in a £1 billion replacement programme for 26 schools. Several of the replacement projects will bring together nurseries, schools (including specialist centres for pupils with additional support needs), colleges and universities in multi-purpose campuses for pupils aged from three to 18, with additional facilities that benefit surrounding communities. The first phase projects could open as early as 2022/23. First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon said: “Modern, state of the art buildings can make a real difference to the lives of pupils, teachers and parents, as well as the wider communities they serve. This investment continues our efforts to improve the condition of our entire learning estate, from early years through to schools and colleges.”

Mental Health: The Welsh Government has published guidance on responding to self-harm and suicidal thought in young people.

Children’s Manifesto: While Parliament hasn’t voted for a general election MPs are quietly lining up their campaign ducks and sector bodies are ramping up their lobbying. This week the Children’s Commissioner for England published ‘Guess How Much We Love You – A Manifesto for Children’ calling on Britain’s political parties to include a six-point plan in their election manifestos to transform the life chances for disadvantaged children and to help all of England’s 12 million children to thrive. The six key themes are: supporting stronger families, providing decent places for children to live, helping children to have healthy minds, keeping children active, providing SEND support for those who need it, and creating safer streets and play areas. The Manifesto is costed and argues that existing statutory services must be put on a sustainable financial footing. Contact Sarah for a summary of the key recommendations and estimated costs – or read the short 12 page document .

Discover Uni: the new OfS service for potential applicants launched this week to general hilarity because of the huge number of bugs and problems.  (The first search your intrepid policy team did said that there were no (as in zero) full time biology degrees on offer in England – some appeared when we re-ran it the search, but even so).  Despite the obvious problem (i.e. don’t actually use it to actually make any choices until it is more reliable), there are some more important points.  Research Professional note  “The UK’s new higher education information website will not include data on the proportion of firsts and 2:1s awarded by universities, because of concerns that doing so could fuel grade inflation”.

Lifelong learning: the Learning and Work Institute have published the findings from their adult (17+) participation survey which examines when they last learnt, their experience, and likelihood to do so again.  The survey shows adults who have not recently taken part in learning are unlikely to say they would be likely to do so in the future. Among adults who have not engaged in learning since leaving full time education, just 16% said they would take part in learning in the future. Among adults currently taking part in education, 77% expect to do so again. With participation at a record low, the analysis states that progress in improving the skills and qualification levels of the workforce has stalled, and that the UK is at risk of falling behind in skills post-Brexit. By 2030, out of the 17 PIAAC countries, the UK is predicted to fall from 10th to 14th for basic literacy, and from 11th to 14th for basic numeracy.

  • Social class – 48% of adults in higher social grades (AB) have taken part in learning in the last three years, compared to 20% of adults in lower social grades (DE). This participation gap has widened by 3 percentage points in the last year
  • Employment status – 40% of full time employees participated in learning in the last three years, compared to 17% of people out of work and not seeking employment

Graduate employment: The Institute of Student Employers published their 2019 annual graduate labour market survey.

  • Almost 22,000 graduate jobs were created. This was mainly driven by significant increases in finance and professional services as well as public sector employers who recruited 35% more graduates, particularly in policing and education.
  • However, employers are cautious and the short-term and temporary hire of graduates through internships or work placements has dropped by 4% and 7% respectively. Employers also anticipate that Brexit and/or a recession will reduce hiring over the next five years.
  • The energy and engineering, and legal industries made small reductions in the number of graduates they recruited, down 1% and 3% respectively (these were the only sectors to show a reduction).
  • The average graduate starting salary offered by ISE members remained competitive at £29,000. Up £750 on last year, however, when indexed to the Consumer Price Index, salaries have still not recovered to pre-recession levels in real terms.
  • The average ISE member is paying £1.225 million annually to the government through the apprenticeship levy. They reported starting 11,224 apprentices this year of which 52% were non-graduates, 25% graduates and 23% existing staff.

Stephen Isherwood, Chief Executive of ISE said:

  • “Although the drop in temporary opportunities is concerning as this offers students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience, employers are mainly resisting the urge to dial down their recruitment in the face of current and future challenges. 
  • Hiring is up, employers are receiving a healthy volume of applications and they are paying more. We hope that this continues and will do everything that we can to support firms as they manage the uncertainty that lies ahead.” 

Wonkhe blogger, Tristram Hooley, suggests that the skills shortage problem is more complicated than it appears

Student loan sale controversy: It’s been a while since the student loan book sale controversy resurfaced but this week Wonkhe report that The London Review of Books published a detailed analysis of government student loan book sales by Andrew McGettigan. He sets out how the government “skewed the test” that made a loss-making loan sale show value for money.

Education Spending: The House of Commons Library has published a report on Education Spending in the UK. Key Points:

  • Education spending peaked in around 2010 at 5.7% of GDP or £104 billion (2018-19 prices).
  • The real level of public spending on education in the UK was static in the early 1980s.
    It increased gradually from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
    After then it increased to new record levels in each year to the peak in 2010-11.
    The Government has removed spending on the subsidy element of student loans from data from 2011-12 onwards.
    Despite this break in the series there was a clear decline in spending in the five years from 2012-13 onwards.
  • Education spending has fallen as a % of GDP in each year from 2011-12 to 2017‑18. This was the longest continuous period of decline in this measure
  • Almost 80% of education spending went on schools -primary and secondary education. The relatively low share going on tertiary (higher) education reflects the fact that the data exclude the subsidy element of student loans which forms the majority of higher education spending in England.
  • Public spending per head on education in 2017-18 was highest in Scotland at around £1,550, followed by £1,490 in London and £1,440 in Northern Ireland. It was lowest in the South East and South West of England at around £1,200.
  • OECD analysis puts UK public spending on education at 4.2% of GDP in 2016. This was 12th highest out of the 34 OECD members with data on this measure and higher than the OECD average of 4.0%.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

[1] See above

[2] We also cover this in “other news” below

Public databases related to EU funding

EU, international, Research communication

The European Commission maintains a large number of publicly available databases with details about Horizon 2020 and other EU projects. The UK Research Office (UKRO) have recently prepared a summary of sources where data related to both submitted and funded EU projects may be found; these may be useful for academics considering applying for EU funding and searching for experienced partners for future applications.

Horizon 2020 Dashboard – This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date of all databases provided by the Commission. It is very interactive and allows users to modify and export the relevant data in various formats. Since its launch on November 2017, the database has grown immensely.

UKRO maintains a dedicated website with information on how to best utilise available data (BU is UKRO subscriber – our academics have access to subscribers’ part of this website).

EU Open Data Portal (ODP) – In a way, the EUODP is the Dashboard’s predecessor and allows users to download various datasets in .xls and .csv formats. While it initially only included details of projects and organisations participating in H2020, it has been expanded in recent years and now includes details such as project deliverables, PIs in ERC projects and researchers in H2020 MSCA projects, which cannot be found on the H2020 Dashboard. Information about FP7 projects is also available.

CORDIS – This database has been the main repository for EU research results since 1990s and includes information about projects funded under the current and past EU Framework Programmes (FP6, FP5, etc.). Apart from basic project data, it also includes information about project deliverables and summary reports, as well as project-related events.

European Research Council’s (ERC) Funded Projects – This basic database provides generic information about ERC projects (including the PIs’ names) and allows searching by scheme (Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant, etc.), year and country of the host institution, which is also possible in other databases.

For more details, you may read full article on UKRO portal (login details required). If you have difficulties in accessing information on UKRO portal, feel free to contact Research Facilitator – International Ainar Blaudums.

HE policy update for the w/e 6th September 2019

EU, Funding opportunities, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, NHS, policy, Research news

The political to and fro this week has been whiplash-inducing and the Universities Minister job is vacant – again.

Brexit & Parliament

Unfortunately the Universities Minister job is beginning to resemble that of the Hogwarts Defence against the Dark Arts teacher – in a shock announcement on Thursday Jo Johnson resigned as Universities Minister and announced he would be stepping down as a MP in the next election.

Given his views on Brexit it wasn’t really a surprise (it was more of a surprise that he took the job at all) but the timing was dramatic. He said:

 “In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest – it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister”. He announced his resignation through Twitter and it received 17,000 likes (presumably as support for his principled decision) within hours.

Following Jo’s resignation the Spectator and Evening Standard published a 2013 older quote in which Boris criticised Ed Miliband for competing against his brother for the Labour leadership: ‘Only a socialist could do that to his brother, only a socialist could regard familial ties as being so trivial as to shaft his own brother.’ [Spectator]

UUK have said it is unlikely the government will appoint a replacement universities minister because of the likelihood of a general election in the near future. It is expected that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and Children and Families Minister Kemi Badenoch will cover the brief in the immediate future.

NUS issued a statement responding to Jo’s resignation: “Jo Johnson’s resignation identifies the inability of our current governing structures in the higher education sector to improve the lives of students, as well as how disruptive Brexit negotiations have been to all parts of our society. The next Minister will be the fourth in under a year and these constant changes from Westminster do not provide the continuity that students need to get on and reform education in the UK. A no deal Brexit would be disastrous for students, who bear the burden of an education system that is in crisis. At the NUS, we will continue to critically engage with decision makers in Westminster to resist the damage that a no deal Brexit will have on our members and advocate for structural change to our entire education system.”

Jo’s departure creates a lot of uncertainty for the sector, as there are many live issues in HE, including subject level TEF and Dame Shirley’s review and the Augar Review. Of course we are wondering who will eventually take over the position and become the fifth HE minister in under two years.  There’s not a lot of experience of the role left in the Commons now – of all the HE minsters in the last 9 years only one remains as a Conservative MP.

Jo Johnson, alongside Nick Gibb (Minister for School Standards) were the only Education experienced Ministers within the Department for Education. We could of course be in for more changes in the next two months.

Ministers linked to education and HE have not had a good week: Justine Greening, Greg Clark, Sam Gyimah were all expelled from the Conservative Party for voting against the Government whip this week. Here is the list of all 21 ousted  MPs. Furthermore, 30 MPs have said they will stand down as MPs and not contest the next election (16 Conservative, 12 Labour, 2 Lib Dem) including some big names. See the list and their reasons for leaving politics here.

In other parliamentary news –

  • Michelle Donelan has been appointed as an unpaid Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education, as maternity cover for Kemi Badenoch MP (Minister for Children and Families).
  • Graham Brady has been reinstated as Chair of the 1922 Committee (until the start of the next parliamentary session).

What’s going to happen next

The House of Lords have finalised the Hilary Benn Bill that requires the PM to ask for an extension to Article 50 if he has not finalised a deal that Parliament can support by 19th October.  It was not amended and will now receive Royal Assent and become law.

The government will propose another motion under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act on Monday asking Parliament to agree to holding a general election.  The opposition parties have agreed to oppose it or abstain.  Under the Act, it needs 434 votes in support to be approved.  Unless the government tries a different route, this means that there cannot be an election in October.  The other possibility is that they try to pass a law allowing one, but given that they do not have a majority, it is unlikely that this would pass.

Parliament will be suspended (prorogued) for 5 weeks at some point next week.

At the time of writing this, the PM is still saying he will not ask for an extension to Article 50, despite the law that has been passed.  It is hard to see how he can avoid doing so unless he resigns.  Unless of course he negotiates a deal in the next few weeks and it is approved by Parliament.

If there is an extension, then there is likely to be an election after that, probably before Christmas.  And someone will then have to sort out what happens when the extension expires. It is of course very possible that lots of things will happen before the end of October and this could all change several times before then.

Spending Round 2019

Chancellor, Sajid Javid, announced departmental budges during a controversial parliamentary session where he was told off several times by the Speaker for electioneering. In short the spending announcement, termed an infrastructure revolution, covered a one year period and it seems the government are expecting to be awash with cash for police, health, social care, schools, prisons, and places of worship. Dods have produced a comprehensive briefing on it here including reaction from sector stakeholder bodies The Education and Skills section starts on pages 17-18. FE and apprenticeships are also mentioned under the Business section on pages 19-20.

Just a few key points:

Health & Research

  • Increase to the Health Education England (HEE) budget, including
    • an additional £150 million for Continuing Professional Development
    • providing a £1,000 central training budget over three years for each nurse, midwife and allied health professional, as well as increased funding for wider education and training budgets to support delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan
  • The Government is committed to increasing levels of research and development (R&D) to at least 2.4% of GDP by 2027. In the autumn, the government will set out plans to significantly boost public R&D funding, provide greater long-term certainty to the scientific community, and accelerate its ambition to reach 2.4% of GDP
  • £250m of investment in artificial intelligence from 2020-21 and discovering preventative solutions to issues such as cancer.

Education

  • Schools got a three year funding settlement, however, this is situated within the changing face of the education sector:
    • These announcements come at a time of significant upheaval within the education system.
      The Government’s response to Augar and consultations on Level 3, 4&5 courses are all still outstanding.
      Whilst today’s announcements will go some way towards alleviating anxiety over school budgets, the Government have their work cut out in aligning and resourcing employer led standards across, apprenticeships, T-levels and Higher Technical Qualifications. Such efforts will be integral to assuaging broader concerns over skills shortages post-Brexit.
  • £400m investment in Further Education in 2020-21
    • includes £190m to increase core funding for 16-19- year-olds;
    • £210m of funding in targeted interventions such as high-cost programmes, English and Maths resits, T Levels, the Advanced Maths Premium and workforce investments.
  • No mention of HE.

Stakeholder reaction to Education announcements

  • The National Education Union commented that the Spending Review saw a “major shift in Government policy”. However, also warned that spending was still “significantly short of what is required”.
  • The NAHT has the Chancellor’s commitment to further education spending, claiming it as a “big win” and that it will go “some way to restoring the real-terms cuts”. But emphasised that “gaps still remain” and that “we need to work with the government to make sure the money goes where it is most needed”.
  • The Sixth Form Colleges Association has welcomed the £400million investment in 16 to 19 education and is a foundation upon which to build.
  • The Association of School and College Leaders has welcomed the money promised by the government, but noted that “even with this additional funding there will still be a shortfall” in education funding.

Student Voter Registration

Earlier this week the Government intended to push for 15 October general election, however political developments seem to have temporarily postponed this (for now, at least). Unless the EU wave a magic wand and a Brexit deal is reached in time for a 31 October exit then a general election at some point late in 2019 remains a very likely possibility.

In Theresa May’s snap 2017 election, there was a widely held belief that young voters had made a huge difference to the results (since largely discredited). In fact a Times article claims a source within Boris’ campaign team has admitted that an advantage of the proposed 15 October election date meant it would limit the numbers of students who register to vote (because the voting registration deadline would have be 27 September).

No matter when (if) the election is held it is important that BU and SUBU play a full role in ensuring  students register to vote at their new address. A staggering number of people have registered to vote recently – The Times report that 70,000 under 35’s registered to vote within the last two days.

No doubt, whatever the outcome and whenever the election takes place, the student vote will be closely analysed post-election. For example, in Northampton the Conservative majority is 807 and there are 900 students within new halls of residence.

This is the online link to register to vote.

Soft Power

HEPI have published The soft-power benefits of educating the world’s leaders  which details how the UK is falling behind the US in the soft power statistics. Soft power is the eventual influence experienced by educating a person from another country within the UK. The individual receives a positive UK HE experience and considers the UK favourably when they return to work in a leadership position within their own country. HEPI state:

Two years ago, the UK had educated one more serving world leader (58) than the US (57). Today, there is one more serving world leader educated in the UK (59) than back in 2017 but there are three more who were educated in the US (62). Over the same period, the number of world leaders who were educated in France has increased from 34 to 40. 

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

  • “The soft power that the UK has historically accrued through educating so many of the world’s leaders is extraordinary. It is rivalled only by the US, which is of course far larger. But it cannot be taken for granted. In recent years, the UK has slipped behind the US while the third placed country, France, has made great strides. Moreover, as the UK struggles to find its new place in the world, it may need to rely on the potential benefits from soft power even more than in the past.
  • Given that the UK’s international student numbers have flatlined in recent years while countries like Australia have been forging ahead, this won’t be easy. Our survey of world leaders provides yet more evidence of the need for a more positive approach towards international students than has been taken over the last decade.”

Tom Huxley, the report researcher, said: “Britain’s higher education sector has, in the past, been the most attractive on the planet for those who go on to lead their own countries. But the growth of US influence in this ranking is striking. US institutions have educated more of today’s world leaders than we have. If recent trends continue, there is a risk that, over time, it could diminish the standing of our universities.”

Access and Success – white working class boys

THE ran an article suggesting digital technology could support universities’ diversity and help bridge the gap in attracting disenfranchised social groups: Reaching invisible students: white working-class boys.

  • Our work in this area has shown us the potential for digital technology to significantly encourage better student inclusivity, via a combination of effective information delivery and reducing psychosocial barriers to entry.
  • One of the key barriers for young white working-class men is their lack of confidence that university life is for them. With accents, clothing and lifestyles that may be very different from their more affluent peers, it is hard for them to imagine themselves fitting in.
  • This is where digital tech can be a great benefit. An online chat event set up by a university can specifically target this group while they are still at school, enabling them to see and hear from those a few years ahead of them and with a similar background. We know that during this key information-gathering stage, it can be a significant advantage to working-class young men to be able to ask questions anonymously and to listen to the questions of other people in the same position as them.
  • At the same time, this kind of online platform can address financial worries by including someone on the student finance team to explain any bursaries or scholarships available, or the availability of part-time jobs in the area – perhaps again drawing on the experience of other working-class students who have supported themselves financially.
  • Chatbots can also be useful here… Because chatbots are non-judgemental and unbiased, they can help teens at least familiarise themselves with the jargon, tackle some of their initial worries and gradually build their confidence.
  • There is potential for this group of men to be invited to online events throughout their university life, offering extra support and helping to minimise the risk of dropping out. These events could also help men to think about future careers and raise their confidence at tackling interviews, recruitment tests and the social aspects of networking.
  • Universities already plough large investments into outreach and support. But by embracing digital tech platforms, they are going where teenage boys spend time already, potentially attracting them into an academic environment that, although initially alien, could prove to be the making of them.

The article references NEON’s Working Class Heroes report from Feb 2019.

Catching up

You can catch up on our summer updates here.  Highlights include Sarah writing about the Impact of Post Qualification Admissions on WP students and a review of the responses to the KEF consultation (from page 5).

Parliamentary Questions

Mental Health

Q – Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central): To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Office for Students has taken since its establishment to assess the adequacy of provision of mental health services and student support at universities.

A – Joseph Johnson:

  • In our latest guidance to the Office for Students (OfS), we asked that it continue its work to support student experience, with a focus on wellbeing and mental health.
  • Where a provider has significant gaps in outcomes between students with a declared mental health condition and their peers, the OfS require providers to set out an ambitious strategy to narrow these gaps and promote equality of opportunity, as part of their access and participation plans.
  • The OfS also regulates at a sector level to share evidence and examples of effective and innovative practice. On 5 June 2019, the OfS announced the award of almost £6 million for 10 large-scale projects through a challenge competition, encouraging higher education providers to find new ways of combating student mental health issues. The OfS has commissioned a programme-level evaluation to gather what works most effectively and to disseminate learning across the sector.
  • On 17 June 2019, the government announced a £1 million fund for a further OfS challenge competition to find innovative proposals that drive improvements in mental health support for higher education students.

Student grants

Q – Angela Rayner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether it is his policy to reintroduce maintenance grants for students from low and middle income backgrounds in higher education.

and

Q – Angela Rayner: if he will make it his policy to implement the recommendations of the Augar Review

A – Joseph Johnson:

  • As part of our ongoing review of Post-18 Education and Funding, the government will be considering Philip Augar’s recommendations carefully. The government has not yet taken decisions with regards to the recommendations put forward.
  • Students from the lowest-income families have access to the largest ever amounts of cash-in-hand support for their living costs. The government has announced a further 2.9% increase to maximum grants and loans for the 2020/21 academic year.
  • (Same answer to both questions.)

STEM

Q – Andrew Percy: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to encourage more working class young people to take up STEM subjects at university . [282286]

A – Joseph Johnson:

  • To maintain a dynamic and growing economy, the government is committed to tackling science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills shortages. The department is encouraging more students into STEM education and training, at all stages, from primary school to higher education (HE).
  • To support more students to take STEM subjects at university, the government has increased investment in maths and digital subjects within schools, including a new post-16 maths premium and a new £84 million programme to improve the teaching of computing. Both of these initiatives aim to increase the number of young people taking these subjects, from all backgrounds.
  • This school-level investment programme is complemented by increasing efforts from the university sector to encourage more disadvantaged students to enter HE. The Office for Students (as the regulator for HE in England) has a duty to promote equality of opportunity in relation to access and participation in HE. In 2018, 18 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds were proportionally 52% more likely to enter full-time HE than in 2009.

Q – Stephen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect on funding for STEM subjects at higher education institutions of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

A – Gavin Williamson:

  • Part of the teaching grant funding that the government provides to eligible higher education (HE) providers, via the Office for Students, is allocated to support the provision of high-cost subjects, including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. We do not expect this funding arrangement to change as a result of Brexit .
  • We do not expect any significant short-term increase in the vulnerability of HE providers to financial failure as a result of no deal EU Exit. The income shock from EU exit, deal or otherwise, is expected to be ‘manageable’, and any effect will not lead to a cliff-edge.  
  • Department for Education officials engage regularly with HE institutions in relation to HE funding and the provision of high-priority courses such as STEM, as well as on EU Exit.

Universities: Apprentices

Q – Paul Farrelly: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department and the Education and Skills Funding Agency are taking to support universities to work closely with non-levy-paying small and medium-sized enterprises .

A – Kemi Badenoch:

  • The department and the Education and Skills Funding Agency continue to encourage universities to work with employers, including non-levy-paying small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).  The Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund (DADF) has focussed on building collaborative projects between providers and employers; including non-levy-paying SMEs . DADF has funded additional engagement activities to better understand their needs.
  • Birmingham City University, University of Greenwich and Aston University have actively engaged with SMEs as part of DADF-funded projects.
  • Over the course of the next year, all employers will be able to control how they pay for their apprenticeship training and assess and recruit their apprentices via the apprenticeship service. This will allow non-levy paying SMEs to work closely with a greater number of high-quality training providers, including universities.

Q – Paul Farrelly: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that degree apprenticeships support (a) social mobility and (b) lifelong learning among underrepresented groups.

A – Kemi Badenoch:

  • Apprenticeships benefit people of all ages and backgrounds, offering high quality on and off-the-job training. Level 6+ and degree apprenticeships offer people an alternative to full time university, as well as the opportunity to upskill or re-train throughout their lives.
  • The Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund (DADF) aims to enable and encourage greater social mobility and widen participation. The DADF has supported 103 higher education (HE) providers and has resulted in 4,464 degree apprentice starts. The Office for Students has published an evaluation of the fund.
  • HE providers, such as universities, can include degree apprenticeships in their Access and Participation Plans; these set out how they will support underrepresented groups and help individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds access and succeed in HE. The National Apprenticeship Service works with local partners to ensure that apprenticeships at all levels are available in disadvantaged areas.
  • We are running an employer engagement campaign, ‘Opportunities through Apprenticeships ’, working with partners in Portsmouth, Nottingham, South Tyneside and Torbay. It aims to support social mobility by creating opportunities for more apprentices from disadvantaged areas to undertake high value apprenticeships with higher earnings potential and progression, such as degree apprenticeships

Electoral Register: Students

Q – Chris Ruane: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of (a) the University of Sheffield ‘s initiative on voter registration for students and (b) mandating universities to promote students to register to vote.

A – Kevin Foster:

  • The Government is encouraged by the University of Sheffield ’s experience but has no plans to mandate a single approach across the country.
  • The Government is, however, committed to ensuring the electoral registration system is responsive to the needs of students. Ministerial Guidance was issued to the Office for Students (OfS) in February 2018 acting on a commitment made in Parliament during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act (2017), directing that they require Higher Education providers to comply with Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) requests for data and they be encouraged to work with Local Authorities to promote electoral registration amongst their student populations. The merits of working closely with EROs have been demonstrated by a number of Higher Education providers across the country.
  • Yet, the Government does not believe that one size fits all and instead favours an approach which allows innovation.
  • The Ministerial Guidance has since been used by the OfS to produce their own guidance to Higher Education providers, which advises them how they might best implement, and abide by, the requirements placed on them. The OfS guidance came into force in August. The Government is committed to ensuring everyone who is eligible to register to vote is able to do so and, in 2014, introduced online registration for the first time. Statistics show young people aged between 14 and 24 are more likely than average to use this as a means of registering to vote.
  • The Government believes these measures will drive up the number of applications to register from students – improving both the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register – as well as further improve the relationships between Higher Education provider and Local Authorities.

Nursing: Training

Q – Graham P Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the additional funding for the NHS announced by the Prime Minister will be used to increase the number of nursing bursaries.

A – Chris Skidmore:

  • The education funding reforms announced in the 2015 Spending Review started to take effect from August 2017 and pre-registration nursing students began to access student loans rather than receiving a National Health Service bursary.  
  • In January 2019, the NHS published its Long Term Plan which sets out a 10 year vision for healthcare in England . The NHS Interim People Plan, published on 3 June, sets out the immediate actions needed to grow the nursing workforce across all settings by over 40,000 in the next five years.
  • We will work with the NHS and the Higher Education Institution sector to improve awareness of the financial support packages available to all undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare students and how they can be accessed.

Students: Disadvantaged

Q – Angela Rayner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a student premium for funding (a) further and (b) higher education.

A – Kemi Badenoch:

  • The government is determined to ensure disadvantaged students are supported in their post-16 education. The national funding formula for 16-19-year olds and the funding through the Adult Education Budget both include a disadvantage uplift. This provides extra funding for disadvantaged students and learners, specifically for those with low prior attainment, or those who live in the most disadvantaged areas.
  • The government teaching grant funding to the higher education (HE) sector includes 3 student premium allocations that support: full-time students deemed to be at risk of discontinuing their studies; part-time students; and disabled students. All HE providers in the approved (fee cap) category of the Office for Students register are eligible to receive these student premium allocations, including further education college ’s offering HE.

Q – Cat Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the announcement of 27 February 2019 that new youth voice projects will be launched to encourage young people to participate in making national policy, what policies will be prioritised for youth participation; and what steps she will take to ensure the work and influence of the projects is transparent.

A – Nicky Morgan:

Three new youth voice projects were announced in February to encourage young people to participate in making national policy:

– Youth Steering Group

– Young Inspectors Group

– Digital Youth engagement research

The Youth Steering Group has already been involved in discussing the Government’s future offer for young people and the review of the guidance which sets out the statutory duty placed on local authorities to provide appropriate local youth services. The Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy invited the Youth Steering Group to conduct a review of environment and climate policy. Young people are also contributing to policy development on serious violence through the Government’s Youth Advisory Forum on Serious Violence .

The Young Inspectors Group are participating in the monitoring and evaluation of national programmes affecting young people.

The Digital Youth Engagement research explored how new digital solutions can enable large numbers of young people to play a role in consultations and policy design across government.

We will make further announcements on these pioneering Youth Voice projects in due course

Research

UK Research and Innovation has published its vision for how it will promote world-leading research and innovation that is built on the knowledge and values of society and open to people from all backgrounds. Its four goals are to:

  • Focus on under-represented communities and places
  • Actively involve people in their work
  • Inspire and empower young people
  • Listen to and understand public concerns and aspirations

The goals will be delivered through funding calls, commissioning research and analysis, and piloting new approaches.  The vision was launched in conjunction with UKRI’s first public engagement funding call for universities and community partners to test new ways to collaborate on research and innovation with under-represented communities.

Special Educational Needs

The Government have announced a ‘major review’ into support for children with special educational needs, seeking to build on the 2014 reforms. The review comes a week after the Government announced a funding boost of £700m in 2020/21 for pupils with the most complex needs.

Education, Health and Care Plans, launched in 2014, were designed to deliver tailored support to children and young people aged 0-25 with the most complex special education needs. The new review will look at how the system has evolved since then, how it can be optimised for families, and how to ensure quality provision is delivered across the country. It will also explore the role of health care in SEND in collaboration with the DHSC.

The review will look at and put forward new actions on:

  • The evidence on how the system can provide the highest quality support that enables children and young people with SEND to thrive and prepare for adulthood, including employment
  • Helping parents to make decisions about what kind of support will be best for their child
  • Making sure support in different local areas is consistent, joined up across health, care and education services, and that high-quality health and education support is available across the country
  • How to strike the right balance of state-funded provision across inclusive mainstream and specialist places
  • Aligning incentives and accountability for schools, colleges and local authorities to make sure they provide the best possible support for children and young people with SEND
  • Understanding what is behind the rise in education, health and care (EHC) plans and the role of specific health conditions in driving demand
  • Ensuring that public money is spent in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner, placing a premium on securing high quality outcomes for those children and young people who need additional support the most.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: Our reforms in 2014 gave vital support to more children, but we know there have been problems in delivering the changes that we all want to see. So it’s the right time to take stock of our system and make sure the excellence we want to see as a result of our changes is the norm for every child and their families.

Minister for Care Caroline Dinenage said: The support and care for people with special educational needs and disabilities is one of my top priorities. The SEND review will be crucial in widening our knowledge of the parts of the system which are working well and the areas which need improvement. The Department for Health and Social Care will play a key role in the review so we can ensure that high quality healthcare support is available for all throughout the country.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Amber Rudd said: Children with special needs and disabilities need to get the right educational support and health care so they can thrive. This review will help make sure all families get the support they need so every child, young person and their parents feel extremely positive about their future.

MPs have repeatedly raised concerns over the number of timeliness of completed EHCPs, with it being reported that only 24% were completed in the statutory time limit in the Secretary of State’s own constituency. Nationally, only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or EHCPs. The Government contend that, owing to the introduction of EHCPs more than 350,000 children and young people aged 0-25 with the most complex special educational needs are receiving the tailored support they need to thrive and receive a world-class education. Of those in schools around half (130,000) are continuing in mainstream education.

T-levels

The DfE have published a policy update as a compendium to their T-level action plan.  Key Points:

Grading and Certification:

The T Level Certificate will include:

  • an overall grade for the T Level, shown as Pass, Merit, Distinction or Distinction
  • a separate grade for the core component, using A* to E
  • a separate grade for each occupational specialism studied, shown as Pass, Merit or Distinction
  • confirmation that the minimum requirements for maths and English qualifications have been met
  • confirmation that the industry placement has been successfully completed
  • confirmation that any additional mandatory requirements have been met

A T Level Distinction grade is only awarded to students who, as well as meeting the other T Level requirements, have achieved an A* in the core and a Distinction in their occupational specialism (or Distinction on aggregate if more than one occupational specialism is studied).

UCAS Tariff Points:

  • To support progression into higher education, UCAS tariff points will be allocated to T Levels. Points will be allocated to overall T Level grades, not to separate elements of the T Level. This is to recognise the value of the T Level programme as a whole. Students must achieve at least an overall Pass grade or higher in order to receive UCAS points.
  • The size and rigour of a T Level programme is comparable to a 3 A Level programme. Therefore, T Levels will attract UCAS points in line with those allocated to 3 A Levels.
  • Although the T Level programme is broadly the same size as a 3 A level programme, the qualifications have different purposes. The T Level programme is intended to help students develop the knowledge and technical skills required for skilled employment. T Levels and A Levels therefore measure different abilities, using different grading scales.
  • A T Level Pass grade is allocated a tariff score of either 72 or 96 points: where a student has obtained an overall Pass by achieving a Pass in the occupational specialism and a B or C in the core, a tariff of 96 UCAS points. Where a student has obtained an overall Pass by achieving a Pass in the occupational specialism and a D or E in the core, a tariff of 72 UCAS points.
  • The tariff points allocated to overall Merit and Distinction T Level grades represent even increments between the points allocated to an overall Pass (with a C or above in the core component) and Distinction* grade.

Despite the allocation of UCAS points to T-levels, the policy paper twice emphasises that the qualifications are predominantly designed to deliver a direct route into skilled employment, given the industry placement inherent in the qualification. It also lacks detail how the qualifications will feed into Level 4 & 5 Higher Technical Education (HTE), currently under review by the Government. In the HTE consultation the Government emphasise the importance aligning of employer-led standards across apprenticeships, T Levels and HTQs. They also state their desire that HTE be a prestigious choice for those completing T-levels.

Consultations

Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

New responses this week:

Other news

New Towns Fund: Bournemouth is on a (short) list of 100 towns eligible to receive funding if they successfully work with Government to develop innovative regeneration plans. The Government announcement states:

  • The towns eligible for support from the £3.6 billion Towns Fund include places with proud industrial and economic heritage but have not always benefitted from economic growth in the same way as more prosperous areas.
  • Communities, businesses and local leaders will now join forces to draw up ambitious plans to transform their town’s economic growth prospects with a focus on improved transport, broadband connectivity, skills and culture.
  • Today’s announcement follows the Prime Minister’s confirmation in July of an additional £1.325 billion to support towns as part of a renewed vision to level up our regions, which took the total value of the Towns Fund to £3.6 billion.
  • The government will soon publish a prospectus to guide towns through the process and set eligibility criteria for funding.
  • Once approved, new Town Deals will improve connectivity, provide vital social and cultural infrastructure and boost growth – with communities having a say on how the money is spent. 

Here is the full list of eligible towns.

Migration: Research Professional report on the Office for National Statistics who have announced inaccuracies in their non-EU migration figures (overestimation) due to inaccurate international student data.

Student Loans: The SLC has issued top tips for actions students should take to ensure they receive their maintenance loans on time. Meanwhile £28 million pounds worth of overpaid student loan contributions still hasn’t been able to be returned to the students who are due a refund. The SLC has written to the students who overpaid but £28 million remains unclaimed. Research Professional have the detail here.

Commuting: A Government news story highlights how the gender pay gap is exacerbated by reluctance to undertake a longer commute despite a higher salary.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

Save the date – 18 November 2019 – UKRO Annual Visit to BU

EU, Events, Funding opportunities, international

As usual, RDS will host annual UK Research Office visit to BU in 2019. This year’s event has been scheduled for November; the reason is obvious – Brexit. All academic staff interested in EU funding are invited to attend the event starting from noon.

Provisionally, the event will take place in FG04 seminar room; sessions will be delivered by Dr Andreas Kontogeorgos, European Advisor of the UK Research Office.
Agenda will include such topics as post-Brexit situation, remaining Horizon 2020 calls available for UK’s researchers in 2020 and development of the next EU framework programme Horizon Europe.

More information on agenda will be provided in early November. Academics are welcome to submit any other EU funding related topics for discussion to Ainar Blaudums at RDS Funding Development Team by the end of October.

UKRO delivers subscription-based advisory service for research organisations and provides MSCA and ERC National Contact Point services in the UK. As part of UKRO services, BU members of staff may sign up to receive personalised email alerts and get early access to EU funding related publications on UKRO portal.