Category / Fusion themes

New BU cross-faculty publication

international, NHS, Publishing, writing

This week Evidence-Based Midwifery published the latest article from the BU team working on the portrayal of midwifery and maternity in the media.  This qualitative paper ‘Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it?’ is co-authored by a multidisciplinary team including the disciplines of Midwifery, Sociology and Media.[1]  The lead author is Prof. Vanora Hundley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), one of longest established centres at BU, her co-authors are Dr. Ann Luce in the Faculty of Media & Communication, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen director of CMMPH and Sophie Edlund, who was based at BU at the time of the research but who is now at Malmö University in Sweden.

The paper addresses societal’s interest in all aspects of childbirth, which is reflected in both social and traditional media. Stories often focus on dramatic, risky and mostly unrealistic events; misrepresenting childbirth and maternity care professionals. The authors raised the question: “Whose responsibility is it to ensure accurate representations of childbirth?”   Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten midwives working in the UK some working in the NHS, some in Higher Education or independent practice, the authors distilled four separate but inter-related themes:

(1) not my responsibility;

(2) fear of retribution;

(3) power balance; and

(4) social media.

The themes sat within two wider societal issues that reflect the current challenges for midwifery, these were (a) the ongoing battle between the social and the medical models of childbirth and (b) the impact of gender.  Finding that midwives fear the media resonates with experiences from a number of countries and professional groups. There is a need to change media discourse in both fictional and factual representations of childbirth and midwives have a critical role to play in this, but to do this they need to equip themselves with the skills necessary to engage with the media. Guidelines on responsible media reporting could ensure that media producers portray pregnancy, midwifery and maternity care as naturally as possible.

This paper is paper of a growing body of interdisciplinary research at BU across faculties, which had already resulted in six earlier publications. [2-7]  In addition last month Dr Chapleo from the Faculty of Management submitted a grant application to the ESRC under the title ‘Rebranding childbirth: understanding the role of marketing in influencing uptake of health services’, a joint application with CMMPH staff (Profs. Hundley & van Teijlingen) and the Media School (Dr. Luce).

 

References:

  1. Hundley, V., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E., Edlund, S. (2019) Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it? Evidence-based Midwifery 17(2): 47-52.
  2. Luce, A., Cash, M., Hundley, V., Cheyne, H., van Teijlingen, E., Angell, C. (2016) “Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 40 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0827-x
  3. van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Luce, A., Hundley, V. (2016) Media, Health & Health Promotion in Nepal, Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences 2(1): 70-75. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JMMIHS/article/view/15799/12744
  4. Luce, A., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E. (Eds.) (2017) Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  5. Hundley, V., Duff, E., Dewberry, J., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2014) Fear in childbirth: are the media responsible? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 24(4): 444-447.
  6. Hundley, V., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2015) Do midwives need to be more media savvy? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 25(1):5-10.
  7. van Teijlingen, E., De Vries, R., Luce, A., Hundley, V. (2017) Meer bemoeien met media (In Dutch: more engagement with media). Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen (in Dutch: Journal for Midwives), 41 (6):28-29.

HE policy update for the w/e 28th June 2019

international, Student Engagement

Although after the frantic weeks in early Spring we seem now to be in a political limbo, when nothing is achieved except an escalation in rhetoric and an increase in polarisation, actually, there’s quite a lot going on.  Some of it looks like political legacy building, but hey, if it works…

Sharing access to health and social research in the UK

BU is gathering views internally on the consultation “Make it Public” by the Health Research Authority.  Responses to an internal survey will inform BU’s institutional response.

The HRA’s consultation gives everyone involved an opportunity to influence the Health Research Authority’s future strategy to improve public access to information about health and social research in the UK. Please read the strategy before you answer the questions.

The BU survey is anonymous, however we have asked about your role at BU to inform our response. We have taken the content and questions directly from the HRA’s consultation. Please take time to complete it if you have experience in this area.

New Commission for Students with Disabilities

The Minster has announced a new body to speak out for students with disabilities…or actually, has renamed an existing group and confirmed he supports its work. Chris Skidmore announces new Commission to improve support for disabled students: 27th June 2019.  The OfS is setting it up:  [The Minister] ”has instructed the Commission to identify and promote good practice which helps those with disabilities have a positive experience at university. The Commission, formerly Disabled Students’ Sector Leadership Group (DSSLG), will use the DSSLG’s existing guidance for providers on supporting disabled students inclusively and look at what more needs to be done.”

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said:

  • Living with a disability should never be a barrier to entering higher education and as Universities Minister, I am determined to ensure disabled students get the support they need to have a positive, life-changing university experience.
  • There are a record number of students with a disability going to university, but we must do more to level the playing field and improve the experience and outcomes for disabled students.
  • It’s my personal priority that those living with a disability have an equal chance to succeed in higher education. I want to see all universities face up to their responsibilities and place inclusion at the heart of their access and participation agenda.
  • The Commission will look at approaches which work well to improve support for disabled students, such as more inclusive curricula, restructuring support for students and enhancing learning and teaching environments.

Brexit

All those who backed Boris on the basis that he would flunk a hard Brexit (eg George Osborne at the Evening Standard) seem to have their bluff called.  This week Boris Johnson has written to Jeremy Hunt saying that leaving on 31st October is a “do or die” thing.  So it looks like he has been nobbled by the Brexiteers , perhaps spooked by the reaction stories of his private life into thinking that his lead with the membership was slipping away.  He looks pretty committed now.  But he has also made lots of speeches suggesting it is all going to be very straightforward….(there’s a million to one chance of not getting a deal, apparently).

Jeremy Hunt meanwhile has refused to make such a robust commitment but continues to challenge Boris on a number of fronts and to present himself as the experienced negotiator.

Both of them sound like the US President from time to time. And they are both making huge spending commitments.  They were both at the Pavilion on Thursday evening, and the local news showed Boris giving BU a tiny plug and also repeating his commitment (as we noted last week) to removing international students from the immigration cap.

Last week we talked about the possibilities for recess being cancelled – that seems unlikely, so we are likely to have an announcement of the new PM on 22nd July, a frantic couple of days in Parliament and then a recess that will probably end earlier than usual, with EU negotiations taking place in the background – if they can find anyone to negotiate with in what is likely to be a long hot European summer.

Local MP Tobias Ellwood was mentioned on Monday’s Radio 4 Today programme talking about the ‘nuclear’ Brexit option of taking down Boris Johnson’s Government through a vote of no confidence should he intend to push through a no deal Brexit to ensure exit from the EU on 31 October. Tobias states a group of 12 backbencher and ministerial Conservatives are already in talks and prepared to risk their careers, including losing their Conservative candidacy, to bring Boris premiership down if he pursues a no deal Brexit. This would be done either through ministers joining backbencher dissidents to vote against the Government (and party whip) or a larger group of MPs abstaining en masse so the Government loses the vote. Tobias also featured on BBC’s Panorama programme talking about this potential rebellion. If the Government lost a no confidence vote it would pave the way for a general election.

REF

Research England have published the Real-Time REF Review evaluating perceptions and attitudes towards the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

  • Views on the REF are not as polarized or as extreme as is commonly believed, or reflected in coverage of the REF in the media. Extremely negative views were in the minority, while a majority of respondents had neutral or moderately negative attitudes about the REF.
  • REF has both positive and negative influences on research activity. The REF is seen to increase engagement outside academia and the use of open research activities, whereas game playing and impacts on creativity are deemed to be the most negative influences.
  • Open access and research practices was the most consistently positive and impactful influence of the REF on both researchers’ own work and UK academic culture. Survey data suggested the move to encourage more open research practices was seen as the most positive change in REF 2021.
  • Researchers generally saw the changes to REF 2021 in a positive light. Increased emphasis on open research practices was seen as the most positive change.
  • It may be fruitful for institutions to share best practices in REF readiness rather than attempting to ‘reinvent the wheel’ as the REF process approaches the submission stage and as the new rules are more widely embedded

And interestingly:

  • Notably, women and independent early and mid-career researchers reported that changes made to REF 2021 were more likely to influence the expectations placed on them, although it was not clear whether these changing expectations would be positive or negative ones. The finding that early-career researchers report more influence is consistent with interviews, in which managers highlighted a disproportionate influence of the REF on early-career academics. The difference across genders is also noteworthy and merits future consideration
  • Although not assessed in the survey data, analysis of the interviews conducted with university managers revealed some negative impacts upon the health and well-being of the research community with respect to the REF. With respect to the changes to REF 2021 where equality and diversity considerations are taken more plainly into account, most managers felt that this would have a positive impact upon the well-being of academics for whom equality and diversity issues were faced in the previous REF 2014. Analysis suggests that the new approaches to equality and diversity and reduction in outputs may lessen anxiety and stress caused by the rules of the previous REF cycle.
  • However, notable findings are: that those who identified as submitting to Panel B – engineering and physical sciences – reported the most beneficial influences on research activities in academic culture, and that those from Panel D – arts and humanities – reported the least beneficial influence of the REF on research activities.
  • Further, in survey data, Panel C participants reported a greater influence of the REF on the quantity, quality, scope, and prestige of outputs they produced. This may suggest a challenge to meet expectations of the REF, particularly as interdisciplinary research is often located within this group of cognate disciplines.

Immigration

Home Secretary Sajid Javid formally requested the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review and advise on salary thresholds for the 2021 immigration system. All the details remain as we’ve already informed in previous policy updates, this simply triggers the requirement for the MAC to carry out the review (again) and report back to the Government in January 2020.

Sajid stated: “It’s vital the new immigration system continues to attract talented people to grow our economy and support business while controlling our borders. These proposals are the biggest change to our immigration system in a generation, so it’s right that we consider all of the evidence before finalising them. That’s why I’ve asked independent experts to review the evidence on salary thresholds. It’s crucial the new immigration system works in the best interests of the whole of the UK.”

In their last review the MAC advised the Government to continue with the existing minimum salary thresholds for the future immigration system. This means international entrants would need to be paid at least £30,000 (for an ‘experienced’ role) and new entrants (including recent graduates) at least £20,800.

The new review asks the MAC to

  • consider how future salary thresholds should be calculated
  • what levels to set salary thresholds at
  • If there is a case for regional salary thresholds for different parts of the UK
  • whether there should be exceptions to salary thresholds, e.g. newly started occupations or work shortage occupations.

Free Speech

HEPI have published Free Speech and Censorship on Campus defending free speech in Universities.

  • HEPI say:the report recognises the concerns of those who wish to restrict free speech as a way of protecting others, but concludes that restrictions on free speech usually end up being counter-productive. Despite the UK’s Government’s strong rhetoric supporting free speech in universities, the paper claims the current single biggest threat to free speech on UK campuses currently comes from the Government’s own Prevent programme.
  • Corey Stoughton, the author of the report, states:“…honest confrontation of legacies of discrimination and unequal distribution of power allow us to see how censorship replicates those problems and to focus on the real threats – like the UK Government’s ill-conceived Prevent strategy, which has had a demonstrable chilling effect on free speech in universities.”
  • Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI, said:  ‘We are delighted to be publishing this nuanced but firm defence of free speech. It challenges students, universities and, above all, Government Ministers to be more careful when they are tempted to impose new restrictions on free expression.There are few justifications for limiting free speech beyond current laws. That is true whether it is students wanting to block provocateurs from speaking or Government Ministers mixing up the prevention of terrorism with blocking legitimate free expression.’

Raising aspirations

In a debate on raising aspirations of secondary school pupils Dr Matthew Offord MP (Conservative) urged the Government not to view academic and technical education routes as two simplistic alternatives. He insisted that permeability and flexibility between different types of learning, throughout the academic journey would be crucial in underpinning increased social mobility and productivity. He also argued that HEIs must develop an understanding of T-levels to communicate entry requirements to prospective students and level 3 providers. He pushed the Government to drive collaboration between schools, universities and local Government. To raise aspirations within school age pupils he set out three elements to be addressed:

  • interventions that focus on children’s parents and families
  • interventions that focus on teaching practice
  • out-of-school interventions or extracurricular activities

Shadow HE Minister Gordon Marsden (Labour) suggested the Government should pursue sustained and dedicated programmes, with children from a much earlier age, and with particular social and ethnic groupings. He also argued for the need to enact a robust, independent and wide-ranging review of admissions processes to higher education, removing unconditional offers and investigating the value of post-qualification admissions.

Nick Gibb (Minister for School Standards) stated “For the good of our economy, we need more young people to pursue degrees and careers in the sciences, including computer science. We have already seen excellent progress, with entries to STEM A-levels increasing by 23% since 2010”. The Minister reassured members that views expressed during the debate had been taken into account as part of the Post-16 review process.

Staff Mental Health

Q – Sir Mark Hendrick: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the Higher Education Policy Institute entitled Pressure Vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education staff, what assessment he has made of the reasons behind the increase in poor mental health among academics and the increasing numbers of university staff being referred to counselling and occupational health services.

A – Chris Skidmore:

  • Mental health is a priority for this government which is why last week (17 June 2019) my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister announced measures which overhaul the government’s approach to preventing mental illness. These measures include £1 million to the Office of Students for a competition to find innovative new ways to support mental health at universities and colleges.
  • The Department for Education is also working closely with Universities UK on embedding the Step Change programme, which calls on higher education leaders to adopt mental health as a strategic priority and take a whole-institution approach to embed a culture of good mental health practice.
  • The university Mental Health Charter announced in June 2018 will drive up standards in promoting mental health and wellbeing, positive working environments and excellent support for both students and staff.
  • The Independent Review of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers led by Professor Julia Buckingham has recognised issues of wellbeing and the challenges that arise from the use of short and fixed term contracts. Recommendations are currently under review and a revised concordat is expected by the end of June.
  • However, universities are autonomous institutions and it is the responsibility of Vice Chancellors to give due consideration to the way their policies and practises impact on staff. This includes responsible use of performance management, workload models and other metrics to assure both student and staff success.

Changing nature of future work

The Learning and Work Institute has published Tomorrow’s World – Future of the Labour Market highlighting the shifts in employment culture and adaptive skills that young people will need for the future labour market. It suggests that young people will be increasingly likely to be self-employed, in busier jobs, need to adapt and more frequently update their skills because of the pace of technological changes and their longer working lives (50 years due to higher retirement age).

Some points from the report:

Young people will need a rising bar of skills needs and a wider pool of skills to enter and progress at work and to adapt to change. Changes in sectors and occupations, coupled with changes within existing jobs, imply an increased demand for interpersonal skills, cognitive skills, customer and personal service, English language, literacy, numeracy, digital, communication, team working, and management.

  1. A more diverse range of young people will participate in the labour market, with further increases in participation among women, people with disabilities, and other groups. This makes it even more important to tackle education and employment inequalities among young people, or these will have long-lasting impacts.
  • Higher occupations and sectors such as health and social care are likely to continue to grow, and the nature of work will continue to change.
  • There will be more opportunities for young people to work flexibly, with policy helping determine if this benefits both people and employers. Employment laws and the tax and benefit system need to support flexibility and security for young people. More workers in the workforce with caring responsibilities means employers will need to offer more flexible options. 
  • Longer working lives and economic change mean young people will need to be adaptable and flexible. A wider and deeper core set of skills will help young people adapt. Learning and social security systems must reflect this ‘new normal’.

Stephen Evans, Chief Executive of the Learning and Work Institute, stated:

“Young people are going to face huge changes during 50 year careers. Attention often focuses on the risk of robots replacing jobs, but further growth in self-employment and changing skills requirements in most jobs could perhaps have bigger impacts. Young people must get the support they need to prepare for this future. It is no good just focusing on the skills needed for jobs today, we also need to give young people the skills they need to adapt to future changes, many of which cannot be predicted accurately.”

Social Mobility

The Sutton Trust has published Elitist Britain 2019.

The nature of Britain’s ‘elite’ is higher in the national consciousness than ever, with a series of events, including 2016’s vote to leave the European Union, putting a focus on the strained trust between significant sections of the population and those at the highest levels of politics, business and the media.

Social mobility across the UK is low and not improving, depriving large parts of the country of opportunity. This contributes strongly to this sense of distance. This study, conducted for the first time by both the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission, looks at the backgrounds of around 5,000 individuals in high ranking positions across a broad range of British society, and provides a definitive document of who gets to the top in Britain in 2019.

The report paints a picture of a country whose power structures remain dominated by a narrow section of the population: the 7% who attend independent schools, and the roughly 1% who graduate from just two universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

Key findings:

  • Politics, the media, and public service all show high proportions of privately educated in their number, including 65% of senior judges, 59% of civil service permanent secretaries and 57% of the House of Lords.
  • 39% of the cabinet were independently educated, in stark contrast with the shadow cabinet, of which just 9% attended a private school.

However:

  • Significant is decline of grammar school alumni among the elite (20%), down about 7 percentage points in five years, and a consequent rise in those educated at comprehensives (40%, up 9%). This reflects the abolition of the selective system in most of England during the 1960s and 70s, and the rise of the comprehensively educated generation to positions of power.

Access to professions

  • Law, defence and the academic world had the highest level of these “elites”.
  • University Vice Chancellors had relatively low levels of private school and Oxbridge educated members among their number
  • Media – Britain’s media, including newspaper columnists, and high-profile editors and broadcasters, had some of the highest rates of attendance at independent schools and elite higher education institutions. Newspaper columnists, who play a significant role in shaping the national conversation, draw from a particularly small pool. Only 5% of newspaper columnists attended a non-Russell Group University.
  • Police and Crime Commissioners were more likely than those elected at local council level to have attended independent school, 29%, the same as MPs.
  • Civil service permanent secretaries (59%), Foreign Office diplomats (52%), and Public Body Chairs (45%) have among the highest rates of independently educated in their ranks. Despite recent efforts to overhaul entry into the Civil Service, its highest levels remain highly exclusive, with 56% of permanent secretaries having graduated from Oxford or Cambridge, and 39% having attended both a private school and Oxbridge.
  • The chairs of public bodies were more likely than their CEOs to have come from exclusive educational institutions; 45% from independent schools compared to 30%. This may reflect the age of such post-holders as well as their social class background.
  • Women are under-represented across the top professions (5% of FTSE 350 CEOs, 16% of local government leaders, 24% of senior judges, 26% of permanent secretaries and 35% of top diplomats). Socio-economic class and gender can often combine to create a ‘double disadvantage’, with women from lower socio-economic backgrounds less likely to be socially mobile. Interestingly for women who do make it to the top, their journeys do not always look the same as those of their male peers. In a variety of sectors, women at the top are less likely to have attended Oxbridge than their male counterparts.
  • The Creative Industries had the lowest levels of these groups; however, among the wealthiest members of the TV, film and music industries, university attendance was higher (42%), with about a quarter attending Russell Group institutions. Also 38% of independent school attendees, although the number attending comprehensives has risen by 18% since 2014.

Policy recommendations from the report:

Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation, stated:

“Britain is an increasingly divided society. Divided by politics, by class, by geography. Social mobility, the potential for those to achieve success regardless of their background, remains low. As our report shows, the most influential people across sport, politics, the media, film and TV, are five times as likely to have attended a fee-paying school.

“As well as academic achievement an independent education tends to develop essential skills such as confidence, articulacy and team work which are vital to career success. The key to improving social mobility at the top is to tackle financial barriers, adopt contextual recruitment and admissions practices and tackle social segregation in schools.  In addition, we should open up independent day schools to all pupils based on merit not money as demonstrated by our successful Open Access scheme.”

The Association of School and College Leaders released this statement:

“We need to do many things to break this cycle but a good start would be for universities and industry to do more to recognise the background of candidates through the greater use of contextual recruitment and admissions practices, as the report recommends.

Industrial Strategy developments – tourism sector deal

The government have published the Tourism sector deal  – the latest in a string of sector specific plans linked to the Industrial Strategy.  They have also published an International Business Events Action Plan outlines how government will support the events industry in attracting, growing and creating international business events.

We have pulled out the actions from the sector deal below:

People

  • The government will work closely with industry on the rollout of two new T Level courses to help deliver the hospitality and tourism workers of the future.
  • The government will continue working with industry, through ‘Fire It Up’ and other campaigns, to promote apprenticeship and the opportunities for careers in the hospitality and tourism sector.
  • The government will engage fully with industry during its Post-16 Qualifications review to ensure the sector has an opportunity to feed into future policy development.
  • `The Department for Work and Pensions will continue its partnership agreement with the hospitality industry to help provide its customers with a structured route into work in the Sector.

Sector action to support tourism

  • The sector will create 30,000 apprenticeship starts each year by 2025, covering all grades, from entry-level roles up to degree-level apprenticeship, and across a range of disciplines.
  • Employers will commit over £1m of funding to an ambitious retention and recruitment programme to revolutionise the pipeline of talent that joins the sector.
  • A new industry mentoring programme will be developed to support 10,000 employees each year. This will aim to enhance careers as well as helping to ensure talented people remain within the sector.
  • The sector will increase the percentage of the workforce receiving in-work training to 80 per cent.

Places

  • The government will pilot up to five new Tourism Zones to increase visitor numbers across the country. More information about the bidding process will be released later in the year, with a view to commencing projects in 2020.
  • Tourism Zones will also receive a range of support co-ordinated by central government.

Sector action to support tourism

  • Tourism Zones will be developed and delivered by businesses local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships (in England) who will determine the specific priorities of an area.
  • A range of larger businesses have offered training and support for small and medium enterprises within Tourism Zones.

Business Environment

  • Alongside the Sector Deal the UK government’s International Business Events Action Plan 2019-2025 has been published and sets out the steps the UK government will take to support the UK to maintain its position as a leading destination for hosting international business events in Europe.
  • The UK government will achieve this by providing support in relation to the six key drivers that event decision makers consider when determining where to host an event, from providing government advocacy to financial support.

Sector action to support tourism

  • The Events Industry Board, set up to advise government, has identified two priority areas which they can help and support – skills and infrastructure. These priorities are being considered by working groups set up by the Board and will report later in the year.

Infrastructure

  • The UK government will make travel to the UK and around the UK easier for tourists through the development of its Maritime and Aviation strategies, as well as a number of rail policy developments.
  • The UK government is investing in a number of projects across the Museums, Heritage and Arts sectors that will enhance visitor’s experience. These include supporting the conservation work at Wentworth Woodhouse, the development of a new interpretation centre at Jodrell Bank and the development of England’s Coast Path, the world’s longest coastal path.
  • The UK government will launch a new £250k competition to improve broadband connectivity in conference centres. This will be a UK wide competition.
  • The UK will build on its excellent existing offer, to become the most accessible destination in Europe.
  • The British Tourist Authority will increase their publicity about accessible travel and provide inbound visitors with increased information about the accessibility offer in the UK through a brand new website.

Sector action to support tourism

  • Industry will create an extra 130,000 bedrooms across the UK by 2025 – a significant increase of 21 per cent in accommodation stock.
  • Industry will continue to invest in tourism attractions and innovative products, to remain a global leader in the experiences the UK offers visitors.
  • The sector will support the UK government’s ambition to be most accessible destination in Europe. They will take forward a number of measures, including better coordination of accessible itineraries online, and increasing the visibility of people with accessibility issues in promotion and marketing campaigns

Ideas

  • The government has supported the British Tourist Authority development of Tourism Exchange Great Britain. Launching in June 2019, this is an online business-to-business platform, which will connect tourism suppliers to global distributors.
  • The UK government has provided £40k to the Tourism Alliance in England to carry out further research on how, where and why businesses within the sector obtain advice on compliance, which will inform the shape of further advisory services including Primary Authority.

Sector action to support tourism

  • The industry and British Tourist Authority will work together to create a new, independent Tourism Data Hub, which can help the sector across the UK to better understand visitors’ preferences for location, activities and products in real time. It will also enable the sector for the first time to gather better data about the people choosing not to holiday in the UK

Action plan

“The Action Plan lists a set of criteria that events will need to meet in order to qualify for the UK Government’s support. This includes criteria on the minimum number of delegates and the proportion of those travelling from overseas. It then outlines the UK Government’s support offer across a number of areas. Key actions include:

  • Government advocacy – A comprehensive advocacy package will be offered – ranging from Ministers being available to write letters of support in order to help with bidding for events to offers of hosting delegates in historical Government property;
  • Financial support – We will continue funding the VisitBritain led Business Events Growth Programme,and look at opportunities for expanding it, especially where business events are identified as critical to meeting the UK’s key economic sector objectives; and,
  • Arrivals and welcome – The Border Force and UK Visas and Immigration will offer a relevant support offer to delegates.”

Lifelong learning

Life Transition Point Learning: The Learning and Work Institute published Learning at Life Transitions focussing on the importance of understanding the needs of adult learners particularly at the key points in their lives when they might be more or less likely to take up learning opportunities. In particular, these points can be parents returning to work after caring for young children and also people preparing for retirement.

Transition back to work after caring for children:

  • Adults, and in particular women, with caring responsibilities who are outside of the labour market are under-represented in learning
  • Taking parental leave or returning to work can act as a trigger to engage in learning. This can result from greater time or a change in attitude or perspective.
  • Returners also face a range of barriers to learning. Adults returning to work after caring for children tend to face significant challenges in relation to work and time pressures, primarily related to childcare

Transition into and through retirement:  Participation in, and decisions about, types of learning opportunities alter as adults retire. Although participation in learning tends to decline with age, those approaching retirement have higher levels of participation than the national average.

  • Moving into retirement can create space to consider learning for enjoyment for the first time. The perceived value of learning can often be greater than at previous life stages, with many adults placing greater value on the role of learning, particularly in relation to providing intellectual and social stimulation.
  • Adults facing retirement experience a range of barriers to engaging in learning. Attitudinal factors, such as feeling too old, not wanting to learn or the perception that their skills and capabilities may have deteriorated can be common.

The report’s recommendations for Policy:

  • National lifelong learning strategy – It is vital that every effort is made to harness the opportunities presented by the 4th Industrial Revolution, while ensuring that no one – including those seeking to leave or return to the labour market – is left behind.
  • Increase investment in lifelong learning – Government should reverse the decade-long fall in real-terms investment in lifelong learning to drive economic growth, promote social justice and support inclusive communities
  • Personal learning accounts – Government should develop and trial a personal learning account model, as a mechanism to both stimulate greater engagement in learning and provide a vehicle through which investment in learning by the state, employers and individuals can be aligned and optimised.
  • As part of the wider development of the National Retraining Scheme, the government should give particular attention to how returners can be supported to upskill and retrain to re-enter the labour market.
  • Access to apprenticeships. Flexible timetabling and blended learning options to facilitate part-time and flexible apprenticeship models should be developed and promoted.

Dame Ruth Silver, President of the Further Education Trust for Leadership

The changing nature of work and of retirement mean that these transitions are changing in nature and need to be rethought. People are more likely to move between jobs, or to need to re-skill or up-skill, than they were 20 or 30 years ago. They are also much more likely to continue working after ‘retirement’, or to seek different ways of combining work and life, and not only when approaching the sort of age traditionally associated with retirement. Transition is increasingly a part of our everyday life; an ongoing consideration.

Other news

The leaders of every general further education college in England have written an open letter to the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Education urging them to “answer the calls from business” and respond to the “challenges of technological change and Brexit”  by urgently investing in the country’s technical and vocational education system by implementing the main recommendations of the government’s recent Post-18 Education Review. The Augar Review called for, amongst other things, an end to the 17.5% cut in education funding for 18-year-olds, support so that everybody, regardless of age, to achieve to at least level three, and a rebalancing of the traditional post-18 educational landscape.

  • In many respects the Augar Review represents a wider emerging consensus across England. We are sure that you will agree with us and other key stakeholders that further education colleges have been neglected, and that there is now a growing appreciation of their unique role, value and potential. What we now need are decisions and commitments: with your political leadership, support and resolve, colleges will be able to build on what they already do to reach more employers and more adults and make the differences our economy and society need.

David Hughes, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges said: It is extraordinary to have every leader in every general further education college in the country collaborate like this. But then these are extraordinary times. These college leaders are uniquely placed at the hearts of their communities, working closely with local, national and international business, supporting individuals to get on in life, and driving the social mobility agenda. Government needs to listen to them if they’ve got any chance of tackling the major issues this country faces, now and in the future.

Welsh Digital Skills: the Welsh Government have published a strategic framework for post-16 digital learning to increase the continuity of learning experiences and transition from compulsory to post-compulsory learning provision.  Vision and aims:

  • Clear, nationally agreed standards for digital skills are in place to enable learners and staff to meet industry, private and public sector requirements, building on the digital competences developed during compulsory schooling
  • The coherence and accessibility of digital learning is increased through a range of curriculum delivery methods that are appropriate to learner and employer needs
  • The benefits of digital technology, and possible barriers to their achievement, are understood by all staff including senior leaders
  • A culture of collaboration ensures that information and best practice are shared to drive effective use of digital skills to support leadership, learning and business processes
  • Staff, learning and business resources are aligned to enable efficient support of the continually evolving digital requirements of post-16 education

Kirsty Williams, Welsh Education Minister, stated: Our Economic Action Plan highlights the importance of businesses adapting to the opportunities and the challenges presented by new technologies in order to grow the Welsh economy and pursue our aim of prosperity for all. We can’t predict exactly how technology will evolve over the next decade, but we can equip our post-16 learners with the confidence and capability they will need to use digital tools in their work and their everyday lives.

What’s your favourite subject?

The British Academy published a YouGov Poll revealing the nation’s favourite school and university subjects. The study, entitled, ‘a nation of enquiring minds’ reveals that:

  • Given the opportunity to start a university degree tomorrow, UK adults were most likely to choose a subject in the humanities and social sciences –
    • 28% would opt for either the humanities (14%) or social sciences (14%),
    • engineering and technology (10%)
    • mathematics and computing (10%)
    • medicine (9%) .
    • English (17%) and history/classics (15%) topped a list of the nation’s favourite school subjects,

The report finds that arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) graduates look forward to strong employment prospects. It states AHSS graduates are as likely to have a job, as resilient to economic downturn, and just as likely to avoid redundancy as STEM graduates. However, AHSS graduates are more flexible (more likely than STEM graduates to voluntarily change job or sector).

Professor Sir David Cannadine, President of the British Academy, said: “The humanities and social sciences help us to make sense of the world in which we live so it is little wonder that the desire to study these subjects at school and university is so great. We not only love the humanities and social sciences in the UK but we also excel at them. Graduates from these disciplines are highly employable and able to weather the changes of a fluctuating job market, while our researchers are disproportionately successful in international funding competitions, punching well above their weight on the world stage.

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Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

Challenging paper by Prof. Pritchard and colleagues

Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Professor Colin Pritchard, Honorary Doctor of Science Anne Silk and their Southampton colleague Lars Hansen who recently published the paper ‘Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World?’  This paper in Medical Hypotheses (published by Elsevier) is a worrying analysis of the effects of (recent) technological progress on our health.  If this paper does not make you worry , at least remember one message: “No mobile phones in trouser pockets or under your pillow as you’re being bathed in 450Mhz.”

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Pritchard, C., Silk, A., Hansen, L. (2019) Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World? Medical Hypotheses 127: 76-83.

 

Invasive Species

The Environmental Audit Committee is running an inquiry into the impact of invasive species and their management. This tackles non-native species living outside their natural range which have arrived by human activity, either deliberate or accidental. Invasive species are those that negatively affect native biodiversity, ecosystem services and public health, through predation, competition or by transmitting disease, costing Great Britain at least £1.8 billion per year. They mainly affect the farming and horticultural sectors but also transport, construction, recreation, aquaculture and utilities. You can read a summary of both of the latest committee evidence sessions (two sessions on 25 June 2019) at this link.

An advanced manufacturing supported supply chain – Enhancing the efficiency of the RNLI

Business Engagement, Fusion, HEIF, Industry collaboration, Knowledge Exchange

 

September will see the completion of a 2 year HEIF project which has been investigating the potential of introducing additive manufacturing (3D Printing) into the RNLI to disrupt the supply chain and enhance engineering design.

The findings of the project will be disseminated at a Business Breakfast to be hosted by the RNLI on 5th September.  The event will also be attended by local engineering businesses.  If you are interested in the project and/or networking with engineering businesses, please sign up to attend the breakfast here.

For further information on the project please contact either Phil Sewell (psewell@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Abi Batley (abatley@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Searchmore Muridzo wins European Travel Grant!

Awarded & submitted bids

Three researchers from the Advances in Media Management research cluster, Dr John Oliver, Melanie Grey and myself (Searchmore Muridzo) recently attended the European Media Management Association (EMMA) annual conference in Limassol, Cyprus. This is the premier media management conference in Europe and boasts of some of the best brains and scholars in the unique niche field that incorporates media and management. I was fortunate enough to be one of two recipients of the EMMA Annual PhD Travel Grant which enabled me to travel to the conference.

To be a participant at the conference and be in the presence of some of the most renowned scholars in media management, such as Prof. Greg Lowe from Northwestern University (Qatar), was a humbling experience but also insightful, as the feedback on my paper has helped me to develop the thinking around my thesis. The conference presentations themselves were not only inspired works but engaging and thought provoking. Networking and potential collaborations in the future were another bonus that came with the conference attendance.

The European Media Management Association is a warm and friendly group of researchers. Overall, the experience was eye opening and beneficial from a personal, academic and cultural outlook.

Searchmore Muridzo, PhD Candidate

Assistive Technology Symposium 2019

conferences, Fusion

Dr Huseyin Dogan and Dr Paul Whittington have organised an Assistive Technology Symposium on Monday 24th June 2019 in Share Lecture Theatre, Fusion Building, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University, 09:00 – 17:00.

The 2nd Assistive Technology Symposium at Bournemouth University will be a fusion of research domains: Digital Health, Educational Technologies, Human Computer Interaction, Inclusion, Learning Strategies through Metacognition, Smart Technologies, and User Experience. Download Assistive Technology Symposium 2019 Programme.
We have presentations from a range of speakers including academics, researchers and postgraduate students, including a keynote presentation from Steve Tyler, Assistive Technology Director of Leonard Cheshire. The Symposium will conclude with a Panel discussing collaborative projects and future Assistive Technology research.
There is no cost to attend the event, but delegates are required to register online through Eventbrite at:
Registration includes refreshments and a finger buffet lunch (please advise by email of any dietary requirements). Tickets will be available on a first come first served basis and there is a maximum capacity of 60 delegates.
If you have any questions regarding the event, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Paul Whittington by email: whittingtonp@bournemouth.ac.uk

Sustainability changes everything

Sustainability as ‘an outcome of conscious thinking’ was discussed at the Faculty of Management’s ‘Sustainability Symposium’ recently.  The event was organised by Dr Karen Thompson and Professor Janet Dickinson in collaboration with the Association of Sustainability Practitioners and we began exploring ideas for new research on sustainability.

Changing economies across the globe to low or no carbon will require new understandings of the relationships between profit, people and the planet.  The new understandings are needed to inform development of new models and ways of doing business that reflect the complexities of social practices.  Three characteristics for research on sustainability issues were identified during the event:

  1. Incorporate partnerships building with practitioners and stakeholders
  2. Cross-disciplinary thinking that seeks to understand the complexity of social practices
  3. Fundamental re-thinking of existing models and ways of doing business.

New approaches to research will be required to address the challenges that face society today and will need to incorporate partnership building.  Derek Robbins, Faculty of Management, is already doing this in his research with bus companies on developing smart apps.  Dr Karen Thompson and Dr Nigel Williams shared their example of using social learning to collaborate with practitioners to develop the new concept of Responsible Project Management.

Their work has recently been shared with local councillors and they are exploring the possibilities for using a framework based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals to promote better decision-making.

Research will also need to be cross-disciplinary.  New models of business that link social practices with the possibilities arising from technological innovation, such as driverless electric cars, are required.  One participant commented:

“this is a really important topic and it was useful to have people here from multiple disciplines because they have different views and are prepared to challenge.  Personally I found I learnt a lot from the other speakers even though I’ve been working in this area for quite some time, so thank you very much.” (EC)

Research that seeks incremental improvement is unlikely to deliver enough change quickly enough.  Re-thinking existing economic and business models from the bottom-up is required, and new models must balance the need for environmental restoration, reducing conflict between communities as well as being economically viable.

As well as the dependencies between economy, people and planet, there are other dependencies to be understood.  There are internal dependencies that underpin our actions and determine outcomes.  Values and information underpin the choices humans make, and our choices determine our actions and the outcomes.  Understanding and, ultimately changing values, will clearly be very challenging.

Four sustainability ‘mindsets’ have been identified and the challenge is how to move society towards the top right quadrant of conscious awareness.  Research is urgently required on understanding what will work and what are the barriers to change.  Researchers will need to work closely with practitioners and businesses to experiment and evaluate alternatives, and they urgently need to do so.

 

 

For further information, or to discuss how these models can be used, please contact Dr Karen Thompson, Dr Nigel Williams or Professor Janet Dickinson, all from Faculty of Management.

Can sustainability be taught?

Centre for Excellence in Learning

At the FoM ‘Sustainability Symposium’ yesterday, we explored what sustainability means for teaching and learning.

Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU, with KPIs for aligning all courses and research with one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the launch of a Strategic Investent Area for ‘Sustainability, Low-Carbon Technology and Material Science’ last week.  Yesterday an audience of academics, students, professional services colleagues and external practitioners came together to better understand the crises facing humanity today.

Gwyn Jones, Director of Association of Sustainability Practitioners, argued for sustainability to be viewed as the outcome of conscious thinking.    Accordingly, sustainability is experienced and practised rather than learnt in a classroom and is enacted as a mindset.

Four mindsets have been identified and our challenge is to move society and our learners towards the top right quadrant of conscious awareness.

 

The question we asked was ‘What does extinction mean for business?’   It became clear that the question is relevant not only to the Business School, but for all disciplines at BU as indicated by a comment from one participant “I found it really interesting and frankly rather scary (and I’m informed) … I’m keen to try to do something similar [in my Faculty] and be active in this agenda more broadly” (FC).

Most models of business are based on assumptions that value profit and growth above all else.  Many of these models were developed during the industrial revolution and are now contributing to the destruction of our environment and society.  According to Gwyn, those who claim to have answers to sustainability, don’t understand the problem.

We discussed new business models and case studies that are based on understandings of purpose and decision-making that balances competing priorities.  One student who was with us for the day commented “I am very excited to interact with all the bright minds in the room discussing sustainability … it was a great day for me” (Sacha, MBA student).

So, what does this mean for programmes and pedagogy?  We can no longer rely solely on text books because we are only just starting to uncover the questions we need to ask.  Understanding how we can live sustainably with ‘enough for everyone, forever’ has not been addressed before and we do not have answers yet.  We need to be comfortable asking difficult questions and seeking answers in novel ways.  Social learning is one approach being used to develop new concepts.  Dr Karen Thompson and Dr Nigel Williams have been collaborating with practitioners to ask novel questions and develop new resources for education, research and practice of Responsible Project Management.

An argument made by Karen is that sustainability should not be seen as an ‘add on’ to the curriculum, rather it should be used as a lens through which we view all aspects of our discipline.

Experiential learning will be important for developing a sustainability mindset among learners.  ‘Living Labs’ are recognised in BU2025 and can be expected to play a useful role for both education and research in the future.  We need to develop learners’ sense of agency and confidence that they can make a difference in the world.  Virtual reality may have a role to play in developing the capabilities for managing more responsibly.  Lastly, we need to encourage our graduates to become advocates for better decision-making in the organisations they will work in.

For further information, or for advice about running your own sustainability event, please contact Dr Karen Thompson or Professor Janet Dickinson, both from Faculty of Management.

Sustainability Symposium

The Faculty of Management held a “Sustainability Symposium” yesterday as one response to the challenges facing businesses today. Organised by Dr Karen Thompson in collaboration with Professor Janet Dickinson and Gwyn Jones, a Director of the Association of Sustainability Practitioners, the event brought together over 50 participants, including academics from a range of disciplines, students and external practitioners.

Sustainability is not just about technology, as Professor Janet Dickinson explains:

“The Committee on Climate Change suggest the UK could achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  Technology is expected to produce 38% of the reduction, societal/behavioural change delivering 9% and the remining 53% coming from a combination of both.”

Clearly, social scientists and business experts will need to work with the technologists to develop solutions and change society if we are to achieve this target.

Nor is sustainability just an issue for future generations.  The impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are here today and, according to the latest models, we only have a very short window of opportunity before the planet reaches a ‘tipping point’ beyond which we will be unable to reverse progress towards an uninhabitable planet.  “Being less unsustainable is not the same as being sustainable” (Hugo Spowers, Founder & CEO of Riversimple).

Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU.  Our BU2025 vision includes KPIs for all our research and education to be aligned with one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and a new Strategic Investment Area has recently been launched in ‘Sustainability, Low-Carbon Technology and Materials Science’.

Business is one of the greatest forces on the planet.  Emerging research suggests that companies who proclaim their ‘green’ credentials most loudly often perform the worst, not just in terms of the environment but also in terms of profits and shareholder value over the long term.  Trading-off between the short term and the long term, or between domains, does not produce sustainability for a business.

One of the questions posed by Gwyn Jones was ‘What are we trying to sustain?  He suggested that what we are aiming to sustain is life.  And the question we do not yet have an answer to is ‘How can 10 billion people live in harmony and peace, equitably by 2050?’

Seeking answers to this question in a business context involves developing our understandings of the dependencies among profit, people and planet.  In other words, every business depends upon a community, and all communities depend on the natural environment.

All businesses draw resources from and have impacts, both beneficial and detrimental, on the other domains.  Awareness and understanding of these dependencies will be required if we are to make progress.  The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals can provide a useful framework for analysing impact and are mapped against the biosphere, society and the economy.

Sustainability has profound implications for both education and research.

We explored the question ‘Can sustainability be taught?’ (see a separate post on this).

Research on sustainability is likely to require one or more of the three characteristics identified during the event:

  1. Cross-disciplinary thinking that seeks to understand the complexity of social practices
  2. Fundamental re-thinking of existing models and ways of doing business
  3. Partnerships with practitioners and stakeholders representing the interests of all domains.

Further thoughts on the implications for research are discussed in a separate post (see ‘Sustainability changes everything’).

For further information please contact Dr Karen Thompson or Professor Janet Dickinson, from Faculty of Management.

HE Policy Update for the w/e 7th June 2019

international, Student Engagement

Is it only just over a week since Augar landed?  Given the volume of commentary, it feels much longer.  We are quite good as a sector at criticism and finding the potential problems and risks in things.  As a HEPI blog says: “Last week’s Augar report divided opinion. At HEPI, we were at the more positive end of the spectrum, not least because the report addressed, in a serious way, pretty much all the points we had said it should. We were, and remain, determined not to fall down the biggest rabbit hole that has to be avoided when commenting sensibly on public policy: being unceasingly negative and refusing to recognise serious attempts to address genuine problems.” 

Last week  we stuck to the facts looking at the full set of recommendations and the content of the report, this week we look more at opinions in a report that may well not be implemented in full, but is unlikely to disappear completely.

One thing that everyone can agree on is that the implications of Augar are ominous for the Arts and Humanities – the (historian) Minister for Universities gave a speech on Thursday which we discuss below, with some reflections on what Augar could mean for Arts and Humanities subjects in universities.  This update was getting so big, we have written about that in a separate blog here.

Augar – what next?

On Tuesday the Secretary of State of Education, Damien Hinds, made a statement on the Government’s review of post-18 education and its funding – the first review since the Robbins report in 1963 to look at the totality of post-18 education. Hinds said the Government will carefully consider the independent panel’s recommendations before finalising any spending review announcements.

  • A lot of the attention will be on what this report says about higher education, but the majority of students in post-18 education are not at university. The report identifies the importance of both further and higher education in creating a system that unlocks everyone’s talents. As the Prime Minister said last week, further education and technical colleges are not just places of learning; they are vital engines of both social mobility and economic prosperity. Colleges play an essential part in delivering the modern industrial strategy and equipping young people with knowledge and skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. We are conscious of the need for reskilling and upskilling at a time when we are all more likely to have multiple careers during our working lives.
  • …Our higher education system transforms lives and is a great contributor to both our industrial success and the cultural life of the nation. It can open up a whole world of opportunities and broaden horizons. Whatever decisions we make about how best to take forward the recommendations in the report, it is vital that we support these institutions to continue to offer world-leading higher education to students in future.

Hinds went on to highlight the general importance of education to society, listing current government policy geared toward improving education. He said that is it right that contributions to the cost of higher education are shared between the taxpayer and the student. The Minister added that although 18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds are now 52 per cent more likely to go to university than 10 years ago, progress is still required in levelling the playing field in higher education.

In keeping with the continued pressure for Government to improve social mobility Hinds said: The panel’s proposals on support for disadvantaged groups are an important contribution to the debate in this area. I very much welcome the focus that the panel has placed on making sure that all higher education is of high quality and delivers well for both students and the taxpayer. There are very high-quality courses across the full range of subjects—from creative arts to medicine—but there are also courses where students are less well served. I have also spoken in recent months of bad practices not in the student interest, such as artificial grade inflation and so-called conditional unconditional offers.

On implementation: The panel’s recommendations on student finance are detailed and interrelated, and cannot be considered each in isolation. We will need to look carefully at each recommendation in turn and in the round to reach a view on what will best support students and the institutions they study at, and what will ensure value for taxpayers. In considering these recommendations, we will also have regard to students currently in the system or about to enter it to ensure that any changes are fair to current and new cohorts of students.  I am sure the House will recognise that this comprehensive report, with detailed analysis and no fewer than 53 recommendations, gives the Government a lot to consider. We will continue to engage with stakeholders on the findings and recommendations in the panel report, and we will conclude the review at the spending review.

The shadow secretary of state for education, Angela Rayner, responded, arguing the Conservatives have previously made terrible decisions regarding education. She intimated her belief that any adoption of recommendations will be deferred until the spending review, or the appointment of a new chancellor.

  • “Augar is the epitaph for Theresa May’s government…slow, wrong-headed, indecisive and, above all, failing in its central objective, to help level up Britain. As it stands, the Government have now wasted two years on a review to reach the blindingly obvious conclusion that, as the Prime Minister now admits, abolishing maintenance grants was a huge mistake.
  • Decisions need to be made on funding. The outgoing Prime Minister promised that austerity is over, but there is every danger it will continue in tertiary education. Presumably, the Secretary of State accepts that a cash freeze in funding for universities means a real-terms cut. Is the tokenistic fee cut pushed by the Prime Minister not the worst of both worlds, as institutions will have their hands tied on funding while students will still be graduating with tens of thousands of pounds of debt?”

She pushed the Secretary of State to assure the House that maintenance grants will be restored and that the cash-freeze for university’s will not have an equality impact burden – and that an assessment of this would be produced.  She concluded that any shortcomings in the Augar review are a product of the limitations the Government has set on them.

The Secretary of State responded:

  • The hon. Lady asked me to commit to not playing off further education and higher education. I give her that absolute commitment. That principle is at the heart of the independent panel’s report: both routes of higher learning are essential for widening social mobility, for letting young people fulfil their full potential, and indeed for enabling our economy and our society to fulfil theirs.
  • We should not lose sight of the fact that we have a successful system in place, particularly for the financing of higher education. The hon. Lady and her Front-Bench colleagues constantly complain about it, but since the 2012 reforms, resource per student has increased dramatically, the living costs support available to disadvantaged students has risen to its highest ever level, more young people are going to university than ever before, and more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university than ever before.

The Chair of the Select Committee on Education, Robert Halfon, raised the necessity of degree apprenticeships to ensure individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds gain the necessary skills to gain skilled employment. I welcome much of the report, particularly its strong emphasis on further education and technical education. Our Education Committee report talked about value for money in higher education and universities, focusing on skills, employability and social justice. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the real engine of those three things is using funds to boost and put more emphasis on degree apprenticeships? They help people from disadvantaged backgrounds to gain the skills they need, they help us to meet our skills needs and they ensure that people are employed in properly skilled jobs.

Jo Johnson: The Augar review does not mention the teaching excellence framework. What use does the Secretary of State think the TEF will have in assessing which courses offer value for money for students and the general taxpayer?   [Readers will remember that differential fees based on TEF outcome were thrown out of the HERA by the Lords.]. Hinds: The TEF is a very important reform and is part of the framework from HERA—the Higher Education and Research Act 2017—and the OFS that enables a much more holistic view of quality in higher education. It remains a central part of that architecture.

Carol Monaghan, the SNP Spokesperson for Education questioned whether the Government will make up any funding shortfall associated with a reduction in fees. Hinds responded that education equality in England is better than that of Scotland and all recommendations will be considered carefully.

Several non-Conservative MPs echoed Rayner’s arguments, questioning when grants would be reinstated or whether the Government will fund the shortfall in funding for disadvantaged students.

Thangham Debbonaire (Lab, Bristol West) raised a necessity for free or low-cost high-quality childcare to ensure more women can develop their potential within further education to ultimately close the gender pay gap.  Hinds side stepped a direct response.

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods: “…we want to hear a guarantee from the Minister that those resources will not come from higher education. We also want a guarantee that if tuition fees are reduced, any shortfall of money going to universities will be made up by teaching grant from the Government not just for science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, but for arts and humanities subjects, because they are also very important for our economy. If these proposals will eventually see their way into legislation—it is not clear to any of us how that would happen—is the Minister going to consult the sector widely so that he does not destabilise it further? We need those guarantees so that universities have certainty if they are to compete globally.”

Hinds: “The hon. Lady will shortly meet the universities Minister in her all-party group on universities and will have an opportunity to discuss some of these things further. She mentioned teaching grants. The Augar report recommends precisely that—that there should be top-ups, although not exactly the same for all subjects. Few people realise the extent of the teaching grant. It is £1.3 billion, with some 40%—two in five—of courses attracting some sort of teaching grant. What the report talks about is how we balance that correctly properly to reflect not only value but cost to serve, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien).” [So no guarantee then, despite his earlier commitment to “not playing off further education and higher education”.

Later in response to questions he also says: We must not allow different parts of our education system to be pitted against each other, and I can give him an absolute commitment not to do so. In fact, as he will know through his work, there is already a great deal of cross-over between what higher education institutions do and what further education institutions do, but they are both incredibly important parts of the overall system.

Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): As I learned from the 10 years I chaired the Select Committee, we make most progress in higher education when we find a cross-party consensus, as anyone who looks at the Robbins report or subsequent reports, such as the Dearing report, will know. There is some good stuff in this report. ….let us build a cross-party consensus. I love the part about a new fund for lifelong learning. Tony Blair introduced one in 1997. It failed, but everybody knew we should bring it back to secure the future of further and higher education. So I say well ​done in part, but if the Secretary of State could keep a higher education Minister for more than a few months we would do a lot better.

Hinds: The hon. Gentleman was right about more than one thing—let us say several. He spoke of the local importance of universities not only to the cultural life of our towns and cities but to, for instance, local economies, business development, innovation, and research and development. He was absolutely right about that, but he was also right to speak of the importance of securing a degree of consensus about these matters. The last two major reports, the Browne and Dearing reports, straddled a change of Government. I hope that that will not happen on this occasion, but I think it right for us to have an opportunity, between now and the conclusion of the spending review, to engage in a good discussion with, among others, representatives of the sector and politicians on both sides of the House and elsewhere, because I think that such discussions help policy making to evolve.

Augar was mentioned in Wed’s Prime Minister’s Questions – Richard Graham (Conservative) made the case that the Government’s review into post-18 education should be “essential reading” for Treasury ministers before the Spending Review. He said that more funding for further education would be “very welcome”. Lidington concurred that further education plays a vital role in equipping young people with skills, but also providing a path towards higher education. He added that the Augar Review “provides a blueprint of how we can make sure that everybody can follow the path that is right for them” and its conclusions should be studied carefully before the Spending Review.

Augar – the critique

Wonkhe have centralised all their analysis and blogs on the Post-18 review and Augar – find it all  here. Including this ‘lessons learned’ blog from crossbench peer Professor Dame Julie King (who was part of the previous Browne review) and says Augar is ‘damaging’ and that it does not propose fundamental transformation.

One concern has been the impact on social mobility.  The Sutton Trust response is here:

  • The Augar Review’s headline proposal to reduce tuition fees to £7,500, alongside the reintroduction of maintenance grants, means that the overall student “debt” figure looks a little less eye watering.  But the review also proposes lowering the repayment threshold from £25,000 to £23,000 (based on 2018 figures) and to extend the lifetime repayment period to 40 years from the current 30 years, all at interest rates which at present are around 6 percent.  This means that lower and middle earners (like teachers and social workers) will end up paying more than they did before  and for longer – and the wealthiest, who can fall back on support from parent or grandparents, can pay the fees upfront, or over a shorter period, and thus contribute far less overall.
  • This is why the Sutton Trust has always argued for means tested fees – so the poorest student are asked to pay less than the wealthiest- and we are disappointed that the Post-18 Review did not adopt this as a policy.   It seems to us fundamentally unfair that, whatever the repayment mechanism, the son or daughter of a cleaner is asked to pay the same as the son or daughter of a stock broker.

Lizzy Woodfield, Policy Advisor at Aston University, wrote for Wonkhe on WP: “Government should undoubtedly run with reintroducing maintenance grants, but not so hastily that it overlooks commuter students. The continued freeze in per student funding risks further squeezing universities’ ability to maintain high quality student services, like careers and placements and additional learning support, which support retention, success and good graduate outcomes. Doing away with foundation years would be very ill-advised and would set widening participation back.”

In an article for Wonkhe on 4th June 2019 , David Willets, the former Minister for Universities and Science, points out:

  • “The period covered by the LEO data is the ten years since the financial crash. Our research at Resolution Foundation has shown that this post-crash decade has been particularly bad for salaries, and even more so for the pay of young people. The real hourly pay of young people aged 18-29 fell by 9% in the four years after the crash – an unprecedented fall followed by a modest recovery. Unemployment was less bad than in previous recessions but – again – one group which did suffer increased unemployment was young people with lowest educational qualifications. Their unemployment rate increased from 68% to 56% after the crash whereas for graduates it only fell from 91% to 88%. It looks as if graduates traded down to less well-paid jobs, displacing the less qualified.
  • The LEO data excludes unemployed people so the only effect they show is on pay. You would not get any sense from the review that the British economy has just been through its deepest post-war recession – with big effects covering exactly the same period as the LEO data. By contrast that same decade did not see a significant increase in the number of graduates – indeed the rate of increase of people with higher education qualifications slowed down. So it is dangerous to interpret LEO data as telling us much about higher education when it may be telling us more about the post crash labour market.”

There is also a geographical effect.  This has been raised by many in the sector before and I understand that there is some work looking at this in the context of the TEF (which is using median earnings as supplemental data in the subject level TEF pilot). The Office for National Statistics latest report on geographic mobility and young people (2012-2016) shows the change in average earnings growth for young people by local authority (see Figure 6). We wrote about some of these issues in our policy update on 6th July 2018

Augar – what does it mean for the Arts and Humanities

In an interesting choice of headlines, the headline on gov.uk is “Science Minister hails the importance of humanities to society”.  Of course his full title is Minister of State for Universities, Science and Innovation (and currently also Interim Minister of Stage for Energy and Clean Growth.  Like his predecessor , Chris Skidmore has also taken several titles upon himself – Sam Gyimah was famously “minister for students” and Chris Skidmore has called himself “minster for the 2.4% [investment in R&D]” and “minister for EdTEch”.  But most importantly, he adopted the title “Minister for the Arts and Humanities”. So what did this former academic and historian say on this vital topic at the meeting of the Arts and Humanities Research Council?  The full speech is here.

So with all that in mind, we took a look at the implications of Augar for the Arts and Humanities.  One narrative around the Augar Review is that it has embraced, and even validated the popular narrative about “mickey mouse degrees” and universities filling low cost, high volume courses, putting “bums on seats” to subsidise other activities, doing a disservice to “overqualified graduates” who are “saddled with debt” that they can never repay.  This shocking state of affairs means that the government subsidy to higher education, in the form of direct funding and underwriting for the student loan system, in which 83% of students will not repay their loans in full, is misdirected and therefore the taxpayer is receiving poor value for money.  And, the argument goes, it is not only the taxpayer who is being ripped off, but students are too.  They are being tricked into taking courses that will not lead to better paid jobs but will instead leave them with student loans that will hold them back even further.  These are the students who should be doing technical training, apprenticeships.  They should be plumbers and bricklayers.  They have been told that they will achieve social mobility through education, and it isn’t true.  These narratives were not born with the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding in February 2018.  They became sharper once the tuition fee cap was increased to £9000 and were heightened when Labour adopted a policy of abolishing fees.  Jo Johnson raised them when launching the Green Paper in November 2015 that led to the Teaching Excellence Framework and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.  In just one example, many of the arguments were rehearsed by Jo Johnson as Universities Minister in a speech in February 2017.  It all boils down to value for money.

But there is a terrific confusion here, as highlighted by the Minister earlier on.  The talk in Augar is all about value for money subject level.  But when people (including previous Universities Ministers (both Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson) and the current Education Minister) talk about this, they talk not about the value of whole subjects, but of individual courses at individual universities.  And so they talk about quality.  But they don’t really mean quality either, because they talk about entry tariffs and outcomes and start talking about bums on seats.  Which is the big give away.  What they really mean is that they believe that there are too many students going to universities to do courses which are not aligned with the government’s priorities.  This is about the government wanting to choose not to invest in subjects that they believe do not add value to the economy.  Which is why Augar, which is all about money, has kept in the threat of a 3D threshold and/or a cap on student numbers (for some courses at some universities).

You can read more in our separate blog on this here.

Student Mental Health

The OfS have published details of the 10 winners of their Challenge Competition (investing £14.5 million) which aimed to achieve a step change in mental health outcomes for students.

The OfS new story says:

  • The proportion of full-time UK undergraduate students reporting mental health concerns when they enter higher education has more than doubled over the last five years.
  • Over 87% of students said they struggle with feelings of anxiety, and 1 in 3 experienced a serious psychological issue which required professional help.
  • OfS data shows that full-time students with a declared mental health condition are more likely to drop out, and less likely to achieve a first or 2:1 degree or secure good jobs after graduation.

This week they have released a news story focussing on Northumbria University which aims to reduce student suicide through utilising analytics and mining data (such as social media). Of course the scheme has to be data compliant and students have to opt in. Northumbria state that only 1 in 3 suicide deaths are known to mental health services. In response the researchers have developed an Early Alert Tool identifying students in crisis to sport early warning signs and to target intervention. (A little more information on the data triggers is here.) Northumbria’s project has been picked up by the Telegraph.

Projects in other Universities cover:

  • Transition from school to university – addressing the first year additional vulnerability something mentioned by the Minister in his recent speeches]
  • Mental health needs specific to international students [another thing mentioned by the Minister recently]
  • Advancing HE / NHS partnership working to improve support
  • Embedding mental health within a community approach, holistically incorporating police, local authorities and the NHS.
  • Developing a module for the PGCertHE to ensure that new academics, nationally, have the knowledge and skills to support mental health and learning through their teaching.
  • Creation of a ‘hub’ of qualified therapists and volunteers with mental health experience who will provide brief therapeutic interventions for students in comfortable, open-plan safe-spaces without the need for appointments or waiting lists.
  • Curriculum-based ‘mind management’ skills training (separate UG and PG courses) which use evidence-based approaches for improving emotion regulation and for managing common issues in student life (e.g. anxiety, stress, social isolation, managing expectations, imposter syndrome).

Nicola Dandridge, OfS Chief Exec, said:

  • Whenever I talk to students, improving mental health support is consistently raised as a priority. Universities and colleges are responding to the problem, but in too many cases students are having their experience of higher education blighted by mental ill-health. For many of these students, there is much more that we can do. Taking preventative action to promote good mental health is critical, as is taking a whole institution approach and involving students in developing solutions. In addition, the earlier we can identify issues developing, the more effectively we can give the vital support that is needed.
  • We know that many complex factors impact on students’ mental health and wellbeing, so addressing mental ill health is always going to be challenging. But universities and colleges are uniquely placed to rise to that challenge: through the expertise of their staff, insights from their own students, and their ability to bring groups and other organisations together to tackle complex problems in partnership.

The Independent covers the launch of the projects.

Tory leadership contest

From Dods:

  • Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow has dismissed the idea that Parliament could be prorogued in order to force through a no-deal Brexit. The idea that Parliament could be dissolved by a new Prime Minister, so that MPs could not take any legislative steps to block no-deal, was touted by ERG members and gained attention when leadership contender Dominic Raab repeatedly refused to rule out pursuing it. The Speaker yesterday, however, told MPs that it was “simply not going to happen.”
  • 10 have confirmed that the Commons will be sitting when the new Prime Minister is appointed at the end of July, amid concerns that Parliament could have entered summer recess before this happens which would mean that the new PM could avoid a potential no confidence vote.
  • Theresa May will resign as Conservative Party leader today, but will remain on as Prime Minister until her successor is appointed in late July.
  • Boris Johnson will launch a judicial review today to challenge the private prosecution against him for the alleged offence of misconduct in public office.

Sarah enjoyed this Spectator article on the Tory leadership contest.

  • Parties don’t get rid of their leaders unless things are going very badly. But this Tory crisis is different in scale and size to anything we have seen in recent decades. The question is not whether the Tories can win the next election, but whether they can survive.
  • The dire state that the Tories are in hasn’t put anyone off running to be leader, however. We suddenly have the most crowded field we have ever seen in a leadership race. Whoever wins will become prime minister without having to go through a general election. It’s quite a prize. Given the unpredictability of Tory contests and the frontrunners’ ability to destroy each other, everyone thinks they have a chance.

It divides the candidates into two categories: the ‘full-blooded Brexiteer’ and ‘compromising cabinet members’. Then it explains the four challenges the Conservative leadership will need to deliver on:

The Tory party is attempting to answer four different questions in this contest.

  • The first is who can best get Britain out of the EU. This will require not just an ability to find a way to extract concessions from a recalcitrant EU, but also an understanding of how to get Britain’s departure through parliament.
  • Secondly, the Tories are trying to work out who is best placed to take on Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage. Given the parliamentary numbers, the next election is likely to come sooner than 2022 and so the Tories need someone who can fight on two fronts simultaneously.
  • The next question is who can come up with a new domestic agenda. The failure of Theresa May’s attempt to reinvent the Tories as a Christian Democrat party has resulted in a vacuum where Tory domestic policy should be.
  • Finally, the Tories must ask themselves who could best do the job of being prime minister.

The problem for the party is no one candidate is the best answer to all four questions. The Tories will have to make trade-offs to decide which qualities they regard as the most important.

Apart from their views on Brexit, the candidates are trying to differentiate themselves on other policies too.  We pick out a few of both here but of course there is much more.  Two dropped out this week – James Cleverly and Kit Malthouse.  Nominations (which now require 8 MPs rather than 2) open and close on Monday.  The BBC list is here.   The Express have their take here  Politics.co.uk have a detailed analysis of their policies on Brexit.  And the (Boris Johnson banking) Guido Fawkes shows the state of support amongst Tory MPs .

  • Matt Hancock has pledged to re-implement a form of student nurse bursary if he succeeds as PM.  Huff post reports: he said that he would offer new cash support for mature student nurses, and those specialising in mental health and community work, in a bid to fill staff shortages. However, he is clear it is about nursing dearth areas: ensure…in the areas of shortage we have that sort of targeted support that’s needed – so not across the full nursing training spectrum. He continues: There’s a question of how you make sure the money we’ve got goes as far as possible. There’s an overall shortage of nursing. It isn’t as big as the headline vacancy figures suggest. But there are acute shortages, especially in some specific areas like mental health nurses, and community nursing. And: I want to make sure that the approach we take is to support and incentivise people into those areas where we’ve got shortages.  He also intends to tackle big business care providers for whom profit is a key objective.
  • Michael Gove has said that if it “finally comes to a decision between no deal and no Brexit, I will choose no deal”. However, he would be willing to delay Brexit beyond the 31st October if a deal was in sight, stating it wouldn’t be right to ‘flounce’ out of the EU for a delay of mere weeks. Gove said that the deadline of 31 October was “arbitrary” and he was “not wedded” to it. That any delay would only be sought if a deal or breakthrough was on the horizon. This sets him against the other front runners, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, who have said that the UK will leave the 31 October under any circumstances.
  • Dominic Raab has repeatedly refused to rule out proroguing (discontinue) Parliament days before 31 October, which would in theory prevent Parliament from blocking a no-deal and see the UK crash out at midnight on the 31st. This move would be completely unprecedented, and arguably unconstitutional. Sky News, Lewis Goodall has said such a move would be “a hand grenade into our constitution” and leadership contender Rory Stewart has said “it would be illegal…it would be unconstitutional and it would be undemocratic.”
  • Sajid Javid has said he supports Jo Johnson’s amendment to the draft immigration legislation to change post-study visas to encourage international students.  He is, after all, Home Secretary, and since his appointment has been less than enthusiastic about TM’s “hostile environment”, dealing with the fallout from the Windrush scandal amongst other things.  The FT article says: “Mr Javid has already announced plans to axe the net migration target — which has never been met — if he becomes the next Conservative leader and is now also supporting the move to let students stay for longer after they finish at university. Mr Johnson has forced the pace on the issue, tabling an amendment to the government’s immigration bill — designed to implement a post-Brexit visa regime — which would take students out of the net migration target. …In 2012 Britain cut the time that students can work after graduating from two years to just four months, although the government this year recognised that the new regime was causing problems and agreed to raise the limit to six months.”
  • Rory Stewart says his competitors’ claims they could negotiate a new Brexit deal before 31 October are “misleading” and there is “not a hope” a new deal can by deadline.
  • Behind its paywall, the Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson plans to spend at least £5000 on every secondary school pupil to “level up” Britain’s education system.

Cost of housing hinders employment prospects

The Resolution Foundation has published: Moving Matters – Housing costs and labour market mobility.  The briefing doesn’t focus on the HE sector but that are some interesting findings that could be transferable.

Nationally changing areas to move for new employment and housing purposes has fallen. Unexpectedly the rate has particularly dropped within the younger age groups. The report notes this is surprising because young people are more likely to be graduates, non-UK born and private renters than in the past, changes that should have increased rather than decreased moves made for work.

Why?

  1. Because moving area isn’t essential to get a job – “the variation between the employment rates observed across local authorities has reduced over time” – so it is possible for young people to obtain some form of employment relatively locally. This is not ideal for graduate outcome statistics as earnings are expected to be lower, the job likely to be less specialised or relevant to the degree. It becomes a compromise option – once that can be difficult to recover from financially in their future career (see this Policy Update page 6 – impact of recession on graduates) .
  2. Moving isn’t as lucrative as it once was – “the ‘pull’ of more buoyant areas has fallen apace.. the difference in the average ‘wage premium’ achieved as a result of such a move has fallen since the turn of the century.”
  3. High housing costs negate the wage premium – “private rents have risen consistently faster in higher-paying areas of England. Rents have risen by almost 90% in the highest-paying 30% of local authorities over the past 20 years, compared to just over 70% among the 30% lowest paying places. As a result, not only has the earnings boost of moving to a more productive area diminished as a result of closing wage differentials; so, too, has the broader living standards uplift once housing costs are taken into account. So for the young graduate quality of housing and lifestyle may well go down as the quality high cost rents are prohibitive.

The report notes that job + housing mobility rate have fallen over time and the number of relocations moving to lower housing cost areas (47%) has increased  6% in the last 15 years. It also highlights a rise in commuting time – which costs the individual both in time and money.

  • With the evidence showing that efficiently matching with job opportunities is especially important for young people at the beginning of their working lives, the intergenerational implications of this briefing note are clear. While two of the reasons we identify that potentially explain the fall in job-plus-residence moves can be viewed as positive, our findings about the way that rising housing costs are determining the behaviour of younger renters in particular is a real cause for concern.
  • ..the evidence is clear that the real boosts to earnings are achieved by moving jobs. Critically, taking a new post in a different firm has a larger pay uplift than simply being promoted within the same organisation, and moving to denser, more productive areas comes with an even bigger pay premium. We know that job mobility is especially important at the start of one’s working life, when progression depends on testing out new roles and developing new skills. Moreover, an agile workforce is generally viewed as good not just for the individuals concerned, but also for the economy as workers ‘match’ more efficiently with business requirements.

You can read the detail of the full report here.

Spending Review

With Teresa May stepping down as PM and the Tory leadership race galloping along the Spending Review will be delayed and likely to be finalised between autumn and Christmas 2019. Liz Truss MP (Chief Secretary to the Treasury) was questioned by the Lords on the Spending Review this week.   this is very important to the Augar review, as the government response will be timed to come out with it.

Here are the most interesting snippets:

  • Truss confirmed the Spending Review preparatory work had ‘already began’ with the Treasury having ‘written to departments asking for initial capital bids, human capital submissions and reform proposals’.
  • Lord Turnbull (Crossbench) asked whether the spending review was likely to prioritise ongoing austerity measures and the reduction of the deficit, or whether spending might be increased or taxes increased. Truss replied that the priorities were likely to continue to be reducing the national debt and maintaining fiscal discipline. However, the main priority was economic growth, and therefore spending and tax reforms would be directed towards that goal.
  • Lord Layard asked for the Treasury’s response to the Augar Review. Truss responded that FE needed reform and that there had been ‘problems with funding’. The Augar Review would be considered within the Spending Review, she said, though given the amount of public subsidy to universities, which was higher than in other areas, better value for money was crucial. She went on to state that she supported the notion of students contributing towards their own education and was not in favour of capping student places.
  • In response the Chair (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, Conservative) voiced concerns that universities and university placements were being judged too narrowly on their value pertaining to economic productivity and not enough on whether they produced good quality of life.

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

Degree Apprenticeships: The Augar Review, the Higher Education Commission, and budget concerns have all cast doubt on the effectiveness of degree apprenticeships during 2019. Concerns that it is not attracting the sections of the population who could benefit most from social mobility,  that existing courses are being rebranded as degree apprenticeships to attract funding and are not truly in the spirit of the alternative route to higher qualification, that higher level provision is counter productively squeezing out lower level apprenticeship starts, that rurality and access remains an issue, and crucially that a high proportion of degree apprenticeship starts are not within areas that will help deliver the Government’s industrial strategy have all come to a head. This Wonkhe blog Post Augar, what will it take to reform degree apprenticeships? takes a gallop through the issues.

Gender employment gap: The BBC report on research which finds gender as the main factor in employment seniority, regardless of whether the female had children or not.

Soft power:  It was good to hear Chris Skidmore publically acknowledge the importance of soft power through educating international students in answering a question on tuition grants for students living in Africa:  Scholarships are a key part of the UK’s soft power, creating lasting positive relations with future leaders, influencers and decision-makers around the world. Many scholars funded by the UK go on to take up senior leadership positions in their home countries, and the strong bond they have formed with the UK enhances our direct and indirect influence abroad. This enhances our diplomatic work, our efforts in promoting increased trade and investment and supports our national security through increased goodwill and cooperation.

School absence policy debate: While it’s not strictly HE related the parents and carers among our readers might like to be aware of a Westminster Hall debate on school absences during term time. Here is the quick summary. Don’t go booking that term time holiday yet though!

HERA:  The House of Lords approved a motion making ‘Uncontroversial’ amendments to the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) relating to the registration and exemption status of some HE providers. You can read a summary here. As you will see some parliamentarians seized on the opportunity to ask what effects the Augar Review would have on matters under discussion.

FE: Parliament have published The Further Education Loans and the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2019. There has been a new regulation inserted which allows the Secretary of State to cancel all or part of a (FE) fee loan in certain circumstances.

TEF: Chris Skidmore answered two parliamentary questions on the TEF. He said the independent TEF review lead by Dame Shirley Pearce is expected to report in summer 2019. Also that the second pilot year of subject level TEF is drawing to a close and the OfS will shortly publish the findings. Skidmore confirms Government will await Dame Shirley’s recommendations, and take account of the evidence from the subject-level TEF pilot, before making a decision on the next phase of the TEF.

Sustainability: Transport Minister, Michael Ellis, has announced the new EU-wide fuel labelling system rolling out from this week which identifies how much of the fuel the drivers are using comes from renewable sources. Here is the news story which simply explains the change, and here is the campaign link.

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What does Augar mean for the Arts and Humanities – Policy Update Supplement 7th June 2019

One thing that everyone can agree on is that the implications of Augar are ominous for the Arts and Humanities – the (historian) Minister for Universities gave a speech on Thursday which we discuss below, with some reflections on what Augar could mean for Arts and Humanities subjects in universities.

The Minister speaks

In an interesting choice of headlines, the headline on gov.uk is “Science Minister hails the importance of humanities to society”.  Of course his full title is Minister of State for Universities, Science and Innovation (and currently also Interim Minister of Stage for Energy and Clean Growth.  Like his predecessor , Chris Skidmore has also taken several titles upon himself – Sam Gyimah was famously “minister for students” and Chris Skidmore has called himself “minster for the 2.4% [investment in R&D]” and “minister for EdTEch”.  But most importantly, he adopted the title “Minister for the Arts and Humanities”.

So what did this former academic and historian say on this vital topic at the meeting of the Arts and Humanities Research Council?  The full speech is here.  It is long – and actually quite interesting.  It’s a shame really that given all the other turmoil we can’t read too much into it because he may not remain as Minister for any of this stuff for very long (as he admits in the speech).  [Did you know? The HE sector has had 5 Universities Ministers in the past 5 years. The last time a Minister lasted more than 6 years in the job was 1902 (source: HEPI – scroll to near end). ] Of course, we may be surprised, if suddenly unity breaks out amongst MPs in the face of the possibility of Nigel Farage as PM, and strong and stable government finally returns…in which case there is a lot of hope for the sector and for the Arts and Humanities in this speech.  He starts:

  • “As many of you know, I’ve attempted to try and achieve a work-life balance that involves juggling policy and public service, with a personal passion for exploring the past and continuing to write history. I continue to do so…because, like many of you here this evening, I am drawn by that overwhelming desire to understand, to comprehend, how different, how similar, previous generations are to our own, and to understand them on their own terms, for their own sake.
  • It is not something that can ever be fully measured, or its value codified by some anonymised data collection processor. Indeed, my own graduate outcome data was only salvaged at the last moment, in the final week before I turned twenty nine, when to my surprise I was elected as the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. That brought to a sudden end any hopes I might have had of my first career path of choice, and dream of entering academia.”

On Augar: “Indeed, even before the report was released, I made clear my concerns over some of the initial leaks, such as the speculation over a three-‘D’ threshold to enter university. And I’m pleased to see that proposal didn’t make the cut. If it had done so, it would have been completely regressive, and would have shut the door on opportunity for so many people whose lives are transformed by our world-leading universities and colleges.” [Yes, but it did make the cut – as a recommendation if the sector does not itself cut recruitment to “low tariff, low value” degrees.]

He makes a very important point which has been bothering your policy team: “But we must be careful not to confuse high-quality with high-value, for they are two different concepts, with two very different outcomes.  High Quality is something that we should all aspire to, whether in our work, our research, our teaching….I hope that our reforms to Higher Education, with the establishment of the Office for Students, which will be fully operational from 1 August this year, will help embed and achieve that focus on quality which must be continued.”  [In other words quality is something for the OfS regulatory regime to worry about, using TEF and other things as tools to support it.]

And then he turns to value:

  • “…data, in its current form, cannot measure everything. And until we have found a way to capture the vital contribution that degrees of social value make to our society – degrees like Nursing or Social Care – then we risk overlooking the true value of these subjects. The same goes for the Arts and Humanities.
  • Although some people around us may argue that the contribution of these disciplines to society may be less tangible, their influence is all around us. …Without people who can think outside the box or challenge ideas.  All this comes from the critical thinking that knowing about different cultures, philosophies and languages provides us….What might be ‘low value’ to one man, might to others represent money well spent on acquiring knowledge for its own sake, expanding one’s cultural horizons, learning to empathise and reflect upon the human condition, applying it to the challenges for the future.
  • There is a place for knowing which subjects have the potential to generate higher salaries in the future– not least for those students who want to make sure they make the right choice of subject and institution for them. For those who wish to know this information, it is also important to highlight the economic benefits of studying creative subjects too.
  • And, actually, the story isn’t all negative for those studying creative subjects. The latest Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data show us that women studying creative arts, in particular, can expect to earn around 9% more on average than women who don’t go into higher education at all. And the highest returning creative arts course can significantly increase female earnings by around 79%. So, a creative education can certainly be the right choice for a number of people….After all, our Industrial Strategy recognises the importance of the Creative Sector in the UK economy, as being an absolutely vital one.”

And the role of arts and humanities in innovation:

  • “Today, we live in a world where around 50% of the UK population have a degree by the time they are 30. Still not enough in my opinion, and certainly not enough if we are to compete as a knowledge economy for the future internationally. As Universities Minister, I’m keen that nobody is deterred from pursuing a particular discipline just because it appears that studying it isn’t for people like them. This is a principle, which applies equally to the Arts and Humanities as it does to Science and Engineering. Thankfully, one mitigating factor to this is the fact that our disciplinary landscape is continually evolving. … multi-disciplinary approaches have become more desired – not just within academia itself, but by businesses, industry and government.
  • Part of this is down to our recognition of the fact that we have to tackle the world’s grand challenges now, before it’s too late. And these challenges, themselves, are not constrained within individual disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, the grand challenges we face today are formed at the intersection of the traditional disciplines – where the Arts, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences meet…
  • The Arts and Humanities are also what makes science ‘useable’. It’s no good developing a cure for a pandemic like Ebola, for example, if you don’t have the anthropologists, the linguists or the lawyers to make the science work on the ground. To bring the product to market. To win the trust of the people. And at a time when trust in knowledge and expertise is constantly threatened by the lapping tides of populism, we need the humanities more than ever to be able to reach out and communicate the value of science and research more than ever….
  • …it is the inclusion of the humanities, running like a golden thread through all scientific collaborations and projects that will protect the future of Western science, maintaining its focus on excellence, but excellence for a human purpose.”

What does Augar mean for the Arts and Humanities?

One narrative around the Augar Review is that it has embraced, and even validated the popular narrative about “mickey mouse degrees” and universities filling low cost, high volume courses, putting “bums on seats” to subsidise other activities, doing a disservice to “overqualified graduates” who are “saddled with debt” that they can never repay.  This shocking state of affairs means that the government subsidy to higher education, in the form of direct funding and underwriting for the student loan system, in which 83% of students will not repay their loans in full, is misdirected and therefore the taxpayer is receiving poor value for money.  And, the argument goes, it is not only the taxpayer who is being ripped off, but students are too.  They are being tricked into taking courses that will not lead to better paid jobs but will instead leave them with student loans that will hold them back even further.  These are the students who should be doing technical training, apprenticeships.  They should be plumbers and bricklayers.  They have been told that they will achieve social mobility through education, and it isn’t true.

These narratives were not born with the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding in February 2018.  They became sharper once the tuition fee cap was increased to £9000 and were heightened when Labour adopted a policy of abolishing fees.  Jo Johnson raised them when launching the Green Paper in November 2015 that led to the Teaching Excellence Framework and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.  In just one example, many of the arguments were rehearsed by Jo Johnson as Universities Minister in a speech in February 2017.  It all boils down to value for money.

But there is a terrific confusion here, as highlighted by the Minister earlier on.  The talk in Augar is all about value for money subject level.  But when people (including previous Universities Ministers (both Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson) and the current Education Minister) talk about this, they talk not about the value of whole subjects, but of individual courses at individual universities.  And so they talk about quality.  But they don’t really mean quality either, because they talk about entry tariffs and outcomes and start talking about bums on seats.  Which is the big give away.  What they really mean is that they believe that there are too many students going to universities to do courses which are not aligned with the government’s priorities.  This is about the government wanting to choose not to invest in subjects that they believe do not add value to the economy.  Which is why Augar, which is all about money, has kept in the threat of a 3D threshold and/or a cap on student numbers (for some courses at some universities).

See this bit in Augar (page 88): “A small minority of institutions produce graduates who on average earn significantly less at age 29 than their comparators who did not attend higher education. The IFS estimate that 33 per cent of male students, and 1 per cent of female students – together making 15 per cent of all students – attended universities that had either significantly negative or statistically negligible earnings returns when these are averaged across all students at age 29.”

It goes on: “Altogether 34 per cent of courses – accounting for 29 per cent of male students – were shown to have negative returns for men at age 29 (without taking foregone earnings and interest loan repayments into account), suggesting that one in three male students who took these courses could have earned more if they had chosen a different course of study or not gone to university at all.”

Augar looked at the overall cost for the government of the sector – taking into account direct investment and the subsidy given through student loans.  For this section, Augar relied on the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) analysis published in March 2019 Where is the money going? Estimating the government cost of different university degrees.  They break it down by borrower (i.e. by student, for those that take student loans) and by subject (which takes into account the number of students).  On a student by student basis, the most expensive programmes for the government – in terms of loan write-off plus direct grant are Agriculture and Veterinary Science, and Medicine, driven by teaching grants followed by Creative Arts, which is driven by loan write-offs.  The best “value” course on an individual basis is Economics, with no teaching grant and loans paid off at a higher rate.  Comms and media and other arts and humanities courses sit more in the middle.  But when they overlay the student numbers (figure 5), the picture changes, because of the comparatively large number of students studying some of the subjects with fairly large write-offs or subsidy.  This chart highlights the overall cost of the Creative Arts, but also brings biosciences, subjects allied to medicine, business and social studies to the top. For this table, Social Studies includes Politics, Anthropology, Human and social Geography, Sociology, Social Policy, Social work, Development studies (see footnote 100, page 110 of the Augar Report).  Again the best value is economics, but Veterinary Science and Foreign languages come off relatively well too, because so few students study them.

The Augar report refers to the Graduate outcomes (LEO) data for 2016-17 released in March 2019. It says (pages 87-88):

  • “Among men, the earnings premium for an Economics graduate at age 29 is 33 per cent on average, whereas a graduate in the Creative Arts will, on average, earn 14 per cent less than his peers who did not attend university. Among women, the earnings premium for a medical graduate is 75 per cent, but only 9 per cent for those graduated in the Creative Arts. 
  • The graduate premium for men is low or negative at age 29 for a sizeable minority of subjects. In addition to the Creative Arts, these include English and Philosophy, for which the premium is negative, and Agriculture, Communications, Psychology, Languages, History, Biosciences and Physical Sciences for which it is zero or very small. Women, by contrast, enjoy a graduate premium at age 29 irrespective of the subject they studied, but the premium is small for the Creative Arts, Agriculture, Social Care and Psychology.”

This is interesting but it is not comparing apples with apples.  Looking at the original DfE LEO data report you can see the problem – in that report they compare graduates in a particular subject with median earnings for all subjects.

This ignores the choices made by those students.  Students who choose creative arts degrees, on average, probably do not go on to high earning careers, based on this data.  But there is nothing to say that if they had chosen a different subject, or not gone to university at all, they would have been any higher earning.  To establish whether a creative arts degree is better than no degree at all, it could be argued that you would need to compare the employment outcomes of a creative arts graduate against a cohort of people who did not go to university but have the same background profile and prior academic attainment and are doing the same mix of jobs.  Then you would know what difference a creative arts degree made to the outcomes for that student.

But those who do not go to university undertake a wide range of careers, and on average they may earn more than those undertaking some degrees at some universities.  But that does not mean that those individual students would have earned more if they had not gone to university at all.  That’s possible, but it isn’t proved by this data, even though the data is controlled for background characteristics and prior attainment.  They might not have become plumbers, or bricklayers, they might still have pursued badly paid careers in the creative arts and individually in fact earned less than the creative arts graduates.

If all students were robotic clones, with the same potential and no personal talent, interest or individual motivation, then they would all do economics at university and become bankers or CEOs.  But that would lead to a different problem, because the world does not need that many bankers.

And see this from Tuesday’s Lords Augar discussion: Lord Storey (LD): My Lords, everybody seems to be very much in support of the Augar review. I have real reservations about the funding proposals for higher education. When the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and my noble friend Lady Garden raised the issue of how the funding model, interest charges, the extension and all the rest will favour the rich and not the poor, the Minister kept saying that we will see it in the round. What does “in the round” actually mean? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, but we have to be very careful, because there are degree courses that are undersubscribed. We are seeing those courses cut, but they are courses that we need to develop, such as modern foreign languages. Fewer students are doing modern foreign languages because there are fewer studying them in secondary schools. It is the same with music. Music is hugely important to the creative industries, which is one of the major growth industries in this country, and yet we are seeing music in secondary schools, because of the EBacc, being scaled back and back. That has a knock-on implication for our universities, where music degree courses are declining as well. If we took the idea of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, all these courses would be cut, much to the detriment of our country.

I have argued before that using LEO to assess subjects is misleading for lots of reasons including because it only really works if all courses are vocational and all students follow their vocation.  If all law students became lawyers, all PPE students became politicians, all history students pursued an academic career (in schools or universities) and all language students became translators, interpreters or teachers then it  would be valid to compare.   Of course for some subjects there is more of a linear connection.  But for many subjects, students will go on and pursue a wide range of careers, using the generic skills that they have learned at university.   Generic skills which they may have learned more effectively because they were following a subject they were passionate about.

[In June 2018 I wrote: “[1] Whether your degree pays for itself is a function of a lot of things – such as what your degree is, and where you do it, but also what you did before you went there, where you live, where you work, the state of the national and local economy, what career path you choose now and in the future, your gender, your age, your ethnic group, your family background, your disabilities, how hard you work at university and at work, the culture, policies and success of the organisation you work for, your other life choices…and many more”]

Just as an experiment, I looked at the 13 candidates for the Tory leadership (as at 3rd June 2019).

University Politics/Economics/PPE Law Other
Oxford – 8 5 (Gyimah, Hunt, Hancock, Harper, Stewart) 1 (Raab) 2

Classics (Johnson)

English (Gove)
Post 92 – 1 1 – Hospitality management University of West London (Cleverly)
Other 3

Exeter (Javid)

Warwick (Leadsom)

Newcastle (Malthouse)

 1

Queen Mary (McVey)

So is a politics degree vocational training for a career in politics?  Surely it really just shows an interest in the subject.  Certainly not all politics graduates go into politics.  And these people did not go into politics for the money.  Some of them didn’t need to, but they went into it for other reasons.  Using Wikipedia I looked at their early careers, and only 6 of them “used” their degrees (and that is stretching the point a bit): Michael Gove taking his English degree and becoming a journalist, and 5 of those with an economics aspect to their degree going on to be bankers, accountants or, in the case of Matt Hancock, an economist.

I also looked at the careers of FTSE 100 CEOs in 2017 and being fairly generous in terms of definitions (apart from other things, the choice of degree subject was more limited, looking at their ages), out of the 53 I could easily find information for, only 31 had a link between their degrees and their early career choices.  And these are clearly talented and successful people, 2/5 of whom chose to immediately pursue a career for which they had not been “trained”.

It might be easier to deal with the “problem” if it was defined more honestly.  The problem really is that the government thinks that the cost of HE is becoming unaffordable.  The effort to encourage students to make “better” choices, by giving them more and better data about outcomes and other things hasn’t really been given a chance to work but also very few people were convinced by it – because students make choices based on a whole range of factors.  Even Sam Gyimah (a  huge proponent of transparency) said when asked that students should follow their passion when choosing what to study.  So instead what we are going to get is rationing.  Rationing by subject feels like a blunt instrument, because it leaves it up to the sector to make the “sensible” decision about cutting student numbers when faced with lower fees but it may have odd effects – like making it harder for disadvantaged students to access courses in those subjects which they might have excelled in (and which might have increased their chances of exceeding median earnings in, too).  Or just reducing the quality of those programmes as they are delivered at a lower cost.

So if Augar is implemented, could we get a much more sophisticated methodology.?  Augar already talks about an institutional Student Premium for disadvantaged students.  You could see a world where there is institutional student uplift for those courses that achieve good student outcomes and loan repayment outcomes.  Maybe they could be relative outcomes, subject adjusted not just based on the median and adjusted for geographical factors.  And maybe they will find a way, as Augar suggests that they do, to measure the social value and adjust for that in the teaching grant as well.