Tagged / data security

HE policy update No 10: 13th May 2024

humanities, international, policy

Research and knowledge exchange

The National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) looked at the ONS data on R&D spending and drew some stark conclusions

  • According to ONS data released today the UK experienced a 3.4% increase in real terms in government R&D spending in 2022, from £14.98 billion to £15.49 billion. This growth level, however, is significantly less than other OECD nations.
  • Dr Joe Marshall, Chief Executive of the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) said: “Whilst government spending in R&D has grown from £14.98 billion in 2021 to £15.49 billion in 2022, some 3.4% growth in real terms, we still lag behind the OECD average of a 6% investment growth. This should ring alarm bells. The UK’s global R&D competitiveness will slip if we do not keep up with the growth seen around the world.”
  • Marshall concluded: “This comes against a backdrop of worrying trends in private investment in research and development. Around the world, private R&D investment rose by an average of 5% in real terms in 2022 across the OECD, with even higher growth in countries such as the US, Japan and South Korea. However, private R&D investment in the UK actually declined by 0.4%. We therefore face an uphill battle to fully capitalise on our R&D potential. By fostering an environment conducive to innovation and collaboration, the UK can position itself as a leader in R&D, driving economic prosperity and societal advancement.”

Education

Admissions

UCAS has announced some changes to the information provided on their system to support students with making their choices. You will recall that UUK issued a Fair Admissions Code a while ago which recommended, among other things, that actual (rather than advertised) entry grades should be published to students. The new UCAS data will include historic entry grades and offer rates.

Teaching Excellence Framework: the post mortem continues

The QAA have analysed the TEF results in what might be read as a guide to getting gold next time.

Degree apprenticeships

The House of Commons Library has published a research briefing: these are always interesting as they provide a survey of the latest data.

Funding: The existing apprenticeship funding system for England has been in place since May 2017. Apprenticeships are generally funded in the following way.

  • Each apprenticeship standard is associated with a funding band. The upper limit of this band represents the maximum the Government will contribute towards training and assessment costs of the apprenticeship.
  • Employers and training providers negotiate a price for training and assessment.
  • Apprenticeship levy funds will be used to pay for the training and assessment for employers paying the levy (up to the upper limit of the funding band).
  • Employers who do not pay the levy will pay 5% of the cost of training and assessment with the government contributing the remaining 95% (up to the upper limit of the funding band). The Government will fund all of the apprenticeship training costs, up to the funding band maximum, for apprentices who are aged between 16 and 21 years old when they start their apprenticeship.
  • Training and assessment costs above the upper limit of the funding band will be paid for separately by the employer. Levy paying employers will not be able to use levy funds.
  • Additional payments may be paid to the employer and training provider depending on the characteristics of the apprentice and the type of apprenticeship.

Apprentices are paid at least the minimum wage for their work and study/training time. This rate depends on the apprentice’s age and whether or not they have completed the first year of their apprenticeship.

Note this bit on page 32 of the briefing:

  • In 2022, a literature review of all the available evidence of the impact of degree apprenticeships on social mobility and productivity was published and said, “when it comes to social mobility, the results are mixed”. However, it argued that, overall, degree apprenticeships were having “a notable positive impact on social mobility.”60 It suggested reports that would challenge this conclusion were published during the infancy of the degree apprenticeship programme, when employers focussed on upskilling their current workforce, rather than recruiting direct school leavers.
  • Nevertheless, it also said achieving equity in access to degree apprenticeships in some sectors may remain a challenge for a while, and so recommended the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), with the support of sector organisations, should formulate policies and guidelines for recruitment from under-represented backgrounds, and encourage stronger collaboration between employers and training providers in recruitment and enrolment.

Degree apprenticeships are not really reaching the students from the most deprived backgrounds nor those from non-white ethnic groups. There are slightly more males doing them than HE. Unsurprisingly (given the common perception that they are often taken up by existing employees) the age profile is older.

And what are they studying? Mostly business, administration and law, or health, public services and care.

Office for Students key performance metrics

Did you know that the Office for Students has key performance metrics and that they are not all about how the OfS is doing in meeting its own internally set deadlines or such like. In fact they relate mostly to how the sector is doing in meeting the requirements imposed under the licence regime.

So, for example, key performance measure 1 is the extent of poor student outcomes across the sector: where poor is below the B3 threshold.

Something I haven’t talked about for a while is grade inflation. A hot topic a while ago although things have gone rather quiet, and probably something that will come back up again sooner rather than later.  the last analysis was published in May 2022.  You’ll remember its interesting use of the term “unexplained”: “The term ‘unexplained’ in this context means that changes in attainment over the time period cannot be statistically accounted for by changes in the characteristics of the graduating cohort, in terms of the explanatory variables included in the statistical modelling. It is not possible to deduce from this analysis what factors not included in the modelling (such as improvements in teaching quality or more diligent students) could also be driving the observed changes in degree attainment.”

As the OfS website says “KPM 3 shows that the proportion of students awarded first class degrees in 2021-22 was 32.5 per cent. This proportion had increased every year between 2010-11 and 2020-21, but in 2021-22 it decreased for the first time from a high of 37.0 per cent in 2020-21.”

In that context it is interesting to look at KPM 7: “the proportions of graduates within broad ethnic groups who achieve first class degrees and compares these to the proportion of all students receiving a first class degree”

KPM 5 is about disadvantaged groups accessing HE. The usual data that is discussed in this context uses percentages and is confusing when overall numbers change. This view gives the absolute numbers and it is sad to see how stable the numbers are for the economically precarious and significantly disadvantaged groups and both these numbers went down in 21-22. Those were pandemic years: maybe when this data is updated for 22-23 there will have been an improvement.

Student experience, wellbeing and finances

Cost of living

HEPI have a new report on cost of living, having calculated a minimum income standard for students and then looking at the implications.

Key findings:

  • Excluding rent, students need £244 a week to have a minimum acceptable standard of living. Including rent, students need £366 a week.
  • Adjusting in line with rent prices in different parts of the UK, it is estimated that students need £18,632 a year outside London and £21,774 a year in London to reach MIS.
  • For a student studying outside London, the maximum government maintenance support, provided to support students to meet their living costs, falls short by £8,405 for English students, £6,482 for Welsh students, £7,232 for Scottish students and £10,496 for Northern Irish students.
  • For those studying outside of London, the maintenance support in England covers just 55% of the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) developed here. The Welsh maintenance support covers 65%, Scottish support covers 61% and Northern Irish support covers just 44% of MIS.
  • For students studying in London, the gap is £8,426 if a student is from England, with the loan covering 61% of students’ costs. The gap is £6,604 if they are from Wales (support covers 70% of costs), £10,374 if they are from Scotland (support covers 52%) and £10,922 if they are from Northern Ireland, where support covers just 50% of students’ living costs.
  • Even a student doing 10 hours a week of paid employment for the whole year and in receipt of the maximum maintenance support will not have enough money to reach MIS. English students must work nearly 19 hours a week at minimum wage, Welsh students more than 14 hours, Scottish students 16 hours and Northern Irish students 23 hours to reach MIS. By contrast, many universities recommend students should work no more than 15 hours during term-time.
  • The parents of an English student who receives the minimum maintenance support and does no paid employment would have to contribute £13,865 a year for the student to reach MIS. For a Welsh student, the contribution is £6,482; for a Scottish student, it is £10,232; and for a Northern Irish student, it is £13,548.
  • Additionally, under the current system, parents in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are expected to contribute to their children’s living costs even if they do not themselves have enough money for a minimum acceptable standard of living.

We recommend that:

  • The maximum level of government support should be increased in all four UK nations to help students reach MIS.
  • However, government maintenance support should not cover all students’ expected costs. Instead, they might reasonably be expected to do some part-time work (though not so much it interferes with their studies). The suggestion in the report is around 10 hours per week, all year, which is roughly equivalent to working full-time over the summer holiday. Adjustments should be made for students who cannot work, due to high workloads, they have a disability that prevents them from working or other reasons.
  • Parents should not be expected to contribute to their children’s living costs unless they have a minimum acceptable standard of living. This means the household income threshold at which parents are expected to start paying should be increased. Currently this stands at £25,000 in England, £21,000 in Scotland and £19,203 in Northern Ireland (parents are never expected to contribute in Wales).

Harassment and sexual misconduct consultation

As I was talking about OfS KPIs, I checked the date of the consultation on regulating harassment and sexual misconduct. It closed on 4th May 2023, so over a year ago. But is it due soon? It may be, as hinted in the next segment.

Protests and free speech

All universities have received a letter in the context of the current student protests asking them to be very careful about protecting students from harassment. Some university leaders were also called to Downing Street to be told to sort out their own campus protests: the same has been happening in the US. This is a very difficult area, with new freedom of speech guidance under consultation. It’s not clear who was called in: “some of the country’s leading universities,” apparently.

There’s also more money to support the University Jewish Chaplaincy Service.

This story from Wonkhe, suggests the consultation response on harassment and sexual misconduct may be out soon: The Office for Students’ powers to prevent harassment will be used to levy sanctions on universities that allow antisemitic reports on campus, according to reports in The Times. A government source has indicated that conditions of registration requiring universities to have robust policies to prevent student harassment will explicitly include Jewish students (in the light of recent protests), and would allow the OfS to investigate claims of antisemitism at individual universities.

NSS changes

The OfS are consulting on changes to the NSS, although really they are consulting on why they shouldn’t make any changes!  the consultation is tantalising headed “theme measures, benchmarking and response thresholds,” but questions 2 and 3 are “tell us if you object to our decision not to change benchmarking and response thresholds”.  And question 1? Drumroll….it requests comments on merging the current academic support and organisation and management questions into one theme. The themes are not named in this proposal. As a reminder, these sets of questions were slimmed down in last year’s NSS with two being dropped from academic support and the timetabling question being dropped from organisation and management, and no new questions added, so you can see why a tidy mind would want to merge these 4 questions into a single set.  And the reason it matters is that last year there were no comparative data sets published because the questions had changed: but this year they will be able to show trends from last year, so the categories (listed as experimental last year) need to be confirmed. ICYMI, the NSS results for this year will be out on 10th July.

International

Security risks

There was a flurry in the news (Foreign states targeting UK universities, MI5 warns – BBC News) a couple of weeks ago about VCs (from the Russell Group” beng called to Downing Street to discuss threats from foreign states. It follows this in mid-April from the FT

  • UK university vice-chancellors will be summoned for a briefing from the intelligence agencies on hostile states targeting British academia, as the government proposes a crackdown on security risks facing the sector.
  • Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister, on Thursday said the government would examine new curbs to protect sensitive technology developed in UK universities from being transferred to overseas competitors such as China.
  • Ministers will also consider measures to prevent British institutions becoming too dependent on foreign investment, following a Whitehall review into security threats to UK academia.

There is existing guidance from UUK on sensitive research material.

Post-study work visa

The Migration Advisory Committee is due to provide its rather rapid review of the post-study work visa on 14th May, which is expected to result in further restrictions ahead of a general election.  I will do a specific summary of that when it is published.

In that context, the Centre for Policy Studies has published a report “Taking Back Control” written by former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick MP, former minister Neil O’Brien MP, and CPS Research Director Karl Williams.  Most of it is not about HE, but the 36 recommendations, which can apparently be mostly implemented before the election, include:

  • We should introduce an overall cap on sponsored study routes
  • We should abolish the Graduate route outright. Foreign students who want to stay in the UK should need to find graduate-level jobs that meet the salary threshold within a six-month grace period at the end of their studies. The MAC is conducting a review into the Graduate route – which it recommended against in the first place – but we should act immediately, ahead of the September 2024 and January 2025 start dates for university courses.
  • We should make universities accountable for their international students: where there is evidence of sustained abuse (such as very high dropout rates, low attendance and a drop in academic standards) they should be struck off the list of licensed study visa sponsors. We should focus initially on reviewing the 18 satellite campuses of non-London universities in London, which are geared towards international students on Masters courses of dubious quality.
  • We should substantially revise the International Education Strategy (IES), ending the arbitrary 600,000 a year target for the number of international students. The IES instead needs to focus on quality over quantity, as per the grammar school approach to immigration. This will also move the Education and Business Departments away from constantly calling for more migration while resisting attempts at selectivity and control.
  • We need a greater diversity of higher education provision – in particular, some local universities, such as the 18 provincial universities with London campuses, should reorient towards educating and training the local or regional population, rather than trying to educate the rest of the world. Reducing the number of international students on poor quality courses might entail some pain for the sector – but we should not shy away from this.

If all this negativity is getting you down, then there is a blog from David Willets on Conservative Home to cheer you up.

  • …of those who came on a study visa 2008-2012 only 5 per cent were granted settlement within the subsequent ten years.
  • The current net “migration” figures are heavily influenced by Covid distortions. Not many overseas students came during Covid. After Covid, there was a surge in overseas students as it included some of the backlog that had built up – rising to an exceptional net “migration” by students of 250,000 or more. This net figure is so high because there has not yet been a balancing flow of departures by the students who surged in post-Covid. The ONS estimate that when we return to the usual high levels of so-called “emigration” by students then that “may lead to a negative net migration estimate.” The next Government is very likely to benefit from this reversal of the Covid distortion. It is not a reason for further tightening now.
  • To make these assessments of net migration more real and robust we should institute a proper system of counting people entering and leaving the country. We would know who came and who left the country. Instead, the figures are based on a survey by officials with a clipboard standing at a few airports and ports and asking a few people as they leave what they have been doing here. So if someone comes in to study and after that does a year’s work and gets questioned when they leave and says they’ve been working then the survey does not show that a student has left but a worker has left…
  • … There is a competitive market for overseas students in which English-speaking countries dominate because of the attractions of being taught in the global language so we should match the way our competitors treat overseas students. We could follow the US and distinguish between “immigrants” and “temporary migrants.” Australia treats overseas students as “temporary entrants.” In Canada, overseas students are “non-permanent residents” as distinct from “immigrants.” This is not some linguistic trick – it reflects the reality of what voters worry about….
  • …I accept that overseas students could be used as a potential means of getting controlled skilled migration of the brightest and best by a regime that gave a few of them the right to settle afterward if they achieve exceptional standards. This is roughly the American approach – going to study there has been called “the world’s longest job interview”. But that doesn’t mean we require them all to be the brightest and the best before they even turn up to study. We are selling an education service with some kind of experience of work thrown in to make the proposition more attractive. We then expect overseas students to leave….
  • …The focus on the brightest and the best also leads to Robert Jenrick’s argument that overseas students are fine if they go to the Russell Group but not to “lesser” universities. This is the deep-seated idea that our prestigious research-intensive universities are “good” universities and the rest are “bad.” It is the influence of the Oxbridge who spent 60 years suppressing the creation of other universities and left us with only one model of what a good university looks like. However universities come in different shapes and sizes. A university can deliver world-class teaching or develop world-class links to business without doing world-class research. The University of Teesside focuses on auto-engineering for the nearby Nissan plant. Universities train our nurses and public health officers. Developing countries want to send some of their students to learn these skills…
  • …I support sensible measures to tighten up the overseas student regime. That could include much tougher rules on dependents. There could also be tougher regulation of the agents advising overseas students. Above all we need the Home Office to share with universities the granular information they have on overseas students and their visa status so universities know whether they have left the country.

And HEPI, with Kaplan and the NUS have published a report with data from London Economics that once again emphasises the contribution that graduate route visa holders make to the economy.

  • There were an estimated 66,410 Graduate Route visa holders in the UK in the 2022/23 tax year, split between 56,460 international graduates educated in UK higher education and 9,950 dependants.
  • For every 10 Graduate Route visa holders, there were under two dependants and this ratio will decline significantly in the future due to the recent tightening of the rules on dependants – this took effect in January 2024 and has already seen a decline of around 80 per …..
  • The benefits to the UK in higher tax revenues from hosting these Graduate Route visa holders are estimated to have been £588 million in 2022/23 (or £10,410 per main Graduate Route visa holder). These figures entirely exclude the wider and longer term benefits – for example, Graduate Route visa holders may choose to remain in the UK beyond their current visa through the Skilled Worker route.
  • A comprehensive assessment of the costs to the Exchequer of Graduate Route visa holders in terms of public service provision comes to an estimated £517 million for 2022/23 (or £9,160 per main Graduate Route visa holder).
  • This means the total net benefit to the UK Exchequer of hosting Graduate Route visa holders in the first full year of the scheme (2022/23) is estimated to be £70 million (or £1,240 per international graduate), disproving claims that the UK loses out financially.
  • The financial benefits of the Graduate Route visa are on course to increase materially, as the Home Office estimated 173,000 Graduate Route visas would be granted in 2023/24 and slightly more the following year, meaning over 350,000 Graduate Route visa holders could be in the UK by April 2025. This would increase the direct economic benefits by over five times the level in the first full year of the Graduate Route’s operation. Meanwhile, the costs are set to fall significantly as a result of the new rules on dependants.

Wonkhe has an article on how we got to where we are now and a view on job prospects and how they impact choices, and another piece on what might come next.

The first article points out some interesting historical contextual points:

  • Expansion was supposed to be all about STEM: but in the end most of the growth in international students has been in business and management and social care
  • The big expansion was supposed to take 10 years but it happened almost overnight

HE sector sustainability and change

Fees for foundation years

Finally, after a very long wait, the detail of the new foundation year fee caps has been published.  The document obviously has to define what the new limits apply to, which is in itself interesting.

Provision can be considered a foundation year if it meets all of criteria 1 to 5:

  1. It is an additional year of study (120 credits under the LLE) and is integrated at the start of an undergraduate course in a way which extends the overall length of the course. (A foundation year can be studied full-time, part-time or in an accelerated format, but should always be equivalent to 1-year – (or 120 credits and 1,200 notional learning hours) of full-time study. )
  2. It is integrated with an undergraduate course, such that a student does not typically enrol for the foundation year alone, but for an entire undergraduate course.
  3. It enables students who meet the progression requirements to proceed directly to an integrated undergraduate course.
  4. It is not a standalone course, and does not typically result in a standalone, recognised qualification.
  5. It is designed to equip a student with the skills and knowledge needed to be successful in an integrated undergraduate course. A foundation year may include modules such as study skills, academic research or functional numeracy, alongside modules that are directly related to the content of a student’s chosen undergraduate course.
  6. It may be undertaken at an institution (which may or may not be a registered higher education provider) that is different from the registered HE provider to which the student applied and with which the student has enrolled, through a franchising arrangement.

So, with that cleared up, what is the new limit?

  • Fees for foundation years that start from 1 August 2025 will be capped at either £5,760 or the maximum fee limit for the 2025/26 academic year (currently £9,250).
  • The lower fee cap of £5,760 will apply to classroom-based foundation years from 1 August 2025 (subject to Parliamentary approval of the necessary amending legislation). The term “classroom-based” refers to subjects currently in OfS Price Group D (at the time of this publication)
  • Some undergraduate courses are interdisciplinary, including taught content that spans more than one subject area. These courses can be assigned more than one HECoS subject code at the point of registration with the SLC. For these courses, the lower fee cap should be applied to the foundation year if more than 50% of the HECoS subject codes it is registered with are lower-fee subjects (listed in this guidance).

The subjects are listed here.  It’s a long and detailed list by HECoS code.

Free workshop – Data management basics: Ethical and legal issues in data sharing

BU research, data management, Guidance, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, Research Ethics, research governance, research integrity, research methods, Research Training

Data management is essential to make sure that well-organised, well-documented, high quality and shareable research data can be produced from our research projects.

The free introductory workshops on data management basics are intended for researchers and anyone who wants to learn about research data management.

The first session, scheduled for 4th May 10am – 11.30am: Introduction to data management and sharing, provides an overview of how to manage, document and store research data. This second session focuses on the ethical and legal aspects of data management.

In this free 90-minute online workshop, participants will learn about the relevant legislation, such as data protection legislation and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Participants will also learn about strategies that enable them to share research data. This includes carrying out an assessment of disclosure risk, obtaining informed consent, anonymising data and regulating access to enable data to be shared.

There will be time at the end for questions and discussion.

This event is part of our UK Data Service introductory training series: Spring 2023.

Register for this workshop here.

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

international, policy

A fresh selection of educational reports were issued this week. When we issue next week’s policy update the election results will be out.  The campaign has already got a bit over-heated, with leaks from both main parties, edited videos, dodgy data and everyone trying to avoid making the ultimate error in today’s world – the soundbite in which you admit that the interviewer may have a point.  It is becoming increasingly hard to listen to interviews in which people read out their prepared lines and then repeat them over and over again. And it will probably get worse next week.  So we’re going election light in this update.

If you are interested in comparing manifesto pledges, the BBC have an interactive tool here.  And here is our own comparison of the major parties’ take on the key HE issues.

An English atlas of inequality

The Nuffield Foundation have published a new English Atlas of Inequality (created by University of Sheffield) challenging the current one-metric approach to disadvantage in distinguishing between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ areas.

  • In late 2019, as the nation continues to experience political uncertainty and the machinations of the Brexit process roll on, it seems there is little room in the policy arena for taking action on persistent poverty, deprivation or the level of inequality in England. In fact, it seems like there is little room to even discuss the topic. However, as hard as it may be to envision a return to ‘normal’ politics, it is surely the case that at some point in the future attention will once again turn to the question of inequality, and the growing consensus that something needs to be done about it. Indeed, only two years ago it was one of the few topics where there was an element of consensus across the political spectrum…in their 2017 party political manifestos, all the major parties in England highlighted inequality as a policy challenge that needed to be tackled.

The research uses three separate measures of inequality and compares the results of each measure in ‘travel to work areas’ to outcomes for the population in mortality, poverty and entry to higher education; to understand how alternative approaches to understanding inequality can produce very different results. The measures used consider income distribution, a measure of economic imbalance within areas, and geographic clustering of different income groups. The report also stresses the risk of relying on one metric to understand an issue so they compared all three measures across the geographical classifications of local authority districts, parliamentary constituencies, and the ‘travel to work’ areas.

Professor Rae (author, Sheffield) said: 

  • “Our atlas highlights the fact that no one measure of inequality paints the full picture and that methodological diversity is needed before we start to think of solutions to inequality at a local, sub-national and national level. This is a reminder that a policy focus on inequality ought also to be linked to a focus on poverty alleviation and equality of opportunity, but also that how we understand inequality is inextricably linked to how we measure it in the first place.”

An example given in the report is that

  • if inequality alone was seen as a policy problem worth tackling, and the Gini coefficient [income distribution] was the only way we measured it, one could conclude that some of England’s most deprived seaside towns should not be the focal point. We believe such a conclusion would be incorrect.

Alex Beer, Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation, said:

  • “This English Atlas of Inequality advances our knowledge of how inequalities are distributed at the local level. The Atlas highlights the importance of taking a multi-faceted approach to the study of inequality and to policy making for a more inclusive society.”

The report makes four recommendations:

  1. Take into account the fact that many of the poorest local economies in the country are also the most equal. Methods which increase equality alone are not enough.
  2. Increase the policy focus on the links between geographic dislocation, deprivation and inequality. It is important to consider wider questions of regional and sub-national connectivity and links to the drivers of inequality. There are important connections to be made between transport policy and welfare policy and as such an inter-departmental approach to tackling geographic dislocation is likely to be necessary.
  3. Thorough review of evidence considering whether the ‘majority of deprived individuals and families [do] not live in the most deprived areas’ (Smith et al., 2001; Barnes and Lucas, 1975). Rather than viewing this issue as an arcane methodological question finding a definitive answer should be a policy priority. When it comes to tackling persistent poverty through policy intervention, it may be right to focus on the most deprived locations if they contain the highest proportions of poor households and residents, yet doing this in isolation may lead to reduced effectiveness if poorer residents living elsewhere are overlooked. This is a fairly obvious point but it is a gap in the academic and policy literature – there is no definitive answer on the proportion of ‘poor people’ who do or don’t live in ‘poor areas’.
  4. Any approaches which seek to understand the true nature of inequalities should incorporate an explicit measure of spatial disparity: it’s clear from our analysis in this Atlas that the story of inequality in England is an inherently spatial one and as such we believe it should also be measured as one, in addition to [income] The authors say this point is threaded through the literature on urban and regional inequalities (e.g. Beatty and Fothergill, 1996; Bell et al., 2018), which often highlights quite striking spatial imbalances at the regional level.

On local areas Dorchester and Weymouth are rated 11th in the country as least unequal. Portsmouth and Southsea are among the most unequal. (Remember areas can be poor but still equal.) You can also delve into all the map detail for different areas here (e.g. by constituency, by travel to work area, and by local authority areas).

  • “Too often the debate takes place in silos, focusing on just one type of inequality, a specific alleged cause or a specific proposed solution. We need to step back and ask: how are different kinds of inequality related and which matter most? What are the underlying forces that come together to create them? And crucially, what is the right mix of policies to tackle inequalities?”

(Joyce, R. and Xu, X. (2019) Inequalities in the twenty-first century, Introducing the IFS Deaton Review, Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Nuffield Foundation, London.)

Academic Mismatch

UCL and the Nuffield Foundation have launched ‘Mismatch in Higher Education’ . Mismatch is a term that’s become very popular in widening participation and governmental circles recently, particularly after the Behavioural Insights Team considered how they could use nudge theory to tackle academic mismatch. A ‘mismatch’ is when a student selects or attends a course/institution which is less or more selective (competitive) than their academic achievement might suggest they could attain.

In the Nuffield investigation a course was benchmarked by using the median A-level (and equivalent) exam results of the students studying on the course as well as the average earnings of previous graduates of the course. The report finds that there is significant under- and over-match in the UK. They also confirm the widely held belief that there are substantial socio-economic status (SES) and gender gaps in mismatch, with low SES students and women attending lower quality courses than their attainment might otherwise warrant. Past universities ministers Sam Gyimah, Chris Skidmore and (briefly) Jo Johnson all picked up the theme of ensuring the most capable students from disadvantaged backgrounds aspired to and were able to access the most selective institutions. Under matching by disadvantaged students and females has ramifications for social mobility and the gender pay gap.

Key Points:

  • Up to 1 in 4 students from lower socio-economic backgrounds take courses at ‘less prestigious’ universities despite having the grades for ‘more selective’ institutions.
  • 15% of students were over-matched and 15% were under-matched using the course quality measure and 23% over-matched and 23% under-matched based on earnings.
  • The school attended accounted for much of the ‘mismatch’ among lower socio-economic students, most likely due to influential factors such as peers, school resources and what information, advice and guidance (IAG) is offered.
  • Disadvantaged students were more likely to attend universities close to home, but those who do so are worse matched than richer students who attend universities close to home.
  • High attaining disadvantaged students going to universities near home were more likely to attend a post-1992 institution, whereas high attaining advantaged students staying near home were more likely to attend a Russell Group university.
  • Interestingly the report suggests 50% of US students are mismatched and that students from ethnic minority backgrounds are likely to undermatch, however, this is not replicated in the UK context.

The data points have been taken from a report by Dods Political Consultants because at the time of writing the full report findings have not been released to the public outside of those attending the launch event for us to verify their accuracy.

Cheryl Lloyd, Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation, says:

  • “This research highlights that students from different backgrounds but with similar abilities are making very different choices when it comes to the university courses they decide to study. To overcome the significant socio-economic and gender inequalities students face when choosing university courses, it is clear that they need equal access to the information, advice and support they require to make informed choices about their future.”

Co-author, Professor Lindsey Macmillan (UCL Institute of Education) explains:

  • “While women enrol in courses that are as academically prestigious as men, they are more likely to attend courses which command lower average earnings. This is, in large part, driven by the different subjects studied by men and women at university. These findings have important implications for the gender pay gap.”

The student take on data security

HEPI have published students or data subjects? What students think about university data security.

The research stems from the volume of data HEIs collect on students both for regulatory purposes or to gather information about student experience. The authors suggest the volume of data collected will increase further as the Government’s focus on measuring universities’ performance through metrics and the internal analysis of data increases. Key Points:

  • 32% of students surveyed agree they are aware of how their institution handles their personal data, 45% who disagree, 22% undecided.
  • Students surveyed do not feel they have been provided with clear information on how their personal data are used. 31% feel their institution has clearly explained how their personal data are used and stored, compared to 46% who disagree (24% who neither agree nor disagree).
  • When asked whether students are concerned about rumours of universities facing data security issues, 69% of students said they are concerned. Around one-fifth of students (19%) are unconcerned and 12% are unsure.
  • 65% of students said a poor security reputation would have made them less likely to apply, compared to around a third (31%) who said it would have made no difference and 4% who said it would have made them more likely to apply.
  • Under half of students feel their university will keep their data safe: only 45% of students feel confident that their institution will keep their personal data secure and private, while 22% are not confident. A third (33%) are unsure.
  • 64% of students say that when sharing personal information online, they check to see if the source is trustworthy and secure. 17% don’t check.
  • Students were split in their knowledge of data privacy and ethics news and 36% keep current on ethical developments whilst 37% don’t.
  • 93% of students feel they should have the right to view any personal information their university stores about them, 2% disagree. 86% also felt they should have the right to delete any personal data the institution holds about them.
  • Students do not want their health information shared widely. 83% of students expect their medical information to be kept private to their institution and themselves. 5% say they would expect for it to be shared with commercial and business services, 10% for it to be shared with government services and 2% for the information to be shared more widely.
  • When asked about information provided to student support and welfare services, 78% say they expect the information to be kept private between them and their institution.
  • A quarter of students (26%) said they are comfortable with their HEI reviewing their social media posts, if it allows them to better identify and target struggling students with wellbeing support services. 57% were opposed to this and 17% neither agreed nor disagreed.
  • On sharing health or wellbeing information with a student’s parents/guardians 48% were happy for institutions to do this; 33% disagreed, 19% were undecided. However, on contacting parents/guardians over academic performance issues only 35% of students were happy for this to take place, 48% were opposed and 17% undecided.

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

  • ‘Students are required to provide large amounts of data to their universities, including personal and sensitive information. It is critical that universities are open with students about how this information will be used.
  • Under a third of students feel their university has clearly explained how their data will be used and shared and under half feel confident that their data will be kept secure and private. Universities should take action to ensure students can have confidence in the security of their data.’

Michael Natzler, HEPI’s Policy Officer, said:

  • ‘Students are generally willing for their data to be used anonymously to improve the experience of other students, for example on learning and mental wellbeing. Around half are even happy for information about their health or mental wellbeing to be shared with parents or guardians.
  • However, when it comes to identifiable information about them as individuals, students are clear they want this data to be kept confidential between them and their institutions. It is important that universities keep students’ data private where possible and are clear with students when information must be shared more widely.’

On learning analytics the majority of students were happy for their anonymised data on accessing university buildings, online platform usage, library books checked out to be aggregated into patterns and used as insights for other students, lecturers, to forecast if future students will drop out and to predict their own performance from the similarity of behaviours from past students (including possibility of drop out).

HEPI concluded:

  • A clear majority of students are happy for the university to use their own and other students’ data to enhance the learning and mental wellbeing of students at university. However, students do not want personal data and data related to learning to be shared outside the student-university relationship.
  • Students expect and demand privacy around their data, while being aware of the positive outcomes responsible usage can bring. Understanding of how student data are used is lower than it ought to be, which universities should work to address, but the message about how students want their data used is clear and must be listened to.

PISA results

The DfE have published the PISA (programme for International Student Assessment) 2018 reports coving the four areas of the UK. Once every three years the PISA measures 15-year-old school pupils’ abilities in reading, mathematics and science through ‘their competence to address real-life challenges’. PISA is administered by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). It is a snapshot assessment checking how countries are performing relative to each other,

  • In PISA 2018, mean scores in England were significantly above the OECD averages in all 3 subjects. The mean scores in reading and science in England have not changed significantly over successive PISA cycles, but in mathematics, England’s overall mean score showed a statistically significant increase compared with PISA 2015.
  • England’s mean score for reading was similar to scores for Scotland and Northern Ireland, and all 3 had scores significantly higher than Wales. In both science and mathematics, the mean scores for England were significantly higher than the scores for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which were not significantly different from each other
  • Closing the gap – the top performers in reading were south-east Asian countries China, Singapore, Macao, China and Hong Kong with Estonia, Canada and Finland also scoring highly. In PISA 2018 there were 9 countries where the mean reading score was statistically significantly higher than that in England, compared to 12 countries in PISA 2015.
  • In common with all other participating countries, girls in England outperformed boys in reading. However, the gender gap in England was significantly smaller than the average gap across the OECD.
  • In England, the gap between high and low achievers in science was significantly larger than the OECD average, with a larger proportion of pupils in England performing at the highest proficiency levels.
  • There was no statistically significant gap between performance of boys and girls in science in England, which was also the case in PISA 2015. This differs from the OECD average where there was a small but statistically significant gender gap in favour of girls.
  • England’s mean score in mathematics was significantly higher than in PISA 2015, which is the first time performance has improved after a stable picture in all previous cycles of PISA. The size of the gap between scores of the highest and lowest achievers in England was similar to the OECD average.
  • Boys in England significantly outperformed girls in mathematics, as was also the case for the OECD average. The gap between boys and girls in England was similar to that in PISA 2015.

TES covered the release in PISA results must be a relief for the government (but there are still many challenges that we must address). This includes the England’s higher scores for pupil dissatisfaction and poorer wellbeing. Also that many pupils said they only read if they have to, not for enjoyment which the article says is of concern, given the importance of reading – for future learning, stimulating creativity and imagination (sought after by employers).

Inquiries and Consultations

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations. There are not any new consultations or inquiries this week because we are still in the purdah period.

Other news

Transnational Education: The Government have released statistics costing the revenue generated through transnational education (THE) and other education related exports. The HE highlights:

  • HEIs contributed £14.4 billion (67%) of the total value of £21.4 billion. This is +7% growth between 2010 to 2017. The revenue from other stages of education such as FE and Schools is smaller at £0.3 billion and £1.0 billion.
  • The share of English Language Training (ELT) and FE (non-EU students) have both fallen – the ELT share dropping from 14% to 7% and FE dropping from 6% to 1%.

New Welsh Tertiary System: The Welsh Children, Young People and Education Committee have published their final report scrutinising the HE (Wales) Act 2015. This report aims to showcase evidence to learn the lessons of the 2015 Act, which is considered unsuccessful and set to be repealed. The report also sets the scene to influence the preparation of the forthcoming Tertiary Education Bill. The new bill will establish a new Tertiary Education and Research Commission for Wales, which will oversee the entire post-16 education system.  Lynne Neagle AM, Committee Chair, said:

  • We heard quite considerable criticism of the HE Act, mainly focusing on its failure to create a complete system of HE regulation, its unsatisfactory addressing of student interests, and it not providing an effective means to align providers behind national priorities. These issues are of such consequence, and are so much a part of the fabric of the 2015 Act, that we agree with the Minister’s intention to repeal Because it is to be repealed, the recommendations we make in this report in relation to it are what we think are realistically possible before any new tertiary education and research Commission is established. 

GCSE changes: The Sutton Trust has released the report Making the Grade analysing the impact of GCSE reforms on the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. Read the executive summary for a main synopsis in general the gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their more advantaged peers have not changed significantly (except for triple science), partly due to the conscious maintenance of grade boundaries and the comparable outcomes approach. Of concern is that less disadvantaged students are achieving the highest marks and grades – potentially impacting on future social mobility as less disadvantaged students achieve the top grades needed to apply to the most selective institutions and impacting on their graduate wage due to the focus top employers place on recruiting from the selective institutions.

Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, commented on the report:

  • “It is absolutely not surprising that the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others has widened as a result of the Government’s GCSE reforms. These reforms were unplanned, had no meaningful consultation with teachers and no proper lead-in time. The exams now cover an unmanageable amount of content for many students, and unlike in real life the students have to sit them once-and-for-all at the end of the course.
  • Both these issues are causing real problems… whilst under the previous system 2% of disadvantaged pupils achieved the top grade (of A*), it is now just 1% that achieve a grade 9. The Sutton Trust is right to say that this may have negative impacts on these students when they are applying for university places.
  • A survey of National Education Union members found that 73% thought that pupil mental health was worse due to the new GCSE reforms and 64% said the reformed courses did not reflect students’ abilities as accurately.
  • We need to see a system in place that plays to all pupils’ strengths to ensure they get the qualifications they deserve.”

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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