Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
This week Research.com, a prominent academic platform, published its 2022 Edition of the Ranking of Top 1000 Scientists in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities. Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), is listed as number 234 in United Kingdom ranking as well as number 1238 in the Social Sciences and Humanities world ranking.
With a reshuffle on the horizon this week, last week was Apprenticeships Week and Children’s Mental Health Week.
Cabinet Reshuffle – we are expecting a ministerial reshuffle to take place before Parliament enters recess at the end of next week. Politico speculates about who may be in and out of favour.
Brexit – Dods have produced an interesting briefing on the Brexit transition phase exploring the negotiating give and take and explaining what the key terms like ‘level playing field’ may translate as within the Withdrawal Agreement.
Contract Cheating – Lord Storey continues his campaign to end contract cheating by introducing the HE Cheating Services Prohibition Bill as a private members bill (PMB). As you’ll recall from previous policy updates PMB’s rarely succeed, however, they can raise visibility of the issue even when they fail. The Committee Stage within the House of Lords is next.
Private Member’s Bills – There’s no news on the Lord Holmes’ Unpaid Work Experience Prohibition Bill yet, we’re still waiting for the second reading and vote. However, Alex Cunningham, a Labour MP has also introduced a similar Bill entitled Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition No. 2) through his win on the Commons’ PMB ballot. Alex’s bill (to prohibit unpaid work experience exceeding four weeks) is due to be read a second time on 27 March and will need to win the vote to continue passage through Parliament. Two very similar PMB’s progressing at the same time is an interesting Parliamentary twist that we’ll be watching closely. Unfortunately Alex’s PMB is number 14 in the queue so it may not ever progress due to lack of parliamentary session time.
The MP’s winning the Common’s PMB vote have declared the topics their intended legislation will cover. There is little of direct interest for the HE sector beside Alex’s unpaid work experience Bill.
(Welfare of Children) PMB aims to impose duties on certain education and training providers in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. Mike Amesbury’s PMB (first to be debated) aims to pick up the provision for guidance to schools about the cost aspects of school uniform policies. You’ll remember mention of this floated around Parliamentary debate several times during the last Parliament, gaining traction but not progressing into law or regulation.
Select Committees
Several of the new Education Select Committee members have been revealed by Tes. Whips from Labour and Conservatives held elections for Committee members last night, but the result have not officially been announced. Tes has been told, however, that new members from the Conservative side are all newly-elected MPs and include a former secondary teacher and a former chair of a social mobility charity. They are understood to be:
From the Labour side, the following members are understood to be elected to the Committee:
Education Committee Members’ Priorities
Jonathan Gullis who is a teacher (and had to return to work at his Birmingham secondary school on the day after the general election) has set out his priorities as reducing the sizes of large multi-academy trusts to ”give power back to schools” as well as investigating the effectiveness of alternative provision and the possibility of introducing new grammar schools into deprived areas. He said: “There are a number of things to look at to be quite frank. Obviously the government has pledged a £14 billion injection into the education system which is sorely needed – and my job, along with my fellow committee members, will be to make sure this ends up in the hands of headteachers and that the money is being spent on pupils”.
David Johnston is a former chair of the Social Mobility Foundation charity. He said: “I’ll be looking at whether we are improving life chances for the most disadvantaged pupils. We also need to get the best teachers into the schools that find it difficult to attract teachers.”
Tom Hunt intends to focus on special educational needs as he has personal experience of both dyslexia and dyspraxia. He said: “I really struggled at school but I was really fortunate I got the support I needed, so I turned it around and did pretty well academically, but I’m acutely aware that a lot of pupils don’t get the support they need so that’s what I’m most passionate about.”
Labour Leadership Contest – The hustings continued for the leadership candidates all through this week.
PMQs
Local MP Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) featured in Prime Minister’s Questions this week when he asked whether the PM would prioritise family hubs and ensure that they were linked to Early Years Strategy, the Troubled Families Programme, and children’s’ services reform. The PM said £165 million had been allocated to extend the Troubled Families Programme this year.
It is National Apprenticeship Week and there has been a plethora of employers and organisations celebrating apprenticeships amongst discussions of future changes and sharing information to ensure more potential students consider apprenticeships as an alternative to university.
Hitting the headlines was the DfE survey with Mumsnet which set out to understand parents’ preconceptions on apprenticeships. They found:
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson comments on the survey:
Here is the Mumsnet press release on the survey. Mumsnet Founder Justine Roberts said:
Other sources
HEPI have published Unheard: the voices of part-time adult learners aiming to prompt a re-think of how mature part time students are engaged and attracted to degree level study. There has been a 61% drop in part time students since 2010. Author, Dr John Butcher from the Open University, said:
Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI, said: …people who want, or need, to study part-time have less choice than they did. The removal of some public funding in 2008, the tripling of tuition fees in 2012 and the withdrawal of some courses have had a terrible combined impact.
Excerpts from the paper:
Page 13 onwards explores the voices of mature part timers within these three themes:
And intersperses recommendations on elements universities can change to make part time learning more accessible and successful.
OfS
The OfS have released a new blog from a mature healthcare student describing the positive experience he had whilst studying radiography. The blog talks about gender balance within the healthcare sector and taking the leap from established career and family to return to study full time. The student describes the additional opportunities he engaged with including the Council of Deans Student Leadership Programme, working with the OfS, and as a Student Observer to the UK Council (radiography). The upbeat blog is quite the counterpoint to the HEPI publication which describes isolated part time students who never fully develop their sense of institutional belonging.
The Government have announced a £24 million investment in FE to enable the sector to recruit, retain and develop high quality FE teachers, including those needed for the new T levels. This is part of the £400 million announced in August last year. It includes:
On the £400 million announced in August 2019 Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said:
Specifically on the £24 million Gavin Williamson said:
The Government will also begin to collect FE workforce data every year from 2020/21to ensure they have robust information and a greater understanding of who makes up the FE sector.
On the same day City AM published The graduate premium is little more than a myth – invest in further education instead. The piece is exactly as the title describes. It argues for less investment in HE (particularly disdainful of the increase in the number of young people attending HE) and suggests that better funded FE provision would result in a ‘FE premium’ salary boost. Excerpt:
Why pay extra for something which is in excess supply? This is exactly how it has turned out. Many graduates end up in mundane, low-paying jobs. The Office for National Statistics shows that 31 per cent of graduates have more education than is required for the work they are doing.
Erasmus & International Students
Chris Skidmore answered ANOTHER question relating to Erasmus – no new news – poor Chris is probably reciting these same answers in his sleep now.
Lord Duncan of Springbank, answering on behalf of the Government, sidesteps responding to a question asking how much budget has been set aside for the Horizon Research Programme beyond 2020.
The House of Commons Library has published a briefing paper on The Erasmus Programme.
Key facts:
There was also a parliamentary question on international students asking how many university places were allocated to non-British students.
Disadvantaged Attainment Gap
Q – Ben Bradley: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support working class boys to close the attainment gap. [6162]
A – Nick Gibb:
Collaboration – UUK issued a press release on Brexit day to reaffirm their commitment to working with HE and research institutions across Europe. The group called on their respective Governments to make this a priority as discussions about the future relationship take place. UUK describe the membership of the group: a total of 36 major domestic and international organisations, which includes the European University Association (EUA), 24 National University representative bodies, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and many other bodies across Europe. Excerpt from their joint statement:
Diversity and underrepresentation – Advance HE have published Increasing Diversity: Tackling underrepresentation of protected groups in HE. It recommends developing quantitative and qualitative skills in institutional research when examining issues of student equity. Wonkhe report that:
Sector Leading: A new Wonkhe blog written by Bristol Student Union’s Education Officer looks the value of a university being recognised as ‘sector leading’ with an eye on what this means for equality, diversity and inclusion, particularly taking risks and trying out new ways to tackle problems and improve the student experience.
Student Loans Company: Professor Andrew Wathey (VC Northumbria University) has been appointed as the interim Chair of the Student Loans Company (SLC).He has been a Non-Executive Board member at the SLC since 2018 and was Chair of the SLC Stakeholder Forum between 2010 and 2017.
Hedgehog rankings: Hedgehog fans will be pleased to know that the Preservation Society has launched a TEF style Gold, Silver Bronze accreditation scheme for universities that are looking after their campus hedgehog population.
Mental Health: Wonkhe report that the OfS has awarded £95,000 to student mental health charity Student Minds to develop a Charter Award Scheme, following the publication of Student Minds’ Mental Health Charter. At school level the National Association of Head Teachers has issued a press statement on the (almost) doubling of the numbers of counsellors needed to support school pupils. In 2016 36% of schools sought help for children’s mental health issues, in 2019 it rose to 66%. It was Children’s Mental Health Week this week.
Student Accommodation: The BBC report on three companies who failed to meet fire safety standards in a student residence in Leeds. Action was taken and the companies fined £670,000 in total after a concerned parent reported the safety breaches. Meanwhile Deloitte said the number of student beds under construction in Britain’s biggest regional cities has fallen 16.6% due to concerns over potential oversupply (reported in The Times).
IT: Regulations relating to the Digital Economy Act 2017 require that IT qualifications be provided free of charge for those aged 19+ who do not already hold an appropriate qualification standard in certain specified IT areas.
The Future: The Association of University Administrators are running a survey as part of research identifying future development needs and how professional service roles are developing during the current rapid changes for the HE sector. The survey is open until the end of February.
Student Vote: The impact of the supposed student vote did not deliver the majority Theresa May expected in the 2017 snap general election. The phenomenon has been analysed ad nauseam ever since (revealing it is far more complex than a student vote). However, the Conservatives are concerned to court the younger vote and wary of constituencies with large student populations. Boris Johnson even unsuccessfully tried for an early September 2019 general election reputedly in part to decrease the impact of the student vote by holding it before or in the transition of the beginning of term when students would not be registered to vote in the local university address. HEPI have an interesting blog by Dean Machin (Policy Advisor at Portsmouth University) who tackles some of the anti-student suggestions on limiting the vote and sets it in a wider context by applying the logic to other marginalised sectors within society (the elderly, carers, apprentices, and the terminally ill) – with some results which would be politically unpalatable. It is worth the quick 2 minute read.
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JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER
Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer
Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk
On Wednesday the Government announced their intention to sell off another set of student loans (written statement here). Angela Rayner Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary was granted an Urgent Question within Parliament to raise the sale and requested a statement from Universities Minister Sam Gyimah. Sam stated:
Angela Rayner continued to question the Minister stating the sale related to £4 billion of the student loan book and requesting for a valuation of the loans up for sale (it wasn’t provided). She also highlighted that the National Audit Office findings suggested the DfE made a loss of £900 million on the previous student loan book sale, with £600 million in future income lost. Finally she asked:
The Lords were also granted a debate on the topic and picked up where Angela Rayner left off.
MoneySavingExpert.com immediately blogged to reassure students their repayments wouldn’t be affected by the proposed sale. MoneySupermarket have a breakdown of student spending which highlights a £142 weekly shortfall in the student loan against outgoings.
Wonkhe report: Higher education staff who are EU residents are to be prioritised in a new phase of the EU Settlement Scheme pilot, which will open in November. Eligible to apply are those who are employed by or work at a higher education institution or overseas higher education institution in the UK which is classified as such on the Tier 4 Register of licensed sponsors. The new phase will be a further pilot to scale up the testing of the scheme in addition to HE staff it also covers the health and social care sector. The new phase will open on November 1 and will run until 21 December this year.
Alistair Jarvis, Chief Executive of Universities UK, stated:
“There are nearly 50,000 EU nationals working in UK universities and they make a vitally important contribution to our campuses and communities. Many leading researchers and key university staff in the UK are from other EU countries. This enables our universities to maintain their world-class excellence in teaching and research. Highly trained international technical, professional and support staff also play an important role in our universities.
“We welcome the news therefore that they will be able to obtain settled or pre-settled status as one of the earliest groups in the scheme. This will provide much needed clarity for our EU staff and for universities. It is vital for our economy and society that the UK retains and continues to attract the best and brightest from across Europe post-Brexit.
The Immigration Minister also stated the government’s intention to double the Immigration Health Surcharge (HIS) to £400 per year (or £300 per year for students). This change will require ratification in Parliament by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Next Tuesday the Education Committee will meet Pepper the robot who will answer questions in a session on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Pepper is part of an international research project developing the world’s first culturally aware robots aimed at assisting with care for older people. The Committee will hear about her work with students across the faculties at Middlesex University, including a project involving teaching primary level children, and what role increased automation and robotics might play in the workplace and classroom of the future. After a demonstration by Pepper, the Committee will explore with witnesses, including those from Middlesex University, how robots can be used to support learning, and the skills needed to adapt to the growth in artificial intelligence and automation.
University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are in the news again with the Guardian drawing on the Education Policy Institute (EPI) report which finds UTCs ineffective as 50% of students drop out. UTCs are for 14-19 year olds, with a strong focus on technical education. They are sponsored by universities and supported by employers. The EPI report notes that there are 50 UTCs open in England. An additional 10 having closed or fundamentally changed into a different institution type in recent years.
UTCs: provision and characteristics
Progress and outcomes of students in UTCs
Supporting skills needs in the economy
Recommendations
Last week Nick Gibb, Minster of State for School Standards stated the UK’s spending on education was the third highest in the world. It hit the headlines as it controversially included university student tuition loans as well as fees paid by private school pupils and positively misrepresented literacy rankings. The UK Statistics Authority criticised here, the letter highlighting it was the fourth time in the last 12 months the DfE has misused statistics. Damian Hinds, Secretary of State for Education, responded here providing alternative statistics to blur the lines of the previous misuse. Whereas the Permanent Secretary within the DfE, Ed Humperson, was willing to hold his hands up and say they’ll do better in this letter.
From Research Professional: The House of Commons science and technology committee has published the written evidence for its ongoing inquiry into the balance of UK research funding. This inquiry was launched in July, two months after UK Research and Innovation published a strategic prospectus in which it announced that it was carrying out an internal review of the balance of funds between the research councils, Research England, Innovate UK and interdisciplinary research. It seems that UKRI would like to alter the balance in favour of more research across disciplinary boundaries and possibly more research that yields impact in its many forms.
It is interesting to look at who submitted evidence – not very many universities, although the Russell Group (and some of their members individually), UUK and GuildHE made submissions, alongside many of the Societies and Academies, the Wellcome Trust etc. So did the Department for BEIS.
A thought provoking blog on Wonkhe this week: Beyond school qualifications: how to make admissions truly inclusive. It tackles the false positives (admitting a student when it would have been better to decline) and false negatives (not offering to a student who would have done well) and considers the influence of a range of WP factors. The article favours foundation years to tackle the false negatives, and considers how efforts could be scaled up to admit on a different basis for a wider range of courses. It also highlights the pros and cons of the radical French université open access system.
The Office for Students published an early evaluation of the Addressing Barriers to Student Success programme covering the first year of programme delivery. It looks at how the programme is working, lessons learnt, and potential for cross-institutional partnerships as enablers for trialling and scaling up as well as the organisational and pedagogical approaches that seek to address differential student outcomes. Figure 3.5 on page 22 lists some of the successful activities which have addressed student success so far and page 33 has a what works diagram:
Finally the recommendation is for a three year programme (rather than the intended two) otherwise the results of the interventions will now be known and that the OfS should consider the academic calendar when funding programmes of this nature.
Parliamentary Questions
This week there were parliamentary questions on whether Pupil Premium is being used to supplement core funding, on the opt-in requirement for universities to share student mental health status information with parents, and on transition to university (mental health). Another question tackled the recruitment of Social Mobility Commissioners, the answer simply stated the recruitment was ongoing and no information would be released until the process concluded (and a further ask on the Commission recruitment attempted to establish how many applicants were solicited or unsolicited – same no response was given). . Sam Gyimah also answered a parliamentary question on student mobility study abroad programmes responding that such schemes still focus on the UK participating in the Erasmus successor programme. A further question on unconditional offers highlighted the tasking of the OfS to assess the impact unconditional offers may have on A level attainment. Finally there was a question on childcare support:
Q- David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has a policy on helping students with children to study at university while providing childcare support.
A – Sam Gyimah:
Birkbeck has announced that it will no longer participate in UK league tables. Their statement notes good REF outcomes and a sliver TEF, but says that their league table position “gives a totally misleading view of the College”.
This is really a criticism of the over-simplified view that league tables give, compared to (say) the TEF (much criticised in its own right, of course, but much more nuanced). The first point above is one that will resonate with many across the sector. Progression from year 1 to year 2 is of course a metric in the TEF, which uses benchmarks so that Birkbeck would not be penalised for its model.
Advance HE published the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey 2018. They note that 16,000 postgraduates responded to the survey and list the key findings as:
The OfS have also issued an invitation to tender for a taught postgraduate student survey. It is described as an exploratory sample based survey intended to gather responses from around 30,000 PG students.
To accompany the tender announcements Conor Ryan, from the OfS wrote a Wonkhe blog: Listening to the postgraduate student voice.
Advance HE will publish the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) later this month, and the UK Engagement Survey next month.
Research Professional continues what might be called a campaign to call the Minister out on his pronouncements on free speech. The latest was in the playbook last week.
Playbook readers are familiar with the occasions it has been our journalistic duty to fact-check the claims of the universities minister Sam Gyimah during his campaign for free speech on campus. It was a surprise, then, to read over the summer an interview with the minister, given to the think tank Bright Blue, in which he said he had “received countless emails and letters from students saying that free speech on their campus is being threatened or impeded”. Wondering what amounted to “countless” these days, Playbook submitted a freedom of information request to the Department for Education. We asked for details of how many emails the minister had received from students on this topic. Sadly, the department was unable to comply with our request.
It said: “‘Free speech’ is such a widely applied term, it is impossible to narrow down all of the correspondence related to this subject.” We were told that the information was held in a “correspondence logging system” and not on a spreadsheet. “So the department estimates that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the cost threshold applicable to central government. This is £600 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3.5 working days locating, retrieving and extracting the information,” the department said.
Sexual Misconduct: AMOSSHE published an Insight report which researched students’ expectations of their universities following reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct by or against students. The report notes a reluctance to report sexual misconduct and that emotional wellbeing support is crucial to student’s following disclosure.
UTCs: University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are in the news again with the Guardian drawing on the Education Policy Institute report which finds UTCs ineffective as 50% of students drop out.
Universal Credit: There has been significant hand wringing from the Conservatives over Universal Credit in recent times. FE News runs an article (written by Dept for Work and Pensions) on Universal Credit setting out the exceptions to the rule that full time students cannot claim Universal Credit.
A (short-ish) technical blog on HEPI this week discusses aligning Post-18 Entitlements and Apprenticeship Funding. It provides some facts and figures from level 2 to level 4. It concludes:
Arguably more thought needs to be given to publicly funded re-skilling entitlements. Potential options include:
EEA Workers: Those following the Migration Advisory Committee’s EEA workers investigation and reporting may find this UCEA webpage interesting. It brings together the major sources on the topic and publishes the UCEA red amber green briefing response to the committee’s report.
Brexit – No deal prep: On Friday the Government released more guidance for various sectors on how to prepare for Brexit should we leave the EU with no deal.
Chief Scientific Adviser (Foreign and Commonwealth Office): Professor Carole Mundell was announced as the new Chief Scientific Adviser. She will also continue in her role as Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at Bath University. The Chief Scientific Adviser represents UK science interests internationally, using science relationships to deliver the UK’s foreign policy priorities. She will work closely with the UK’s Science and Innovation Network to facilitate links between British and international scientists to drive future economic growth; tackle global challenges such as Anti-Microbial Resistance, Patient Safety, girls’ education and to support the conservation and sustainable use of the Ocean.
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JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER
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Welcome to the first policy update of 2018! Parliament is in recess until Monday 8th so there has been less activity this week. Nevertheless, here is your slimline summary of the activity since our last update.
The Office for Students (OfS) officially came into existence this week. The final 6 members of the OfS board were announced
New members:
This appointment has been contentious with both students and academics claiming he is unsuitable (BBC News: Toby Young regrets ‘politically incorrect’ comments). In another BBC article: University job backlash because I’m a Tory the DfE are reported to have spoken of the “vital insights Toby’s experience as the founder of a free school will bring to the role”. Furthermore: “This experience will be vital in encouraging new providers and ensuring more universities are working effectively with schools.”
Mr Young has also been criticised for past derogatory comments about working class students. In response to this complaint Toby claims the number of pupil premium children enrolled at the four schools he has established counters this criticism.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “If this organisation was to have any credibility it needed a robust board looking out for students’ interests. Instead we have this announcement sneaked out at New Year with Tory cheerleader Toby Young dressed up as the voice of teachers and no actual representation from staff or students.” [Note – there is student representation as Ruth Carlson has been appointed to the OfS board – see above.]
Twitter has been awash with complaints, including suggestions he is deleting thousands of inappropriate past tweets. LBC have critiqued the DfE for failing to provide a rationale response justifying why the inappropriate tweets were not considered a deterrent factor in Toby’s appointment.
Conservative Minister Margot James has also criticised the choice: “Toby Young is worthy of his appointment but it is a mistake for him to belittle sexist comments by labelling them ‘politically incorrect’, a term frequently used to dismiss unacceptable comments about, and behaviour towards, women and minorities.”
Toby has strong links with the Conservative party who are currently reported as experiencing a generation gap crisis due to the low number of young members they are attracting. Strong student opposition to Toby’s appointment may further damage the Conservatives’ reputation with younger voters further.
Click the link to read Toby Young’s statement: why I am qualified to be on board of new universities regulator
Previously announced members:
League tables often attract a collective groan within HE institutions because positioning is important but the criteria and methodologies change making interpretation difficult. On Thursday the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the Higher Education Strategic Planners Association published A Guide to UK League Tables in HE. The report is a simple introduction for those who’d like to understand the limitations of league tables without getting bogged down in the complex terms and data.
Sally Turnball (author) said: League tables are both interesting and useful. But, as is the case in much of today’s knowledge society, we need to be able to navigate and understand this information effectively, so that it aids – rather than drives – what we do.
In summary, some difficulties are:
The report concludes: League tables are not created for higher education providers to use as core management information. They are not based on thorough in-depth analyses of the datasets and they do not take many of the known contextual factors into account – for example, graduate employment data are not adjusted for local employment markets, despite differences in the profile of employment opportunities across the country. Yet league tables bring together a range of different sources of information about higher education providers to give a general overview of factors that prospective students might find useful when considering where to study. They provide information at both subject and institutional levels and they generate media coverage, putting areas of supposedly stronger and weaker provision in the spotlight. League tables are here to stay, and it would be ill-advised to ignore them. However, using them as the sole basis for policymaking or strategic decision-making is equally ill-advised.
Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI said: Universities are judged by their position in the league tables. Rankings determine reputation, prestige and student numbers. That is why university governing bodies hold their vice-chancellors to account for their league table positions. But users of the league tables tend to know little about how the rankings are put together. In other words, they do not know, precisely, what it is they are holding people to account for. The main league tables are not going to disappear any time soon because they provide comparative information and people find them useful. But they are easily and often misunderstood. My hope is that everyone who holds our universities to account will set themselves a new year’s resolution to look under the bonnet of the league tables before using them.
Jo Johnson spoke about free speech at the Jewish Limmud Festival on 26 December: “Our universities…should be places that open minds not close them, where ideas can be freely challenged and prejudices exposed. But in universities in America and increasingly in the United Kingdom, there are countervailing forces of censorship, where groups have sought to stifle those who do not agree with them in every way under the banner of “safe spaces” or “no-platforming”. However well-intentioned, the proliferation of such safe spaces, the rise of no-platforming, the removal of ‘offensive’ books from libraries and the drawing up of ever more extensive lists of banned “trigger” words are undermining the principle of free speech in our universities. Shield young people from controversial opinions, views that challenge their most profoundly held beliefs or simply make them uncomfortable, and you are on the slippery slope that ends up with a society less able to make scientific breakthroughs, to be innovative and to resist injustice.”
Of the OfS Johnson stated: “Promoting freedom of speech within the law will be at the heart of its [OfS’] approach to the regulation of our higher education system. The OfS will go further than its predecessor in promoting freedom of speech. …as a condition of registration with the new regulator, we are proposing that all universities benefitting from public money must demonstrate a clear commitment to free speech in their governance documents. I am pleased to say that this freedom is as important to the OfS’s new chairman, Sir Michael Barber, as it is to me. While he hoped the OfS never has to intervene in a university in relation to freedom of speech, he undertook that, if it does, it will be to widen it rather than restrict it. I’m confident freedom of speech in our universities has a bright future under the OfS. But we will continue to watch the system carefully.”
Finally Johnson reiterated: “And I want to be clear about this: attempts to silence opinions that one disagrees with have no place in the English university system. Academics and students alike must not allow a culture to take hold where silence is preferable to a dissenting voice. Universities cannot afford to be complacent about complying either with their duties to protect freedom of speech, or anything less than vigilant against hate speech (or other unlawful activity) masquerading as the exercise of the right to freedom of speech.”
On the following day Angela Rayner (Labour, Shadow Secretary of State for Education) said: “It is a false choice to suggest that universities are either places of free enquiry or places of safety. They can be both. Denying access to groups and individuals who incite violence and hatred is a perfectly sensible step to keep students safe from harm. The NUS have a ‘no-platform’ policy for a handful of racist, anti-Semitic and extremist organisations, some of which the Government itself has also banned. If Jo Johnson is opposed to that policy, he needs to be clear which of those groups he actually wants on campus.”
Leader of the Lib Dems, Vince Cable, is optimistic the PM will remove international students from the official immigration figures. He said: “…the Home Office has wildly exaggerated the number of those who overstay. This absurd policy has fuelled concerns over immigration numbers and done serious damage to our universities. We should be encouraging more students to come and spend their money in the UK, instead of needlessly hampering one of Britain’s most successful export industries.”
Theresa May has been vehement in continuing to count students within the net migration targets. Without fresh evidence it seemed unlikely the PM would change her stance, however, Politics Home has speculated May is likely to back down to avoid a vote defeat during the forthcoming Immigration Bill.
Meanwhile, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) continue their work to assess the social and economic impacts of international students studying within the UK. BU are currently preparing their response to the MAC call for evidence. Contact us at Policy if you’d like to contribute this this response.
In December the Government announced a £170 million fund to establish Institutes of Technology delivering high level technical skills that meet employer needs. The Institutes of Technology will combine business, education and training providers within technical (particularly STEM) subjects to deliver the specific provision needed by local, regional and national employers. It forms part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy that will directly target skills gaps through upskilling existing and new entrants to the workforce. The first Institutes of Technology are expected to open in 2019.
Justine Greening said: “Institutes of technology will play a vital role driving our skills revolution with business and unlocking the potential of our country’s young people through better technical education. By bridging the country’s skills gaps, these new institutions will drive growth and widen opportunity.” “This Government continues to invest in developing our homegrown talent so British business has the skills it needs and so that young people can get the opportunities they want.”
Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.
The year that was: HEPI review the major happenings of 2017 – a handy and brief refresh if you tuned out during the relentless sector debate and change last year. And Times Higher lists their 25 most popular articles of 2017 – the top spot went to the TEF results.
Research policy news: read our round up of the research news this week. And David Sweeney reflects on the change in mindset required to understand the approach to submissions in REF 2021.
Access to non-religious pastoral carers: Humanists UK published the results of their survey calling for non-religious support workers to be appointed to university chaplaincy and pastoral support teams. The survey sampling is limited in that it was only drawn from their student membership.
Industrial Strategy: The House of Lords has produced a library briefing on the Industrial Strategy and the UK Economy
Artificial Intelligence & Automation: The House of Commons Library has produced a briefing paper on Artificial Intelligence and Automation in the UK. Increasing digital skills, filling employment gaps, and funding for AI research are key issues for Government who seek to grow the AI industry. A sector deal for AI was announced in the Autumn 2017 Budget. This briefing paper considers the impact of AI and automation on the UK workforce, including how working lives may change. There are a broad range of predictions caveated by uncertainties such as the rate of technological development, rate of deployment, and the geographical variations. The paper concludes that the impact is likely to be significant and the Bank of England predicts that 15 million jobs will be influenced by automation over the next 20 years. You may also find the THE article from May 2017 Which countries and universities are leading on AI research interesting.
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