Tagged / Ukraine

Conversation article: How the world’s first open-source digital map of mass graves could help bring justice to victims

In this Insights long-form article for The Conversation, Dr Ellie Smith and Professor Melanie Klinkner write about their work documenting mass graves across the world and the difficulties in locating and investigating such sites…

How the world’s first open-source digital map of mass graves could help bring justice to victims in Ukraine and other war zones

Ellie Smith, Bournemouth University and Melanie Klinkner, Bournemouth University

These newly reported discoveries [of mass graves] confirm our darkest fears. The people of Ukraine and the world deserve to know how exactly those buried in the forest near Izium have died. Amnesty International

Mass graves were reported in Ukraine soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, and were promptly probed by investigators and forensic experts as likely crime scenes.

Soon after the war began, we started to collate information on potential mass grave sites, hoping to get a better understanding of the practicalities of documenting the location of mass graves in real time using open-source information, and to stress test tools that we had developed to support mapping.

It was exacting work: the internet was flooded with reports from many different sources, from potential victims and witnesses to journalists and analysts. The volume of material available to us was enormous, and within it, we needed to work out which reports were reliable, where there might be inaccuracies – innocent or deliberate – and how we should record the location of a verified mass grave.

We were working within an ongoing and rapidly changing situation: in a short space of time, a site would go from being located, reported to the police, formally investigated, excavated and the bodies located in it identified.

Our mapping therefore had to be done at pace to fully verify the open-source reports that we relied on before the situation changed.

The intensity of the work in Ukraine was also a strong reminder to us of the need to protect ourselves and our team from the constant exposure to graphic reports and imagery. As Diego Nunez, a data researcher for the Mass Grave Protection, Investigation and Engagement (MaGPIE) project that we run, told us:

Even if you might be familiar with graphic or explicit content, it is hard not to feel small and powerless in front of the evidence of human rights violations of any kind. From pictures of the mass graves with fresh or skeletonised remains to the testimonies of survivors, each grave seems to tell a story of horror which might be difficult to forget.

It was noticeable how little information was coming out of eastern Ukraine and Russian-controlled regions. For us, this meant an increased risk of an incomplete or skewed map with the potential for it to feed into a political narrative of denial. It was only when Russian troops left certain territories that more information emerged.

But while the inaccessibility or unreliability of information about mass grave sites during an armed conflict presents challenges for us as researchers, it is a source of excruciating anguish for those looking for their loved ones.

That is why we have made it our mission to produce the world’s first global open-source mass graves map. Such a map is important because physical memorialisation of mass grave sites may be difficult where political and ethnic tensions continue to run high or perpetrators remain in positions of power. The digital recording of sites – especially in an open-source format – may serve as a form of memorialisation, providing some form of justice for victims’ families, ensuring that the death of their loved one is recorded and remembered, and helping to counter revisionism and state denial.

This article is part of Conversation Insights.

Our co-editors commission long-form journalism, working with academics from many different backgrounds who are engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

In addition to our ongoing work with the map, we have extensively researched mass grave materials and victim accounts from across the world and have produced a protocol of international standards on how mass grave protection and investigation should be approached.

Millions missing

Mass graves are sites of unimaginable human loss and suffering, and they exist on a shocking scale. According to a report by the UN Special Rapporteur in 2020), “there is not one region in the world, not one historical period, that has not seen mass graves”.

They are present on every inhabited continent and the number of victims they are believed to contain is staggering. In Iraq alone, up to 1 million people are missing and are potentially in mass graves following decades of conflict and human rights violations, from the pre-Saddam Hussein era to the Yazidis killed at the hands of the Islamic State.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, 7,600 people are still missing following the conflict there. They include over 1,000 victims of the Srebrenica genocide.

And in Cambodia more than 20,000 mass burials at 288 burial sites from the Khmer Rouge era have been found so far, containing the remains of an estimated 1.3 million people.

The ethnographer Adam Rosenblatt has called mass graves, “an underground map of atrocity that stretches across the planet’s surface”.

And for every body hidden in a mass grave, there is a family that is in anguish. The need to know where their loved one is, what happened to them, and to have their remains returned so that they can be mourned with dignity can be overwhelming and enduring.

Crime scene investigation

But mass graves are more than sites of human despair and suffering – they are also crime scenes, containing evidence that is essential for building a case against perpetrators so that families can achieve some element of justice. Despite this, however, until relatively recently there have been no common, international standards to guide practitioners on the best ways to protect and investigate such sites.

We have been able to fill this gap with the Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation.

We were fortunate enough to be joined by a group of world-leading experts who worked on mass graves in many different capacities, including representatives from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), the International Committee for the Red Cross and the International Criminal Court. Between them, our collaborators had worked as lawyers, judges, investigators and forensic practitioners in every major mass grave context imaginable, and on every continent.

The protocol follows the chronological stages of mass grave investigation, from the initial discovery of a site to the achievement of justice and commemoration. It is now being used by the ICMP and is available in 15 languages, most recently Ukrainian.

Zahra and Wadad’s quest for answers

To highlight the impact that this trauma can have, we searched for and
compiled the real-life experiences of families of the missing from all over the world for our animated film Resolution.

Our hope for the animation is that any family who finds themselves in the same horrific situation anywhere in the world would be able to recognise their own experiences in it. The six-minute film is told from the perspective of those who are left behind, and focuses on three key characters.

The first two are Zahra and Wadad – they are not real, but their experiences are. They are composite characters, grounded in research that includes published victim narratives and testimony from many different countries that have seen atrocities, including Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon, Rwanda, Syria and Guatemala. Our research also involved direct engagement with victims’ organisations and expert practitioners with experience of working with the families of the missing.

Our decision to use composite characters for the film was based on our need to ensure the anonymity and safety of survivors, particularly in situations where the perpetrators of atrocities were still in positions of power. It also allowed us to represent the experiences of as many people and contexts as possible.

Zahra’s son was found in a mass grave ten years after he was taken by armed forces from their rural home. Together with hundreds of others who were targeted because of their ethnicity, he was transported to a holding site, tortured and executed.

His body was found in a mass grave that contained the remains of over 200 others. He was identified initially by his distinctive clothing – a hat that Zahra had knitted for him – and later by DNA evidence

Zahra’s search for him had been a long and arduous one. Like many others who were also searching for missing family members, she reported him missing, provided a description and a DNA reference sample. She asked neighbours, survivors and witnesses if they had any idea what had happened to him and where he might be.

Animation of a mother by her son's graveside.
‘Zahra’ holds her son’s hat after his body is discovered in a mass grave.
YouTube/Lina Ghaibeh and George Khoury

She plastered his image on any available public space – and she waited. And despite the almost daily discovery by international investigators of mass graves in the surrounding area, knowing in her heart of hearts that he must almost certainly be dead, the absence of a body meant that there was always the tiniest shred of hope that somewhere he might be alive and come back to her.

She lived in this agonising state of limbo for more than a decade, unable to mourn her son and to move on with her own life until he had been found. The return of his body to her was devastating, but it also meant that she was able to bury him with the care and dignity that had been denied him in his final days and in his death.

Sadly, Zahra’s experiences are not unique.

Wadad was at home with her husband and two small children, celebrating her husband’s birthday, when the soldiers arrived at their door.

Animation still of soldiers turning up at a family home.
Soldiers come to beat Wadad’s husband who was never seen alive again.
YouTube/Lina Ghaibeh and George Khoury

They beat her husband before taking him away and raped Wadad while her terrified children cowered outside her bedroom door.

Wadad never saw her husband alive again. Like Zahra, Wadad’s quest to find out what had happened to him was a long one. Her children grew into adults as their struggle continued. As political oppression in her country mounted, so did the number of disappearances, and families of the missing swelled the ranks of protesters who were calling for answers.

In the end, the answer did not come from the government but from a survivor who had been imprisoned with Wadad’s husband. He had been executed. Wadad still doesn’t know where his body is.

The experiences of Zahra and Wadad are shared by families all around the world who are searching for their loved ones. The majority of victims in mass graves are men and boys, meaning that many of those who are looking for the bodies of their dead are women. In the immediate aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, for example, 70% of the country’s population was female. In Bosnia, too, the vast majority of the missing are men (86.98%), most of whom were aged between 21 and 60 at the time they disappeared (70.58%).

Like Wadad, women were often victims of human rights violations, including rape and other forms of sexual violence. This means they have to deal with their own trauma and at the same time navigate the ordeal of investigating what happened to their loved one.

In Rwanda alone, between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped during the genocide. Many of them suffer social isolation and rejection as a result, struggle with ongoing illness including HIV infection, and must try to make a living as a sole breadwinner for their families, including for any children born as a result of rape.

In our film, the body of Zahra’s son is found and returned to her so that she can bury and mourn him. The same cannot be said, however, for Wadad, reflecting the sad truth of mass grave investigation: for most people who are looking for their loved ones, their remains will never be found. Mass grave sites – even when known – will never be excavated, and in other cases remains have been destroyed.

‘They made him disappear completely’

Armando Amaro Cóndor, for example, was a student at Peru’s Universidad Nacional de Educación Enrique Guzmán y Valle who went missing in July 1992.

He was among nine students and one professor who were disappeared and later extrajudicially executed by Peruvian military forces. His sister, Carmen Rosa Amaro-Cóndor summed up her feelings in her evidence to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights when she said:

They made him disappear completely; they burned his body with lime, with gasolene, that shows their complete inhumanity.

Mass grave exhumation is time consuming and expensive, and for countries that lack sufficient resources or expertise, may simply never happen.

In Iraq, for instance, it is estimated, based on the current rate of progress, that to exhume and investigate all currently known mass graves would take 800 years.

But efforts to search for, exhume and identify the dead and prosecute those responsible also requires political will, which is likely to be lacking where those responsible remain in positions of power.

In Guatemala, there is still no specialist public body with a mandate to search for the reported 45,000 people who have been missing since the 36-year conflict ended in 1996. Instead, families have faced official denial and obstruction, aided by an attorney general who remains loyal to former military leaders and political figures directly implicated in the many massacres that took place there. Families must rely instead on civil society organisations to conduct exhumation and identification efforts.

Where the existence of mass graves runs counter to political or nationalistic goals, sites become inconvenient reminders of a truth and a history that leaders are seeking to either rewrite or erase.

For example, nationalism and ethnic tensions are running dangerously high in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska where President Milorad Dodik – a genocide denier – has promised his supporters secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Authorities within the Republika Srpska are actively engaged in revisionism efforts, and since 2016, at the behest of the minister of education and culture, children attending schools in the Republika Srpska have not been taught about the Siege of Sarajevo or the Srebrenica genocide.

Memorialisation has become a highly partisan issue, as murals in the city of Foča have appeared celebrating Ratko Mladić and Milorad Pelemiš, the commander of the 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army – the unit responsible for the killing of over 1,000 Bosniaks at Branjevo Farm in July 1995.

By contrast, of the 42 largest mass graves discovered in the country to date, just 12 of the excavated sites bear any kind of memorial plaque or are otherwise marked. Instead, many have been built over or used as rubbish dumps.

Within this highly tense and partisan context, witnesses to crimes are fearful of reporting mass grave locations. Amor Mašović, chairman of the board of directors of the Missing Persons Institute in Bosnia, said that information about hidden graves is still being stored in people’s heads, but witnesses who were involved in crimes aren’t willing to share their knowledge, partly because of the political climate, adding:

Messages from political leaders go against that, saying those who offer information will become traitors to their people, while those who should be criminally prosecuted for taking people away and forcibly making them disappear are heroes to these politicians.

Wissam is the third character in our film (they are gender-neutral so that the widest possible spread of survivors can recognise themselves in the film).

They are a student in a city in sub-Saharan Africa, where they blog about the political situation. Wissam is chatting with their partner online when they witness armed men break into their partner’s flat and begin to beat him, before dragging him away, out of sight of the screen.

Animation showing person in hoodie having online video chats.
Wissam launching an online campaign to raise awareness about their partner’s disappearance.
YouTube/Lina Ghaibeh and George Khoury

Wissam uses their online presence to raise awareness of the disappearance, launching a campaign that attracts others from their own country and beyond. There are riots as protests against government oppression grow, but Wissam never learns their partner’s fate or whereabouts. They remain in limbo.

For those who continue to search – and for whom there will never be a body or a trial – we need to find other ways to alleviate their anguish, to restore dignity in death and to bring families some peace, and perhaps some form of justice.

Digital mapping and concealed evidence

Online documentation and mapping is used in other human rights contexts as a way of recording fact, preserving evidence and raising awareness of human rights violations. It is an area that we have been exploring in our work to see how it might be applied to mass graves.

The digital recording and mapping of mass grave sites could also provide protection of the site and preserve its location in the event that the political situation changes and investigation becomes a possibility at some point in the future.

In Guatemala, for example, after decades of impunity and an absence of any will on the part of the state to search for and identify the missing, a new president has been elected on an anti-corruption platform, and the country is currently pursuing the criminal prosecution of a former army general, Lucas Garcia, who held office during one of the most violent and bloodiest periods of the conflict.

It offers families a glimmer of hope that justice will finally be done and loved ones found – but time is running out. Garcia is 91 and his co-accused, Callejas y Callejas, has been declared unfit for trial. Witnesses and perpetrators are dying and memories are fading, along with hopes of locating mass graves and their victims.

But the issue of open-source mapping of mass graves is not a straightforward one.
Mass grave sites are vulnerable to disturbance because perpetrators will often try to cover up their crimes. So publicly revealing the location of a site may actually alert them to the fact that their cover ups have failed. The destruction of or interference with mass graves can then result in the loss or contamination of evidence.

It can also result in damage to the bodies that are buried there, including the separation and commingling of body parts. For those hoping for the identification and return of a family member, this can be both traumatic and catastrophic.

As the conflict in Bosnia was in its final throws, for example, several months after the Srebrenica genocide took place, the US secretary of state issued a statement indicating that US forces had identified the location of a number of mass graves from satellite imagery.

As Bosnian-Serb forces sensed defeat, a concerted and organised effort was made to conceal the evidence of mass graves: they were dug up using heavy machinery and bodies were moved in their hundreds to secondary, smaller sites. The process was brutal and indiscriminate. It meant that body parts became separated and mixed with others, with remains of single individuals being found in multiple different grave pits.

Public disclosure of the location of a mass grave site could also put witnesses and victims’ families at risk of harm, especially where the possibility of criminal investigation exists within a country or those responsible still hold positions of power.

The first global map

While there is currently no system of global record keeping, mapping or monitoring of the number and location of mass graves or of the numbers of victims believed to be in them, there are a few mass grave mapping projects that have been conducted at a country level, including in both Bosnia and Cambodia, providing us with an insight into some of the challenges involved.

Our initial aim was to produce guidance – a number of practical tools – that would enable anyone involved in mapping mass graves to make decisions that were ethical and safe – including when open-source publication should be avoided and how risks could be mitigated.

And our team of specialist researchers has now begun the long process of producing the first world-wide open-source map of mass graves, a process that we envisage will take another 2.5 years to complete.

We continue to encounter many challenges along the way, including how we verify the credibility of online reports and sources, as well as the availability and accessibility of reports themselves.

Cross-referencing materials to validate our sources is hugely time consuming – we are trying to compare the non-comparable. Where sites are unmarked or are situated in remote areas they are harder to identify, bringing with it the risk of under-representation in areas and the possibility that fewer recordings of graves might feed into a revisionist narrative, or deny families the justice and closure they are looking for.

The work is methodical and long. Nonetheless, as a snapshot of our current progress hopefully shows, we are working to ensure that overlooked and under-reported mass graves are captured.

A digital map of Kosovo
Mass graves detected and mapped in Kosovo.
MaGPIE

The image above shows the different types of mass graves recorded in Kosovo. The barchart outlines the large numbers of sites recorded by the project so far.

What next?

The way that we search for, exhume and investigate mass graves has come a long way since the formation of forensic teams in south and Latin America in the wake of the military junta regimes of the 1970s and early 1980s. Since then a number of forensic teams have been founded in Guatemala, Peru and elsewhere to facilitate the exhumation and identification of the disappeared.

The international tribunals that were set up by the UN Security Council after the conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia went a step further, introducing multidisciplinary teams that operated on a large scale. The search for the missing has benefited from the application of technology such as satellite imagery and ground penetrating radar, while the development of DNA evidence has been instrumental in the reliable identification of victims.

These developments all inform today’s efforts to find answers for victims’ families in what feels like an increasingly volatile world.

And despite the ubiquity of mass graves across the globe and their significance for families and societies that are seeking to come to terms with their violent pasts, the full scale and nature of the mass grave phenomena is still not well understood. While many countries may legislate to search for the missing, punish those responsible and provide families with the answers they so desperately need, the extent to which those legal commitments are manifested in practice is variable.

Sometimes states may simply lack the capacity and expertise required to conduct credible forensic exhumations that have the potential to meet the needs of families who are often left without the answers they need while perpetrators go unpunished. In order to rectify this, we need a fuller understanding of how legal commitments are being interpreted and applied in practice.

In the meantime, for the families of the missing, the need to find their loved ones and to understand what happened to them does not fade with time, and neither does their commitment to pursue the truth.

Resolution was written and animated by Lina Ghaibeh and Georges Khoury and is dedicated to all those who continue to search. The name is intended to speak, not only to their need for an answer but also to their steadfast resolve – often over decades – to bring their loved ones home. We are grateful to the victims’ organisations that supported us in the development of the film. The survivor quotes used in this article come from materials produced by those organisations, and helped to form its narrative.

For you: more from our Insights series:

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Ellie Smith, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Bournemouth University and Melanie Klinkner, Professor in International Law, Bournemouth University

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

Ukrainian refugees and their invisible luggage of displacement – publication by Dr Alina Dolea

Dr. Alina Dolea, Associate Professor in Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy in FMC, has published an article on emotions, trauma and public diplomacy in the academic forum on the #RussiaUkraineWar that she co-edits together with Nadia Kaneva (University of Denver) and Ilan Manor (PhD) (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) in Place Branding & Public Diplomacy

In the article, Alina argues all displaced people (refugees, migrants, or expatriates) experience a sense of loss and trauma and the Ukrainians crossing the border to take refuge across Europe carry with them this emotional luggage that shapes their identity and influences their integration in their new host places. Yet, the consequences of this invisible luggage have been rarely scrutinized in depth in public diplomacy and even in diaspora diplomacy scholarship. She draws on the psychoanalytical work of Vamik Volkan to shed some light on the psychology of Ukrainian refugees and the reactions of Romanians as host population.

Expanding from her research on Romanian diaspora (over 5 million) and the current Ukrainian refugees in Europe (over 8 million), Alina posits it is essential to understand the complex psychology, loss, emotions and trauma of displacement in diaspora diplomacy. It is necessary for theory building in order to develop analytical frameworks and research questions that link psychological processes with engagement and disengagement. In terms of practice, it can inform medium- and long-term policies of support and integration of refugees in host countries. Developing programs and encouraging grassroots initiatives aimed to increase multi-cultural awareness, communication and collaboration between newcomers and host populations is critical. Increased communication towards host publics is also needed in European countries especially because previous waves of migration and refugees have been instrumentalized in exclusionary, divisive political discourses that contribute to social anxieties, fears and phobias towards newcomers. Psychoanalytical approaches can shed light on the psychological processes that make illiberal, populist and extremist discourses effective as they instrumentalize chosen traumas and chosen glories.

This essay calls for integrating the study of emotions in public diplomacy and diaspora diplomacy research in order to (1) explore the breadth and depth of psychological processes that turn individual emotions into group emotions and (2) understand the potential of emotions to enable or disrupt engagement. Interdisciplinary research which engages with political psychology approaches that look at emotions, affect and trauma can provide new analytical insights into the inner worlds and lived experiences of the displaced, as well as into the emotions that shape representations, attitudes and behaviours of both newcomers and hosts. Such insights are much needed in designing policies aimed to support displaced groups and ease their integration and adaption in host countries. They can also contribute to more inclusive and positive public discourses about migrants and refugees.

The Academic Forum on the #RussiaUkraineWar captures a variety of epistemic reflections, creating a common space for scholars from diverse fields such as public diplomacy, strategic communications, global media studies, nation branding, international relations, post-Soviet studies, linguistics, and cultural studies. Together, we re-examined some of the concepts and practices that have shaped major debates in public diplomacy and identified new angles and approaches that can no longer be ignored in light of a world of many crises.

HE policy update for the w/e 4th April 2022

Guidance, innovation, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, open access, student research

A slightly quieter time with the House of Commons on recess.

Before they went on recess, the Skills Bill finally made it over the line.  If you are wondering why we are focussing on school level education at the moment, the first item here will explain why, as the OfS provides more insight into its views on the role of universities in schools age attainment, driven by the government’s levelling up agenda.  In this context, there was controversy over whether T levels meet the needs of lower performing pupils (despite it being marketed as an alternative to academic study), and the Social Market Foundation believe current careers advice risks entrenching inequalities by steering people towards different educational and employment options according to their parents’ income and background.

Research

There’s an article on Research Professional about priorities for the Nurse review of research arrangements.  It flags five “blind spots”:

  • The productivity of R&D is falling
  • A more systemic approach to R&D – “A more strategic approach is needed that aligns technology development, regulation, policy and test beds, and engages the public”
  • Mobilising intelligence – organising around data and knowledge not property and resources
  • Focus on adoption and diffusion
  • Addressing the gaps around social science – “The UK is good at monetising economics, psychology, behavioural science, ethnography, design and other fields, often through consultancies and advisory services or teams within companies large and small. But this happens despite, not because of, how research is organised” and “serious action to shift incentives for social scientists and mobilise them to help society think ahead”

UKRI has published an updated policy on the governance of good research practices that will apply to new and existing grants from 1 April 2022. Updates include:

  • revised text with improved clarity on the individual’s and organisation’s responsibility to enable positive research practice for high integrity research
  • a policy change that organisations must inform UKRI upon deciding to undertake formal investigations.
  • clearer text stating that we will only seek observer status on investigations by exception, with examples.
  • clarification that UKRI will not investigate cases but will check processes at an institutional level.

UKRI has also updated its full economic cost grant and training grant terms and conditions.

  • UKRI has added a new condition to reflect the statutory requirements introduced through the National Security and Investment Act 2021. Research organisations will need to ensure they follow the rules of this legislation. The legislation enables government to scrutinise and intervene in certain acquisitions that could harm the UKs national security.
  • Revisions have been made to the terms and conditions in response to the new UKRI open access policy, which will apply to in-scope research articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022 and in-scope monographs, book chapters and edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024. The publishing your research findingssection should be read alongside the policy for further information on open access and how to acknowledge a grant.
  • UKRI has added information to employment and staff costs to clarify its position on funding that is eligible and how UKRI continues to support research staff. The updatedfEC and training grant terms and conditions will take effect from 5 April 2022 and are now available

Ukraine and Russia: The Office for Students has compiled information on the Ukraine crisis for providers offering transnational education in Russia and on research collaborations with Russian institutions.

  • There are 775 Ukrainian and 3,030 Russian students studying at English universities and colleges.
  • In addition, some English universities and colleges offer transnational education. There are 267 students studying in Ukraine and 3,113 students studying in Russia in this type of provision.

Wonkhe report that around 30 British universities have expressed interest in joining a new scheme which would see them twinned with an institution in Ukraine. As part of the scheme, universities may host academics and run summer schools for students to assist in catching up on lost learning. There is also discussion of providing Ukrainian academics with “ac.uk” email addresses to enable them to allow them access to resources. The scheme is supported by Universities UK and is being run by Cormack Consultancy Group. iNews has the story.

The OfS has published the interim outcomes of 20 projects that it has funded to develop and share understanding of effective practice in student engagement in knowledge exchange.

Parliamentary Questions

Money, money, money

There is an updated House of Commons library research briefing on student loan statistics.

The IfS have looked at the inflation rate and warned about the impact on student loans.  Although this doesn’t change the position that graduate repayments are linked to salary and therefore a lot of this high interest will not be paid at all but will just increase the government write off, it is still unhelpful, because of applicant perceptions and risk aversion.  And increasing the government write off doesn’t help their perception of the cost of HE either (see charts above).

  • English and Welsh graduates who took out a student loan since 2012 are in for a rollercoaster ride on student loan interest rates in the coming years. Today’s reading for RPI inflation means that the maximum interest rate, which is charged to current students and graduates earning more than £49,130, will rise from its current level of 4.5% to an eye-watering 12% for half a year unless policy changes (the interest rates for low earners will rise from 1.5% to 9%). This means that with a typical loan balance of around £50,000, a high-earning recent graduate would incur around £3,000 in interest over six months – more than even someone earning three times the median salary for recent graduates would usually repay during that time.
  • The maximum student loan interest rate is then likely to fall to around 7% in March 2023 and fluctuate between 7 and 9% for a year and a half; in September 2024, it is then predicted to fall to around 0% before rising again to around 5% in March 2025. These wild swings in interest rates will arise from the combination of high inflation and an interest rate cap that takes half a year to come into operation. Without the cap, maximum interest rates would be 12% throughout the 2022/23 academic year and around 13% in 2023/24. While interest rates affect all borrowers’ loan balances, they only affect actual repayments for the typically high-earning graduates that will pay off their loans.
  • This interest rate rollercoaster will cause problems. The way the interest rate cap currently operates disadvantages borrowers with falling debt balances for no good reason. Perhaps more importantly, sky-high interest rates may put some prospective students off going to university; some graduates will likely feel compelled to pay off their loans even when this has no benefit for them.

Fees and funding – Research Professional has an interview with Philip Augar. 

Financial pinch: Wonkhe – Students from England beginning higher education courses in September will see the largest ever real-terms cut in a single year, according to analysis highlighted in the New Statesman. The real-terms cut in maintenance support of 7 per cent comes in addition to the continued freeze of the income threshold required to qualify for the maximum maintenance support. And a new blog on a related topic – For Claire Callender, proposals that limit eligibility for student loans undermine recent rhetoric on levelling-up.

There’s a Wonkhe blog by David Kernohan on “what happens when providers run out of money” looking at processes and some examples: “Market exit, in other words, has still not been normalised. As much as we might pretend that the invisible hand makes the decisions – provider monitoring, insolvency, and student support – the actuality of the process remains as messy and human as it ever was. The pre-OfS strategy – of selectively limiting provider borrowing, loosely controlling provider growth and shrinkage, and (yes!) selectively bailing out providers if this was needed to protect the interests of students or applicants – feels like a more honest approach.”

Levelling Up

The Institute for Government (IfG) published Will the levelling up missions help reduce regional inequality? concluding that the Government’s 12 levelling up ‘missions’ – targets to be achieved by 2030 across a range of policy areas from crime to health to housing – will not reduce regional inequality. The IfG finds that only four of the 12 missions are clear, ambitious and have appropriate metrics against which the government will measure and demonstrate progress by 2030. IfG state the other eight missions need to be recalibrated if they are to deliver on the government’s promises to level up the UK. The IfG also calls on the government to put the right systems in place to ensure that ministers and civil servants are held accountable for progress on the levelling up agenda. They believe the proposed Levelling Up Advisory Council cannot provide rigorous expert advice and scrutiny when it operates only at the discretion of the government and cannot perform independent analysis. And without any idea of which departments are leading the coordination of policy contributing to each mission, it will be harder to hold government accountable if things are off track. 

The IfS press release summarises their main findings:

  • Five of the missions are not ambitious enough, meaning that little or no change would be needed to meet them. For example, one metric requires that pay increases in every region by 2030, but this is almost certain to happen regardless of policy.  
  • Three missions are too ambitious to be realistic, which will also fail to inspire policy action. For example, meeting the target of 90% of students achieving the expected standard by age 11 will be virtually impossible. 
  • Four of the missions do not define what success really looks like, making it hard for actors within and outside government to know what they need to do to make progress. For example, it is not clear what the government means by a ‘globally competitive city’, but one of the missions sets a target to have one in every region of the UK by 2030. 
  • Two of the missions have too narrow a focus, and risk diverting attention and resources away from other outcomes that would contribute to levelling up. 
  • One mission (on R&D spending) does not align with the overall objective of levelling up to reduce regional disparities. 
  • Important objectives, such as simplifying funding for local government, are not currently part of the proposed metrics. Other metrics, such as those on pay and productivity, are due to be tracked only over large geographic regions despite the white paper acknowledging significant inequalities within these regions.  

And while we are on the topic of levelling up, a key part of the government agenda is on part-time and mature students, with an ongoing consultation on the lifelong loan entitlement.  There is a House of Commons research briefing on part-time students.

Schools, skills and qualifications

Universities working with schools: The OfS published an insight brief Schools, attainment and the role of higher education providing examples and commentary on some the work HE providers are already doing in schools to raise attainment. BU’s books and stories scheme is celebrated on page 5.

  • Raising the expectations(rather than simply the aspirations) of pupils and their parents, teachers and guardians. Findings from the formative evaluation of the Uni Connect programme show that 79% of participants who responded to the survey had increased expectations for the future, while 94% had better knowledge of higher education options.
  • Appointing ‘influencers’ and running dedicated open days and interactive events for pupils with experience of local authority care.
  • Sponsoring local schools, as 73 universities and colleges reported in their 2019-20 access and participation plans that they were doing or about to do. Some have set up maths schools, such as the Exeter Maths School sponsored by the University of Exeter and Exeter College. The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts has incorporated a primary school and a sixth form college into its LIPA Learning Group. Bridgwater and Taunton College sponsors a multi-academy trust.
  • Running summer school programmes for school pupils. Evidence suggests that participating in summer schools is associated with greater confidence and increased aspiration, and with higher GCSE grades and rates of progression to higher education.
  • Programmes of intervention in schools to raise attainment. The Education Endowment Foundation has rated interventions related to metacognition and self-regulation as highly impactful, and some universities and charities take this approach to raising attainment. Others focus their interventions on improvements to subject knowledge or to grades and capabilities e.g. BU’s Books and Stories programme which increased the reading age of participants.
  • Supporting attainment at Level 3through Access to HE courses taught in further education colleges.
  • Providing initial teaching training and continuing professional development to teachers. The Sutton Trust found that ‘for poor pupils the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher is a whole year’s learning’. A separate report also found six teacher characteristics associated with increased attainment, including a strong pedagogical knowledge. Evidence shows that high quality continuing professional development has an average effect on pupil attainment equivalent to a month of extra learning.
  • Broadening the available routes into higher education to include short courses and apprenticeships. Over 100 universities and colleges offer degree apprenticeships, but some young people lack the knowledge to make an informed choice. With strategic partnerships, providers can show how diverse the sector is and help young people to choose a path to a successful career.
  • Staff and alumni involvement in school governor structures. For example, the University of Manchester has a longstanding staff and alumni school governor initiative. The university recently conducted an impact study showing that, if all universities in England and Wales adopted the initiative, they could fill more than 10 per cent of the current nationwide school governor vacancies.
  • Access and outreach work, which is often collaborative and can contain elements of raising attainment. For example, in the National Outreach Coverage project, between 2017-18 and 2019-20 over 80,000 activities related to skills and attainment were reported through tracking services in England.

New Government dashboard for pupils: Skills Minister, Alex Burghart, spoke at a Policy Exchange event stating that the new ‘Unit for Future Skills’ will begin publishing data in April. The Unit was announced in the Levelling Up White paper and is expected to be cross-government, publicly accessible, and produce information on local skills demand, future skills needs of businesses and the pathways between training and good jobs. A DfE spokesperson told news outlet FE Week that the unit would take over the work of the DfE’s skills and productivity board once its schedule of reports had been completed.

Data provided through a central-government dashboard will inform prospective learners whether peers taking a certain qualification in health and social care go on to work in health and social care, or whether they ultimately work in retail. The Government hopes the dashboard will improve the quality of information available to school pupils.

In response to a question from the audience about the timescales attached to the UFS, the minister said his department will be starting to release data this month, but was keen to stress that it will be on an “iterative basis” and so would only be “an indicator of the sorts of things we can start doing over time.”

Burghart also commented that a reduction in undergraduate numbers would be a good thing.

  • Perceptions of post-18 study are shifting. And they are shifting I think for the better.
  • I would not be at all surprised if, in 10 years’ time, many more people are choosing to become apprentices after leaving school or college – and that the consequence of this may be that there are slightly fewer undergraduates. I consider that to be a good thing. Now, I believe in the importance of universities and the power of university degrees. But I know they are not the be all and end all.
  • As I said at the start, I taught and lectured for a number of years in some wonderful universities. I was lucky enough to teach some very bright people. But it was clear that not all of them wanted to be at university, a number were there by default, because their parents wanted them to be there, or because they felt they had no other ladders to a good career.
  • Apprenticeships have the potential to create some of those other ladders. In doing so, they can help to transform opportunity. The chance to earn while you learn, to get a three-year head start on your undergraduate friends in the workplace, to build networks, experience, to not run up debt. They are surely a huge part of the future of skills. 

Careers advice: The Social Market Foundation (SMF) published new research demonstrating that careers advice and guidance risks entrenching inequality by steering people towards different educational and employment options according to their parents’ income and background. The report examines school leavers and adult learners’ experiences of careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) in England. SMF say it presents new evidence on the way that people engage with IAG and they make a number of policy recommendations to increase the personalisation, accountability, and accessibility of IAG.

Key findings:

  • The shape and quality of IAG services is patchy, varying substantially across and within schools and colleges
  • Support for those pursuing vocational options tends to be weaker, with students carried towards university by inertia
  • People tend to favour anecdotal information over hard data, but even those using formal information make limited use of government sources
  • There is a mismatch between the grand ambitions of IAG, and what users expect from it. Careers professionals view it as long-term career planning and skills development, whereas receivers tend to just want help with the next step.
  • Adults are largely unaware of IAG services and face significant barriers to accessing them

Six actions policymakers can take:

  1. Ensure every school leaver receives a minimum level of personalised careers support by offering an entitlement to three one-to-one sessions.
  2. Add careers provision to the four ‘key judgements’ on which schools are graded in Ofsted inspections.
  3. Set the Careers and Enterprise Company the objective of tackling inequalities between schools in the level and quality of information, advice and guidance.
  4. Aim to ensure all apprenticeship opportunities are listed on the UCAS system, perhaps by establishing and integrating local platforms.
  5. Partner with trusted private apps and websites to ensure official government data and information is easily accessible.
  6. Engage in a large-scale outreach programme promoting adult education and careers services.

There’s a Wonkhe blog on careers support here from Jon down of Grit Breakthrough programmes:

  • 98 per cent of careers professionals in universitiesfeel students do not engage with career development activities and 27 per cent of students believe that the biggest obstacle to future career success is not knowing what field to go into.
  • .. If we are to drive up engagement with career development activities, it seems clear that universities need to give thought to supporting students develop the confidence to make full use of their employability offers. As a starting point, this might include:
    • Creating experiences that raise young people’s self-awareness so they can articulate their unique combination of knowledge, experience, and attributes, and the contribution they can make.
    • Coaching students to arrive at their own goals and support them in building the resources to achieve them, rather than simply imparting information, guidance, and advice.
    • Reframing support so it is not all about finding a lifeline in a crisis but instead is about gathering what you need to be a success

T level criticism: The completion of the Bill won’t be popular with all. Lord Baker has spoken out to criticism the current T levels as too academic and not serving important elements of the UK population. Lord Baker is a former secretary of state for education and science (1986-1989) and was integral to the introduction of GCSE exams.

During a select committee hearing Lord Baker stated that the Schools White Paper should have promoted a skills-rich curriculum, as well as one that focused on knowledge. He outlined his surprise at how modest the paper was, with the focus centring on the improvement of literacy and numeracy, and stated he did not agree with the idea of raising the goal of the average grade to 5 from 4.5 as that would further disadvantage certain students.

On T levels Lord Baker explained that they had introduced new T Levels at his University Technical Colleges 18 months ago, and that his trust had found they were more suited to academically able students. He highlighted to the Committee that of the ten pupils who started, three dropped out because they weren’t academically up to it, and they were people who got below a seven in GCSEs. He went on to assert that he thought the T Levels were suited to students who were achieving above a seven in GCSE.

Lord Baker emphasised that education policy should be focused on the “bottom third” of students across the country who do not pass GCSE English and maths (at level 4 or above), and that there had been no progress for this group for over a decade. He added that the curriculum reforms introduced by former education secretary Michael Gove from 2014 had not improved outcomes for low-attaining students and stated this was one of the reasons why youth unemployment in the UK was double that of Germany.

Overall his view is that T levels are not suited to over a third of the UK child population and result in drop outs.  – a blot on the Government’s quality landscape, particularly at a time when they are pushing regulators to threaten punitive action for HE providers with higher dropout rates.

Meanwhile Wonkhe covered a new apprenticeships report: the apprenticeships system favours those from professional backgrounds and wealthy areas, according to a report published by think tank Onward. The research identifies a reduction in the number of people taking entry-level apprenticeships as businesses use their levy funds to support existing staff. The report’s recommendations include fully funding apprenticeships for those aged 16-18, giving mayors more responsibility to support SMEs to take on apprentices, and providing financial incentives for businesses to take on new apprentices.

And with all that in mind, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill finally passed: Last week we highlighted that the prorogation of Parliament would mean all Bills that weren’t finalised would have to navigate a carry over process to avoid being lost. One hanging in the balance was the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill – stuck in the “ping pong” tussle between the Lords and the Commons over the withdrawal of BTEC qualifications. The Government heaved a sigh of relief as, at the last minute, the Lords conceded and dropped the disagreement over Amendment 15B which called for a 3-year wait before removing funding from applied level 3 qualifications (BTECs). Government Education Minister, Baroness Barran, calmed the discontent by playing down the implications and making small concessions. Key points from her speech:

  • Last November, the Education Secretary announced an additional year before funding would be removed from qualifications that overlap with T Levels, and the government have also removed the English and maths exit requirement from T Levels
  • A further delay will not benefit providers, AOs, employers or students – stakeholders need clarity on implementation timescales
  • Applied generals, such as BTECs, will have an important role to play alongside T Levels
  • To be approved for funding in future, quals will need to meet new “quality and necessity” criteria – students will be able to continue to take Applied Generals, including BTECs, alongside A Levels, as part of a mixed programme
  • Stressed they were not creating a binary system, but wanted students to be able to choose from a high-quality mixed system
  • Around 1,800 qualifications have low or no enrolments and will therefore have funding removed from August 2022
  • The next phase of reforms will be to consider qualifications that overlap with T Levels – they anticipate they will remove funding for “just a small proportion” of the total Level 3 offer, including BTECS: “This will be significantly less than half” she added
  • Expect to publish the list in due course, and there will be an opportunity for awarding organisations to appeal a quals inclusion on the list.
  • Qualifications identified as overlapping with waves 1 and 2 of T Levels will not have funding removed until 2024/25.
  • Qualifications identified as overlapping with waves 3 and 4 of T Levels will not have funding removed until 2025/26.
  • Employers will now have the opportunity to say if they believe quals support entry to occupations not covered by T Levels.
  • The new Unit for Future Skills, announced in the Levelling Up White Paper, will have a role to play in gathering evidence and regularly assessing the quality of qualifications.

All Peers also received a letter from the Education Secretary stating that all qualifications, including BTECs, have an important role to play in the education ecosystem, and appeared to ease off on the A Level/T Level binary approach.  Lord Blunkett, the architect of the troublesome amendment welcomed the Government’s small concessions.  In short, this means the Skills Bill now awaits the Royal Assent rubber stamp and will become an Act of Parliament.

Anti-Semitism

Wonkhe: Lord John Mann has been appointed to set up a new task force of senior ministers and MPs to look into the treatment of Jewish students in UK universities. Speaking at the Jerusalem Post London conference yesterday, Mann said the working group would “listen” to the voices of Jewish students. Justice minister Lord Wolfson also spoke at the conference, insisting that the IHRA definition of antisemitism does not shut down free speech. Jewish News has the story.

Wonkhe also report on The Times coverage that higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan is “considering a range of possible measures” against NUS following concerns about antisemitism within the organisation. Jewish News cover the calls from Lord Mann to not recognise NUS as the representative of student voice if things do not change, and an open letter from Lancaster University’s Students’ Union expressing concern over antisemitism in NUS.   The NUS have published a statement here.

Access & Participation

Parliamentary Question: the benefits of students having at least one family member who attended university, and whether it should be declared on applications if someone is a first generation HE student.

Disabled Students’ Commission

Wonkhe report on the Disabled Students’ Commission publication of its second annual report: It reports a degree awarding gap for disabled students of 1.1 per cent in 2020-21 – driving a Commission focus on improving the disabled student experience. The report highlights the ongoing challenges faced by disabled students, and recommends increased consultation and communication with students, consistent approaches to support across and between higher education providers, more flexibility in teaching, learning, and assessment, and offering certainty for disabled students that they will get the support they need.

Disability Voice Blog: Wonkhe inform that the blog of the Association of National Teaching Fellows (NTF) has a piece on amplifying disabled student voices.

Other news

Graduate outcomes: an interesting blog by Charlie Ball of JISC on Wonkhe.  In the light of all the government talk about poor graduate outcomes …how we can be in a situation where one group of stakeholders can hold the view that there are too many people going to university, and others can have spent many years worrying that they cannot find the graduates that they need to thrive.. Well, yes, good question.  The suggested answer is that we need more data.

Dropping out: Wonkhe have a quick write up following DfE drop out news – Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan has written on the DfE’s Education Hub blog about how the drop-out rates of students in the 2019-20 cohort has fallen below ten per cent for the first time. However, Donelan attributes this to the government’s recent push to drive up quality. On Wonk Corner, DK questions how recent policy announcements could have impacted on events in the past.

Admissions: In the context of the new UUK admissions code, there is a Wonkhe blog: Do applicants who end up on a course generally meet the entry requirements of that course? Jane White shares evidence that very often this is not the case

Hygge: A neat piece from Wonkhe on the benefits of the Danish hygge for students.

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HE policy update for the w/e 4th April 2022

international, PG research

The Government has announced the current Parliamentary session will be prorogued in April (date not confirmed yet) (you’ll remember that process from “that” prorogation).  A new session will commence with a State Opening of Parliament and the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday 10 May. This means that legislation that is currently incomplete will either be dropped or will need to be allotted parliamentary time for a carry over motion debate (not quite as easy as it sounds). For HE this means the future of the controversial HE Freedom of Speech Bill is less certain although Wonkhe reported that it is likely to be carried over.

Meanwhile the Government has a plethora of consultations and white and green papers out. We can expect expectations for these to feature in the Queen’s Speech. For HE we will be watching for the legislative and regulatory changes required to implement the lifelong loan entitlement and the response to Augar (see our 3rd March update for more info. Consultations on many aspects of these things close on 6th May, so we won’t get definitive announcements on the detail that is being consulted on, and the Queen’s speech itself is very high level and so are the policy statements that come out with it.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill

The Skills Bill is one they are trying to get through before prorogation.  The Skills Bill parliamentary ping pong continues with MPs rejecting the Lords amendment relating to the changeover from BTECs and T levels. The Lords attempted to delay the defunding of BTECs and force a public consultation but MPs overturned it through their majority in the Commons. Compromises were also made on vocational careers advice provided by schools.

The outcome and more details of all the Skills Bill amendment are available in this Dods summary. The Commons Library also have a useful publication highlighting the changes as the Bill has progressed through the legislative system, shorter version here.

Next: the Bill will pong back to the Lords on Thursday 7 April. The Lords will consider the MPs’ rejection of Lord Blunkett’s BTEC amendment, which attempted to attach conditions to the defunding of BTEC/level 3 technical qualifications. Potential options:

  • The Lords will accept the rejection and will not push for the amendment to added again (at this point, the Bill would have completed its passage and will be sent for Royal Assent)
  • The Government will bring forward a compromise amendment, and the Lords will vote on this (if it passes, it will have to go back to the Commons where it would be agreed)
  • Lord Blunkett will move to disagree with the Commons’ decision on his amendment and re-introduce it again in its current form (this is the least likely option, but it would then ping back to the Commons).

Compromise is the usual solution when there is a hard stop like this.

Levelling Up

Citizenship within Levelling up policy: The Lords Liaison Committee published a follow-up report examining the Government’s progress in  implementing the recommendations made by the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement’s 2018 report. While the (new) report focuses on citizenship, including the educational delivery of citizenship, it is worth looking past this because the Lords highlighting the importance of citizenship within the Government’s current flagship levelling up policy. In brief, the Lords criticised:

  • Poor progress in improving Governmental coordination of citizenship and civic engagement policy since 2018. The Lords recommended a Minister with responsibility for Citizenship and Civic Engagement be appointed immediately within the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) or the Cabinet Office. The new Minister to be given latitude and authority to facilitate integrated policymaking across the Government departments including a permanent seat on the Domestic and Economic (Levelling Up) Cabinet Committee.
  • The Lords are also concerned that as cabinet committee meeting are not available for public scrutiny that the Levelling Up Cabinet Committee may not be meeting or gaining traction. The related Inter-Ministerial Group leading on similar Citizenship content has not met since 2019: the Committee saw good intent in relation to the Inter-Ministerial Group for Safe and Integrated Communities and yet that group did not meet for three consecutive years. They’ve called for evidence of the scale of the work expected to be undertaken by the Domestic and Economic (Levelling Up) Cabinet Committee.
  • Also the Levelling Up Cabinet Committee is criticised for the lack of cross-departmental members particularly from the Cabinet Office and the DfE.

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who was the Chair of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement commented:

  • Things have gone backwards rather than forwards with citizenship education in the UK since our last report. This is despite the government’s clear commitment to levelling up across the country and an Elections Bill where great stress is being placed on the importance of engagement with our voting system…
  • We were promised a cross-department Minister, we didn’t get one. We were told that Ofsted should treat citizenship education is a core part of the curriculum, the evidence shows they don’t. The government had a chance to put things right in its Schools White Paper. It appears that they have missed the opportunity to do so. There is just one mention of citizenship in the Schools White Paper, and it is mentioned in the context of volunteering. We urge the Government to think again. Otherwise, they risk damaging democracy for generations to come.

Also on levelling up – Wonkhe report: Speaking to Chris Skidmore at a ResPublica event yesterday, Secretary of State for Levelling Up Michael Gove expressed his view that the number of students in higher education should be further extended, and drew links between recruitment and research and development in the creation of local high quality jobs. On the future development of the sector he saw a mixture of national missions and provider aspirations driving future developments. A twitter thread describes the key points of the discussion, and a recording is available.

Research

Dods have this on the research side of the Spring Statement:

In his Spring Statement to the House, the Chancellor also unveiled a new ‘tax plan’, part of which outlines what his focus will be for the Autumn Budget later this year. This included:

  • Considering whether the current tax system, including the operation of the Apprenticeship Levy, is doing enough to incentivise businesses to invest in right kind of training.
  • Reforming R&D tax credits to be more effective, expanding the reliefs to include data, cloud computing and pure maths, and considering whether to make the R&D spending credit more generous.
  • He said he would also cut the tax rates on business investment in Autumn, and would consult with employers and businesses in the run-up to the Budget.

On R&D tax reliefs, the Chancellor announced these would be reformed in the Autumn Budget 2021, following a consultation launched in the Spring Budget earlier that year.

  • “The government set out in the Tax Administration and Maintenance Command Paper that R&D tax reliefs would be reformed to include some cloud and data costs and refocus support on R&D carried out in the UK. The government has listened to stakeholders and can confirm that from April 2023, all cloud computing costs associated with R&D, including storage, will qualify for relief. The government remains committed to refocus support towards innovation in the UK, ensuring that the UK more effectively captures the benefits of R&D funded by the reliefs. The government recognises that there are some cases where it is necessary for the R&D to take place overseas. The government will, therefore, legislate so that expenditure on overseas R&D activities can still qualify where there are:
  • material factors such as geography, environment, population or other conditions that are not present in the UK and are required for the research – for example, deep ocean research
  • regulatory or other legal requirements that activities must take place outside of the UK – for example, clinical trials
  • To support the growing volume of R&D underpinned by mathematical advances, the definition of R&D for tax reliefs will be expanded by clarifying that pure mathematics is a qualifying cost. Where required, legislation will be published in draft before being included in a future Finance Bill to come into effect in April 2023.”

Delivering a UK science and technology strategy: The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee heard evidence from NERC, the Medical Research Council and ESRC at the session on delivering a science and technology strategy. They covered funding and the relative responsibilities of the research councils and other delivery organisations. All the key points that you’d expect were touched upon such as 2.4% R&D funding, Horizon, interdisciplinary research promotion, research morale and opinion of UKRI, academic/industry interaction, and how the research councils will interact with Government departments and budgetary implications. Summary here. Your policy team was also happy to hear that incorporating more academic research into government policymaking was addressed and it was suggested that UKRI could do more to coordinate the work with research councils to this end. BU researchers who are interested in sharing their work with policy makers or interested in influencing policy making are encouraged to sign up to our regular influence digest which highlights opportunities, sector policy news and shares top tips to increase influencing success.

Russia research | Ukraine support package: The Government announced a £3m support package to support Ukrainian researchers at risk and the suspension of publicly funded research and innovation collaborations with Russian Universities and companies of strategic benefit to the Russian state. Research Minister George Freeman stated:

  • All payments for projects delivered through UK public research funds with a Russian dimension have been paused. I have commissioned an assessment, on top of the existing and strong due diligence processes of UK public research funders, to isolate and freeze activities which benefit the Russian regime.
  • We will not fund any new collaborative projects with Russia through our research and innovation organisations.
  • We have suspended existing government to government dialogue through our science and innovation network team in Russia including their collaborative science projects.
  • Where the UK is a member of multilateral organisations, we are working at pace with partners to respond appropriately – holding Russia to account for its actions while diminishing and isolating its influence.
  • We are standing up a £3 million package of support for Ukrainian researchers at risk. We stand with Ukraine, its democratically elected government and its brave people at this awful time.

Wonkhe tell us more on the Ukrainian package: The British Academy, UK National Academies, and the Council for At-Risk Academics have announced the Researchers at Risk Fellowship Programme – a new fellowship scheme for Ukrainian researchers who are fleeing the conflict or are already in the UK and unable to return. £3m is being contributed by the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, and £0.5m from the Nuffield Foundation. The funding will provide visas, a salary, research costs, and living costs to successful applicants, and will be open to all postdoctoral or those with equivalent experience in all disciplines. Participatory institutions will need to identify six months’ worth of accommodation for recipients and their dependants. 

A parliamentary question asking if universities should take action against academics who promote pro-Putin propaganda (set within the backdrop of the Government’s steer on HE upholding free speech) is met with a beautifully fence sitting answer:  Alongside our allies, we are united in support for Ukraine. Universities, as independent and autonomous organisations, should decide whether to investigate such incidences.

Quick news:

  • Wonkhe – The Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, have announcedcollaborative UK-Japan projects which have been awarded funding to support international efforts to manage the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • George Freeman (Science, Research and Innovation Minister) provided a written ministerial statement on the Intellectual Property Office performance targets and transformation projects.

Parliamentary Questions

Blogs:

Financial sustainability of the HE sector in England and the Spring Statement

The Public Accounts Committee published the oral evidence from the latest Financial sustainability of the HE sector in England session. The DfE and OfS were called as witnesses. A shorter summary is here. The session covered grade inflation, international students, financial support/Augar, risk modelling, student satisfaction and outcomes, regulation, value for money, student protection plans, minimum entry requirements, and the new loan terms.

In the Spring Statement the Chancellor said that there would be a review of the apprenticeship levy.

Regarding levy reform, last month the CBI challenged the Government to pursue more ambitious growth with new policies – one of which was to replace the Apprenticeship Levy with a new Skills Challenge Fund, to “incentivise more flexible training to meet skill shortages and rewards firms who invest beyond their apprenticeship levy levels”. Leaders across the sector have raised Levy reform for some time, and today’s announcement could represent a step towards this.

PQs:

Education Committee: Universities

The Education Committee ran a session questioning witnesses on the HE sector. Topics included outcomes for disadvantaged students, anti-Semitism and free speech. The NUS was criticised by Committee Chair Robert Halfon as they did not provide a witness for the session. A summary of the committee session is available here provided by Dods and good coverage by Wonkhe is available in: Is OfS asleep or woke at the wheel?

Here are the key discussion points from the session (which at times felt like an echo chamber):

  • 92% of the British public believe antisemitism is a problem in universities.
  • The witnesses presented a number of points to evidence that universities are not upholding free speech.
  • The Committee criticised the OfS for not intervening enough to tackle antisemitism in universities including noting that the rapper Lowkey had been asked to attend the NUS conference, a rapper he said had made antisemitic statements. The committee then went on to criticise the University of Nottingham for revoking the honorary degree award to Tony Sewell following a report on UK institutional racism. Highlighting once again the difficulty of drawing the unclear free speech/antisemitism line with different actors believing it should be drawn in different places.
  • While headline figures suggest more disadvantaged pupils are going to university the number of part time students has dropped. Disadvantaged pupils remain less likely to access the higher tariff institutions, more likely to drop out and less likely to have good employment outcomes. Concern was express that the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged is not narrowing.
  • On disadvantaged students witness McKellar (VP at UUK) said disadvantaged students started form a legacy of poorer education, and often had to do part-time work, because they lacked social capital.  There was a need for universities to create Access and Participation Plans (APPs) which supported disadvantaged students. He said in general these plans had worked better in other areas, such as closing the BAME attainment gap.
  • Witness Humphries (Chair, University Alliance) said the availability of more scholarships and support – including grants as low as £500 – would help. She also pointed to the role of peer mentoring and better careers guidance.
  • Dandridge (OfS) stated tackling disadvantage was a core priority as in addition to APPs the OfS looks at post-university progression, as poor progression after university could be a breach of a regulatory condition. Dandridge also stated disadvantaged participation was creeping up but measures not happening fast enough.
  • Careers and the role of research and knowledge exchange with employers were discussed.
  • Old chestnuts such as students not repaying their loans and is attending university really of value to society or enabling social mobility were trotted out. As were courses that were poor value for money (due to strike action, poor mental health support, high costs of tuition and lack of in-person teaching). Pensions were mentioned.
  • Blended learning was discussed with an overall positive tone.
  • BAME students drop out / lower degree classification and staff representation in senior roles were raised. Diversity at Board level was raised. McKellar (UUK) called for quotas for both academic staff numbers and senior representation of BAME staff. Dandridge (OfS) highlighted the UKRI programme on black progression into research careers.
  • On the Government’s implementation of the Augar review Clare Merchant (Chief Executive, UCAS) said recent UCAS analysis on GCSE English and Maths levels suggested that those on free school meals, some BAME communities, and those in certain disadvantaged areas, were less likely to obtain the requisite levels at GCSE. Other concerns about the impact of minimum entry requirements and possible student number caps and their disproportionately disadvantaging effect compounding existing disadvantage were raised by other witnesses.

Related to the above points made during the Education Committee are comments that Emma Hardy (previous Shadow Minister for FE & HE Education) made at an accountability meeting and again at the Treasury Committee Spring Statement session. Wonkhe report: At the Treasury Committee Emma Hardy highlighted the regressive nature of changes to student loans, and the impact of these changes on the national accounts. Rishi Sunak described the reforms as “sensible”, and emphasised that nobody will pay more back in real terms than what they borrowed. Hardy noted that this change would only affect higher earners, with lower earning graduates likely to pay more than under the current system. Sunak rejected Hardy’s characterisation of the changes as “a tax on low earners” despite the evidence presented from Office for Budgetary Responsibility and Department for Education figures. You can watch the committee session on parliamentlive.tv.

There’s also a very short Wonkhe explainer, snippet:

  • Hardy’s argument is that this has a place based effect – graduates earning around the average wage in Hull will pay a lot more than they currently do, graduates earning around the average wage in London will pay less than currently. The opposite – in other words – of “levelling up”.
  • There’s a tendency in expert commentary to see this as a niche issue affecting only a small part of the population – but with participation rates rising (and set to rise further if we take into account both demographic bulging and the LLE opening the loan system to more people) there is a sizable marginal tax rate impact for a large part of a generation.

Graduate Jobs

The Institute of Student Employers has released their 2022 Student Development report which compiles trends following a survey of the Institute’s employer membership base. It’s sat behind a paywall so here is Wonkhe’s synopsis:

  • Every year Institute of Student Employers (ISE) surveys its member employers to get their view of graduate skills – in this year’s Student Development Survey reportwe get the picture of the impact of the pandemic, as well as an update on larger trends in graduate employment, with data drawn from 107 employers. ISE analysis concludes “there is a renewed focus on the soft skills required for a post-Covid workplace.”
  • A third of respondents say their skills needs have changed as a result of Covid-19 – focusing on independence, resilience/growth mindset, adaptability, and confidence. 65 per cent of employers expect their new hires to be able to work remotely, up from 45 per cent in 2021. There is also greater expectation that graduates will arrive with technical skills such as coding and data analysis – or be able to acquire these skills. Expert insight from University of Leeds academic Helen Hughes suggests that early career hires may struggle to access development opportunities and secure visibility of their work if there is more hybrid and remote working.
  • There is a long term downward trend in retention of graduate hires three years post-graduation – down to 72 per cent from 79 per cent in 2011, suggesting that employers may need to work harder to retain early career staff in the post-Covid workplace. 61 per cent reported demand for mental health support has increased during the pandemic and 89 per cent report providing mental health support and counselling particularly for early career hires.

There’s also a blog written by Nicola Thomas of ISE: Never have the skills required to thrive in the workplace shifted so dramatically in a two year period as in the last two years.

Access & Participation

We wrote about UUK’s new Fair Admissions Code of Practice recently – as of 1st April there is a long list of universities who have signed up to it.

The OfS issued some data on their participation performance measures.

As you have seen in our recent commentary on the B3 licence condition consultation and TEF plans, continuation is a key metric for the OfS.  They note from this data that there is a difference of 3.7% for continuation between the most and least represented groups.  These splits will feature in the regulatory and the TEF data and so we can expect scrutiny of this – the Ofs target is “To eliminate the unexplained gap in non-continuation between most and least represented groups by 2024-25, and to eliminate the absolute gap by 2030-31”.

Wonkhe report on the black attainment (degree classification) gap:

  • The gap between the proportion of black undergraduate qualifiers and the proportion of white qualifiers in England achieving a first class degree has almost doubled in a decade, widening to almost 20 percentage points in 2020-21…..Its headline measure on “good honours” attainment, which combines first class and upper second class honours, saw further improvement as a continuation of a long term trend – but masks the significant differential when only considering firsts.

Similar issues apply to the degree outcomes for disabled students.

As well as updating the KPM analysis, OfS has updated its Access and Participation Dashboard with figures for 2020-21, updated sector-level information on student’s qualifications on entry to higher education and their subject of study, and published a report that summarises the key gaps in access, continuation and attainment at a sector level for different student characteristics.

Blogs

Parliamentary Questions

OfS

It is Ministerial letter time.  After the flurries of letters from Gavin Williamson, things had gone a bit quiet, but a letter appeared on 31st March 2022, offering guidance on strategic priorities.  It replaces  the previous guidance up to February 2021, but notably the guidance on teaching grant (strategic priorities grant) stays in place.  The priorities as set out will not surprise you.  Although the encouragement to the OfS to carry out in person inspections of 10-15 institutions is interesting and the instructions on how the new B3 enforcement regime will be carried out.

  • We are clear that HE has an important role to play in delivering the government’s moral, economic and social vision for levelling up: supporting strong regional and economic growth, developing partnerships with Further Education colleges and local employers to improve the skills base nationally, and working with schools to drive up attainment
  • We welcome the OfS’s ongoing engagement on the development of the LLE to date and would like this engagement to continue in 2022-23. Together we need to ensure that the LLE is supported by an appropriate regulatory regime, fully equipped to support radically different, flexible arrangements, measuring quality using metrics that are meaningful in the new system and which interact positively with our admissions regime
  • Cold spots…We would like the OfS to explore ways of encouraging the expansion of HE provision into new areas, while ensuring that high quality provision is maintained
  • We would like the OfS to work with officials to help to grow the uptake of high-quality technical education and degree apprenticeships including, where possible, through the use of access and participation targets, information and guidance, as well as supporting the raising of the profile of IoTs.
  • … it is our clear and firm expectation that the OfS will use the new outcome thresholds to identify providers with unacceptable levels of performance and challenge them. In the event that they cannot convincingly explain and justify their student outcomes data, then this should provide the basis for generating robust regulatory investigation and action. In cases where low and unacceptable quality is confirmed, action should include, where appropriate, financial penalties and ultimately the suspension or removal of the provider from the register (and with it, access to student finance)
  • our priorities for investigation are:
    • larger providers with university title which are below proposed numerical thresholds either for the whole provider, or multiple subject areas; and
    • a set of investigations focused on a major subject grouping with large numbers of students and high variation in outcomes, such as Computer Science or Law, with the intention to drive up the quality of those courses across the sector as a whole; and
    • providers where OfS has long-standing concerns about quality which are confirmed or strengthened by numerical data on student outcomes
  • Our expectation is that the OfS should … implement a visible and effective inspections regime against the other B (Quality) conditions of registration, that will involve on-site inspection of 10-15 providers next year, that will root out pockets of poor provision and will result in regulatory action where appropriate. Through this activity, we would expect the OfS to focus on the following priorities:
    • that online learning should be used to complement and enhance a student’s learning experience, not to detract from it;
    • the provision of sufficient contact hours, particularly where this has been flagged by intelligence from students; and
    • the importance of maintaining rigour in assessment, including appropriate technical proficiency in English necessary to secure a good outcome for all or some students.
  • …., we want to offer our support for the OfS proposals for a refreshed Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and, in particular, welcome the proposed introduction of the new ‘Requires Improvement’ category
  • On APP: we would like the OfS to work at pace to publish guidance this spring, calling for providers to bring forward variations to their current A&P plans where these do not currently meet the new expectations. We would like to see these approved this autumn, to take effect from September 2023. Where providers with substandard plans fail to bring forward variations voluntarily, the OfS should not hesitate in calling on those providers to submit a new plan for approval.
  • We endorse the OfS’s proposal to move to a four-year A&P plan cycle, with a full rewrite of new A&P plans at the end of 2023, to come into effect by September 2024
  • We would also like to see providers incorporate data on completion rates and entry into professional employment, or further study, in all their advertising of subjects and courses from the start of the next admissions cycle
  • Anti-Semitism, freedom of Speech bill
  • We welcome the OfS’s publication of the statement of expectations on sexual harassment and misconduct last Spring …. in our view, the OfS should include this in a condition of registration as soon as possible.
  • we would like the OfS to work with officials and sector stakeholders to consider how we can ensure that the student interest is placed at the centre of fair and transparent admissions practices, and that the sector avoids practices where students may feel pressured into making decisions, including through the use of ‘conditional unconditional’ offers

And on funding – a separate letter also came out on grant funding.  Research Professional have a summary:

  • …the ministers set out how funding will be distributed next year after it pledged £750 million over three years last month to support “high-quality teaching and facilities” such as engineering and nursing.
  • The strategic priorities grant will rise by 5 per cent to £1,397m in 2022-23 from £1,330 million in 2021-22. Of the £56m rise, £32m is for strategically important subjects, particularly those connected to health.
  • Capital funding will be £450m between 2022-23 and 2024-25, compared with £150m in 2021-22. There will be up to £4m across the 2022-23 financial year to support Ukrainian nationals and Ukrainian-domiciled students affected by the war, and universities will have £5m to set aside for “emerging priorities”.
  • However, the student outreach programme Uni Connect will lose £10m next year after losing £20m this year, and student hardship funds will go without the £5m pandemic-related boost they received last year. 

More detail from RP here.  And you can find the letter itself here.  Some interesting points:

  • we want to further accelerate the growth of degree apprenticeships and encourage Higher Education Providers to expand their existing offers, or develop new ones, where they are best placed to do so. We will explore options with the OfS for supporting this important provision with up to £8m of funding for this goal
  • To encourage greater provision of level 4 and 5 qualifications we are providing £8m in the 2022-23 financial year to be allocated to providers with eligible learners on level 4 and 5 qualifications, through formula funding
  • we will explore options with the OfS for using an additional £10m of funding in the 2022-23 financial year to increase the amount of skills provision at levels 4 to 6 available in preparation for the launch of the LLE from 2025.
  • Mental Health: We have listened to students and the HE sector and would like the OfS to distribute funding, at a similar level to that disbursed last year, to give additional support for transitions from school/college to university, and through targeting funding to support partnership working with NHS services to provide pathways of care for students
  • No additional student hardship funding for 2022/23
  • Capital funding: We would like the OfS to continue allocating the majority of funds to providers through a competitive bidding process, to continue to target funds at specific projects and activities supporting high-quality, skills-based education but to do so using a multi-year approach.

In the meantime the OfS had published their 2022-2025 strategy focusing on quality and standards, and on equality of opportunity. The strategy aims for:

  • students to receive a high quality academic experience that improves their knowledge and skills, with increasing numbers receiving excellent provision
  • rigorous assessment and for qualifications to be credible and comparable
  • a focus on free speech
  • using incentivisation, regulation and providing a focus so that the subjects graduates study contribute usefully to the economy/industry and the levelling up agenda
  • student access, success and progression is not limited by their background, location or characteristics
  • a diverse range of courses and providers are available for students to choose from; provision is flexible and innovative and access to people at all life stages
  • harassment and sexual misconduct are responded to effectively if they occur
  • the environment supports student mental health and wellbeing to enable success in HE
  • HE providers are financially viable, sustainable and have effective governance
  • the promised academic experience is delivered to students and consumer protection is applied
  • minimising the OfS regulatory burden – action to meet the OfS goals and regulatory objectives

A summary is available here. Full content here.

Details of the latest appointments to the OfS board are here.

PQs:

Education Policies: White and Green

Education: Schools White Paper: The Schools White Paper – Opportunity for All: strong schools with great teachers for your child. Dods summary here (see first 6 pages).
Key aspects of the paper are:

  • Strong teaching (including aspects on teacher training, recruitment and the retention of teachers delivering key subjects in deprived areas through enhanced pay).
  • High standards for the curriculum (English and Maths are key foci, increasing average GCSE grade from 4.5 to 5 by 2030), behaviour and attendance (minimum 32.5 hours in school by 2023). Every school to have access to funded training for a senior mental health lead to deliver a whole school approach to health and wellbeing. New plans for sport, music and cultural education. New modern foreign language network hubs and professional development. More students to take the EBACC.
  • Targeted support for children who are behind in English and maths via a new parent pledge, guidance on the catch up (again with parent communications so parents stay informed) but without labelling and over testing; tutoring expected to be funded out of school core budgets including pupil premium.
  • All schools to be in a ‘strong’ multi-academy trust (MAT) by 2030 with new intervention powers to address MATs that are not strong. (There’s a new consultation on it here.) Plus transparency measures for parents to understand their top slicing of school budgets. Exceptionally schools may be able to move MATs. Local Authorities will receive ‘backstop powers’ to force trusts to admit children, and to object to schools’ published admissions numbers. Lots more on MATs in the summary.
  • A nice section in the summary page 5-6 which highlights the ‘re-announcements’ i.e. the aspects the Government have already released information or funding on. So if you are wondering if some aspects are new money or new interventions the ‘re-announcements’ detail what isn’t new but makes sense to sit under the White Paper umbrella.

SEN Green Paper: Nadhim Zahawi launched the green paper Special Education Needs and Disability Review through a debate in Parliament on Tuesday. Dods summarise the content here or there is a short Government press release: Ambitious reform for children and young people with SEND.

Other news

NUS: The NUS have elected new leadership. Wonkhe – NUS has announced that Shaima Dallali – currently President of City, University of London Students’ Union – was elected UK President for a two year term starting in July. Chloe Field – from Liverpool Guild of Students – was elected Vice President for Higher Education. Jewish News reports on concerns over Dallali’s “historic tweets” (since deleted), and her apology for them.

HE Data Reduction: Yes, you’ve heard it all before. Here’s the news from Wonkhe:  Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan has announced that she will chair a HE Data Reduction Taskforce. The new taskforce will meet every six weeks to “streamline and simplify reporting requirements” on higher education institutions. We understand that representatives from HESA, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the Student Loans Company, OfS, Ofsted, Ofqual, UCAS, and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education – along with experts from the wider sector – will have a particular focus on instances of duplication in data requirements. The Task Force will produce interim recommendations within three months, and a final report after six months.

This announcement comes following a written parliamentary question from Shadow HE minister last week asking Michelle Donelan what steps have been taken to ensure that higher education providers have a good understanding of (a) the reasons for which the Office for Students collects the data it does and (b) how it uses that data.

Turing mobility scheme: PIE news has a good quick read:

  • Improvements proposed for UK Turing scheme. Excerpt: while the new outward mobility program is being praised for the short mobility opportunities it presents and its weighting towards disadvantaged students, improvements could create a more efficient program, they have suggested.
  • UUKi is calling for the current 12-month project cycle to be shifted to a multi-year funding model.
  • “We think [that] would better support, not only the Global Britain agenda and the widening participation goals, but students to apply for actual funding so they can have funding confirmed earlier on,” said UUKi head of Global Mobility Policy Charley Robinson.

More here. And the second year of the Turing Scheme bids has opened.

Graduate shaped learning: Wonkhe – Miriam Firth explains why incorporating graduates’ working experiences into teaching is essential to helping students develop.

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HE policy update for the w/e 18th March 2022

innovation, international, NHS, Student Engagement

A wide ranging update for you this week!

Parliamentary News

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is due to deliver his spring statement. Wonkhe predict: tough times are coming for a sector that almost certainly won’t feature in any list of political priorities. For students, thanks to the way these things have been historically calculated, inflation-linked rises to student maintenance will literally come too little, too late – eating into the buffer that funds participation in student life beyond the bare minimum…For universities in England, the announced fee cap freeze, coupled with rising inflation and energy costs, is a serious problem – and there’s little prospect of funding rising in line with inflation in the devolved nations. As providers grow student numbers just to stand still, students and staff will find worsening pay and conditions, and that resources are spread more thinly.

Of course, Wonkhe also have a blog: If the numbers don’t add up, something has to give. With inflation rocketing, cuts are coming. Jim Dickinson reviews the protection for students when the money isn’t there for promises to be met.

Ukraine: HE & FE Minister Michelle Donelan has called upon the HE taskforce to address the issues arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill: The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has entered ‘ping pong’ meaning it is at the final stages of its legislative journey. The Lords and Commons bat the Bill back and forth between the two houses as they thrash out the final amendments of details within the Bill. The next sessions will take place on 24 and 28 March so we will see the final form of the Bill shortly.

Research

R&D Allocations: The Government has confirmed the allocations of the 2022-25 £39.8bn research and development budget. Stated aims are to deliver the Innovation Strategy and increase total R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. Key points taken from the Government’s news story:

  • R&D spending set to increase by £5bn to £20bn per annum by 2024-2025 – a 33% increase in spending over the current parliament by 2024-2025.
  • A significant proportion of the budget has been allocated to UKRI (£25bn across the next 3 years, reaching over £8.8bn in 2024-2025). This includes an increase in funding for core Innovate UK programmes by 66% to £1.1bn in 2024-2025.
  • Full funding for EU programmes is included. £6.8bn allocated to support the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, Euratom Research & Training, and Fusion for Energy (if the UK is unable to associate to Horizon Europe, the funding allocated to Horizon association will go to UK government R&D programmes, including those to support new international partnerships).
  • BEIS programmes will receive over £11.5bn over the next 3 years, of which £475m is earmarked for the new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), £49m is allocated to the Government Office for Science (GOS), and £628m will go toward the Nuclear Decommission Authority (NDA).

In the Levelling Up White Paper, the Government committed to increasing public R&D investment outside the greater South East by at least a third over the Spending Review period, and for these regions to receive at least 55% of BEIS domestic R&D budget by 2024-2025. Also the £100 investment in three new Innovation Accelerators (as we mentioned last week) through the pilots in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and the Glasgow City-Region.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng stated: For too long, R&D spending in the UK has trailed behind our neighbours – and in this country, science and business have existed in separate spheres. I am adamant that this must change. Now is the moment to unleash British science, technology and innovation to rise to the challenges of the 21st century…My department’s £39.8 billion R&D budget – the largest ever R&D budget committed so far – will be deployed and specifically targeted to strengthen Britain’s comparative advantages, supporting the best ideas to become the best commercial innovations, and securing the UK’s position as a science superpower.

On Horizon Europe the Russell Group commented: We are…reassured by the confirmation that any funding required for association to Horizon Europe or an alternative will come from a separate ringfenced budget rather than the central allocation to UKRI and the national academies, which will help protect critical funding for the UK’s research base and provide researchers and academics with the long term stability they need.

UKRI Strategy: UKRI published their first five-year strategy. It outlines how UKRI will support the UK’s world class research and innovation system, fuel an innovation-led economy and society, and drive up prosperity across the UK. The strategy sets out how UKRI will invest in people, places and ideas and break down barriers between disciplines and sectors to tackle current and future challenges – all supporting the Government’s ambitions for the UK as a global leader in research and innovation. UKRI has proposed four principles for change:

  • Diversity– we will support the diverse people, places and ideas needed for a creative and dynamic system
  • Connectivity –we will build connectivity and break down silos across the system, nationally and globally
  • Resilience –we will increase the agility and responsiveness of the system
  • Engagement –we will help to embed research and innovation in our society and economy.

Aspiring to:

  • People and careers –making the UK the top destination for talented people and teams
  • Places –securing the UK’s position as a globally leading research and innovation nation with outstanding institutions, infrastructures, sectors, and clusters across the breadth of the UK
  • Ideas –advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and innovation by enabling the UK to seize opportunities from emerging research trends, multidisciplinary approaches and new concepts and markets
  • Innovation –delivering the government’s vision for the UK as an innovation nation, through concerted action of Innovate UK and wider UKRI
  • Impacts –focusing the UK’s world class science and innovation to target global and national challenges, create and exploit tomorrow’s technologies, and build the high-growth business sectors of the future
  • Underpinned by a strong organisation – making UKRI the most efficient, effective, and agile organisation it can be.

Delivery will be outlined through strategic delivery plans for each of UKRI’s constituent councils and published later this year.

UKRI Chief Executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said: Throughout the pandemic, we have seen the transformative power of the UK’s exceptional research and innovation system to navigate an uncertain and fast-changing world. As we emerge from the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to empower our economy and our society, putting research and innovation at their heart. UKRI’s strategy sets out our five-year vision for how we will catalyse this transformation, investing in people, places, and ideas and connecting them up to turn the challenges of the 21st century into opportunities for all.

Quick News:

  • Science and Technology Strategy: The Lords Science and Technology Committee ran a session on delivering a UK science and technology strategy. It focused on the role of the new Cabinet Office group, its purpose and its long-term goals, as well as science diplomacy, engagement and national strategies going forwards. The committee also heard of approaches to international science diplomacy. A summary of the main content in the session is available here. And Wonkhe provide an even shorter synopsis: The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee heard evidence on the introduction of a UK science and technology strategy, including from Andrew McCosh, director of the Office for Science and Technology Strategy. McCosh said that funding routes will not be changed for research academics where they are working well, but that the new office will support improvements. In response, Lord Krebs wondered why the government is creating further bureaucratic structures. McCosh also noted that the new National Science and Technology Council will provide a governmental steer in direction to UKRI, but it will remain UKRI’s responsibility to allocate research funding. You can watchthe full session on Parliament TV.
  • Diversity in STEM: The Commons Science and Technology Select Committee heard evidence for its inquiry into Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. Summary here. The session covered: funding and representation, Resume for Research, UKRI and representation, UKRI improvements, short term contracts, diversification, and the idea of a Universal Basic Research Income.
  • Horizon Europe funding guarantee – extended: The Government and UKRI also announced an extension to the financial safety net support provided to Horizon Europe applicants(originally launched in November 2021). It ensures that eligible successful UK applicants for grant awards will continue to be guaranteed funding for awards expected to be signed by the end of December 2022, while efforts continue to associate to Horizon Europe. The funding will be delivered by UKRI and details of the scope and terms of the extension to the guarantee will be made available on their website. You can read the Minister’s announcement letter here.  The Minister, George Freeman, commented: Since becoming Science Minister last year, my priority has been supporting the UK’s world-class researchers, which is why we have been so determined in our efforts to associate to Horizon Europe. Whilst it is disappointing that our association is still held up by the EU, our plans to develop ambitious alternative measures are well underway and I’m pleased Horizon Europe applicants in the UK will still be able to access funding through our guarantee, meaning that researchers will be well-supported whatever the outcome.

Blogs:

Parliamentary Questions:

Student experience and outcomes

The OfS have launched a review of blended learning in universities.  It doesn’t say how they will conduct the review – or which universities they will be reviewing.

  • While most students have now returned to in-person teaching, many universities continue to deliver some elements of their courses (for example, lectures for large groups of students) online. There are no guidelines in place which prevent or restrict any kind of in-person teaching.
  • The review will consider how some universities are delivering blended learning. A report in summer 2022 will set out where approaches represent high quality teaching and learning, as well as approaches that are likely to fall short of the OfS’s requirements.
  • Professor Susan Orr has been appointed lead reviewer. Professor Orr is currently Pro Vice Chancellor: Learning and Teaching at York St John University and is the incoming Pro Vice Chancellor: Education at De Montfort University. A panel of expert academic reviewers will be appointed to work with Professor Orr to examine the way different universities and colleges are delivering blended learning.
  • Commenting, Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students, said:
    • ‘With the end of government coronavirus restrictions, students are back on campus and able to enjoy in-person teaching. There are clear benefits to in-person learning and where students have been promised face-to-face teaching it should be provided. This return to relative normality is important, and comes after an enormously challenging two years for students and staff. It remains very important that universities and colleges are clear with their students and their applicants about how courses will be delivered. If universities decide that certain elements are to remain online, this should be made explicit. Whether online or face to face, the quality must be good, and feedback from students taken into account.
    • ‘Our review of blended learning will examine the approaches universities and colleges are taking. There are many ways for blended courses to be successfully delivered and it will be important to harness the lessons learned by the shift to online learning during the pandemic. We are, however, concerned to ensure that quality is maintained, and through this review we want to gain a deeper understanding of whether – and why – universities and colleges propose to keep certain elements online.
    • ‘A report following the review will describe the approaches being taken by universities and colleges and give examples where blended approaches are high quality, as well as those that may not meet our regulatory requirements, providing additional information for universities and colleges, as well as students and applicants.’

On Wonkhe, David Kernohan has a take:

Running it through – in order of unlikeliness – there are three things that Orr could conclude:

  • Blended learning is great, and the complaints are largely without foundation
  • Blended learning is in routine use at a marked detriment to the student experience in order to save universities money.
  • There is a mixed picture on blended learning – there is a lot of great practice but some provision lags behind, and a mixture of enhancement and enforcement needs to be deployed to drive up quality.

None of these endpoints benefit either the Office for Students or the government.

In that context, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has published the latest provider-level statistics of higher education students not continuing into the 2020 to 2021 academic year.

  • For full-time first degree entrants, we see higher rates among mature students than young students.
  • Non-continuation rates among young, and mature, full-time first degree students have observed a further decrease in the percentage of 2019/20 entrants not continuing in HE following the small decrease observed for 2018/19 entrants.
  • With regards to other undergraduate entrants, the non-continuation rate for young, full-time students in the UK has seen a general decrease over the last few years, while for mature entrants there have been fluctuations in the rate.
  • Non-continuation rates two years after entry for part-time first degree entrants are slightly higher among those aged 30 and under than for those aged over 30.
  • Between 2012/13 and 2018/19 the proportion of full-time first degree students expected to qualify with a degree from the HE provider at which they started in the UK was showing a slight decline. In 2019/20 the proportion expected to qualify has increased again.

The Student Loans Company (SLC) has published the latest statistics on early-in-year student withdrawal notifications provided by HE providers for the purpose of student finance from 2018/19 to 2021/22 (Feb 2022).

Research Professional cover the stories.

OfS consultations on regulatory graduate outcomes and the TEF

We wrote about these three very significant consultations in our update on 21st January, and they closed this week.  As you will recall, this includes the consultation about calculating metrics, which is linked to the consultation on new licence condition B3 (the one with the minimum levels of outcomes).

The UUK responses talk about proportionality.  On B3, they raise concerns about outcomes being seen as the only measure of quality, and about how the new rules will be applied, in selecting universities to look at more closely, and specifically by looking at context.  They ask in particular that universities should not face an intervention where they are within their benchmark and that value add, student voice and geographical context should be considered alongside the actual metrics.

Jim Dickinson points out, though:

  • It’s one of the many moments where you can’t quite work out whether UUK knows that the key decision has already been taken here or if it genuinely thinks it will change OfS’ mind – it certainly paints a picture of the sector being stuck on the left-hand side of the Kubler-Ross grief curve.
  • Either way, we can pretty much guarantee that in a couple of months an OfS response will tell the sector that it’s wrong in principle, and anyway hasn’t read the proposals – which to be fair when taken in their totality along with the rest of the B conditions, do measure quality both quantitatively (via outcomes) and qualitatively (through proposals the sector isn’t too keen on ether, with a kind of be careful what you wish for vibe).
  • … It’s the threat of monitoring – with the odd provider made an example of – that should be causing people to both work on improving outcomes where the red lights are, and having “contextual” action plans ready that show that work off if OfS phones you up in September.

There was a separate consultation on the TEF (and the metrics one is related to this too).

On the TEF, UUK disagree with the name of the fourth category “requires improvement”.  As we have said in many TEF consultation responses, they disagree with “gold, silver and bronze” too and would like to redefine them.  They don’t think subcontracted provision should be included and they strongly disagree with the proposed timeline, asking for a Spring submission.

International student experience

The OfS has published an insight brief on international students.  It acknowledges that information about international students is incomplete and announces a call for evidence to “identify effective practice in ensuring that international students can integrate and receive a fulfilling experience in the UK”.  Using the data that they do have, the brief talks about numbers and fees as a proportion of total income.

The brief talks about NSS feedback (international students are generally more positive than home students) and the issues faced by international students, particularly when travel was restricted in the pandemic.

The OfS are concerned, however, that they don’t have enough data about international students, and for that reason they have launched a call for evidence on international student experience.  They are looking for responses on initiatives linked to three themes.  They will filter the submissions to identify case studies to feature in a report.

The themes they have identified are:

  • work to prevent and address harassment and sexual misconduct
  • how responding to the coronavirus pandemic has shaped practice in supporting international students to adapt to and integrate with UK higher education
  • work to ensure the accessibility and effectiveness of wellbeing and support services (such as student services, mental health provision, etc.).

While responding on those themes, institutions can also consider the relationship of their evidence to the following:

  • advancing equality of opportunity for students with one or more protected characteristic
  • partnership with international students
  • intervention that may also benefit home (UK-domiciled) students.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

In April last year Dr Tony Sewell published the findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. The Commission’s findings were criticised and equalities campaigners accused the group of cherry-picking data and pushing propaganda, while the United Nations described it as attempt to normalise white supremacy. Dr Sewell, who lead the inquiry in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations, has recently had his honorary degree from the University of Nottingham withdrawn amidst the controversy. This week the Government published its response to the report and findings of the Commission through the policy paper: Inclusive Britain: government response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.

The Guardian report under the header: Denial of structural racism – Ministers will drop the term black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), more closely scrutinise police stop and search, and draft a model history curriculum to teach Britain’s “complex” past in response to the Sewell report on racial disparities. Launched as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the report caused controversy when it was published last year for broadly rejecting the idea of institutional racism in the UK. In the government’s response, called Inclusive Britain, ministers acknowledge racism exists but stress the importance of other factors. Taiwo Owatemi, Labour’s shadow equalities minister, said the report still “agrees with the original report’s denial of structural racism. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have once again failed to deliver meaningful action.” The report sets out a long list of policies, some new and others already in place.

Relevant key action points follow below. There is nothing new in the HE elements.

Educational success for all communities

  • Action 29: To drive up levels of attainment for under-performing ethnic groups, the Department for Education (DfE) will carry out a programme of analysis in early 2022 to understand pupil attainment and investigate whether there are any specific findings and implications for different ethnic groups to tackle disparities.
  • Action 30: The DfE and the Race Disparity Unit (RDU) will investigate the strategies used by the multi-academy trusts who are most successful at bridging achievement gaps for different ethnic groups and raising overall life chances. The lessons learnt will be published in 2022 and will help drive up standards for all pupils.
  • Action 31: The DfE will investigate the publication of additional data on the academic performance of ethnic groups alongside other critical factors relating to social mobility and progress at school level, in post-18 education and employment after education by the end of 2022.
  • Action 32: The schools white paper in spring 2022 will look at ways we can target interventions in areas and schools of entrenched underperformance.

Targeted funding: Action 34: To maximise the benefits of the pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils, DfE amended the pupil premium conditions of grant for the 2021-2022 academic year to require all schools to use their funding on evidence-based approaches. To the extent possible, DfE will investigate the scale of these benefits.

Higher education

  • Action 43: To empower pupils to make more informed choices about their studies, the DfE will ensure that Higher Education Institutions support disadvantaged students before they apply for university places.
  • Action 44: The DfE will work with UCAS and other sector groups to make available both advertised and actual entry requirements for courses, including historic entry grades so that disadvantaged students have the information they need to apply to university on a fair playing field.
  • Action 45: Higher education providers will help schools drive up standards so that disadvantaged students obtain better qualifications, have more options, and can choose an ambitious path that is right for them.
  • Action 46: Higher education providers will revise and resubmit their Access and Participation plans with a new focus on delivering real social mobility, ensuring students are able to make the right choices, accessing and succeeding on high quality courses, which are valued by employers and lead to good graduate employment.
  • Action 47: To improve careers guidance for all pupils in state-funded secondary education, the DfE will extend the current statutory duty on schools to secure independent careers guidance to pupils throughout their secondary education.
  • Action 52: The government is consulting on means to incentivise high quality provision and ensure all students enter pathways on which they can excel and achieve the best possible outcomes, including exploring the case for low-level minimum eligibility requirements to access higher education student finance and the possible case for proportionate student number controls.
  • Action 53: To help disadvantaged students to choose the right courses for them and to boost their employment prospects, the Social Mobility Commission will seek to improve the information available to students about the labour market value of qualifications and, where possible, the impact of those qualifications on social mobility.

Innovation: Action 56: To equip entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds with the skills they need to build successful businesses, BEIS is supporting HSBC to develop and launch its pilot for a competition-based, entrepreneur support programme in spring 2022. The programme, which will be run in partnership with UK universities, will equip entrepreneurs with the skills they need for years to come.

Apprenticeships: Action 48: To increase the numbers of young ethnic minorities in apprenticeships, the DfE is, since November 2021, working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and partner bodies and employers to engage directly with young people across the country to promote apprenticeships. This will use a range of mechanisms to attract more ethnic minority starts identified in the Commission’s report, such as events in schools with strong minority representation, relatable role models, employer testimonies, data on potential earnings and career progression. It will also explore the impact of factors that influence a young persons’ career choices.

Alternative provision (AP)

  • Action 37: The DfE will launch a £30 million, 3-year programme to set up new SAFE (Support, Attend, Fulfil and Exceed) taskforces led by mainstream schools to deliver evidence-based interventions for those most at risk of becoming involved in serious violent crime. These will run in 10 serious violence hotspots from early 2022 targeted at young people at risk of dropping out of school: reducing truancy, improving behaviour and reducing the risk of NEET (those not in education, employment or training).
  • Action 38: DfE will invest £15 million in a 2 year-programme to pilot the impact of co-locating full-time specialists in Alternative Provision in the top 22 serious violence hotspots.

Teaching an inclusive curriculum

  • Action 57: To help pupils understand the intertwined nature of British and global history, and their own place within it, the DfE will work with history curriculum experts, historians and school leaders to develop a Model History curriculum by 2024 that will stand as an exemplar for a knowledge-rich, coherent approach to the teaching of history. The Model History Curriculumwill support high-quality teaching and help teachers and schools to develop their own school curriculum fully using the flexibility and freedom of the history national curriculum and the breadth and depth of content it includes. The development of model, knowledge-rich curriculums continues the path of reform the government started in 2010.
  • Action 58: The DfE will actively seek out and signpost to schools suggested high-quality resources to support teaching all-year round on black history in readiness for Black History Month October 2022. This will help support schools to share the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups that have made this country the one it is today.

Further Education: Action 63: The DfE will encourage governing bodies to be more reflective of the school communities they serve and will recommend that schools collect and publish board diversity data at a local level. The DfE will also update the Further Education Governance Guide in spring 2022 to include how to remove barriers to representation, widen the pool of potential volunteers and promote inclusivity.

The Government did not accept the Commission’s Recommendation 18 to develop a digital solution to signpost and refer children and young people at risk of, or already experiencing criminal exploitation, to local organisations who can provide support.

Access & Participation

Wonkhe report on new research from Disabled Students UK: 41 per cent of disabled students believe that their course accessibility improved through the pandemic. However, 50 per cent of respondents report that their course both improved and worsened in different ways. The report recommendations include taking an anticipatory approach to issues, better equipping staff, reducing administration for disabled students, and cultivating compassionate approaches. The Independent has the story.

Academic quality

HEPI published a new policy note, written by the Chief Executive of the Quality Assurance Agency for HE exploring what quality means in UK HE today.

There’s a nice explanation of the quality continuum:

  • In many sectors, the notion of quality control is straightforward. Quality control tests a sample of the output against a specification. The required standard is set by identifying measures for outputs, and then testing everything else against those measures. In this way, it is easy to demonstrate how quality requirements are being fulfilled (typically within an acceptable tolerance).
  • No matter the sector, quality control is only part of the picture. To be really efficient, one needs to provide confidence in the cycle of production; to reassure that there are systems and processes in place to ensure that the output consistently meets, if not exceeds, the quality benchmarks that have been set. This is where quality assurance comes in. Quality assurance acts prospectively to provide confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. Assurance relates to how a process is performed or a product is made. Control is the retrospective, post-production inspection aspect of quality – it focuses on the product or output itself. Arguably, without the underpinning processes, outcomes cannot be guaranteed – they are achieved (or not) by luck. In our sector, assurance gives us the confidence that a provider understands (and self-reviews) how it is producing its outcomes.
  • But in higher education, we are not simply producing identical products for customers. QAA’s definition of academic quality refers to both how and how well higher education providers support students to succeed through learning, teaching and assessment. This is because higher education is not a product, as classically defined. It is an intrinsically co-creative, experiential process. Students and teachers collaborate to progress and reach their potential and, ideally, the learning from that collaboration is mutual as we constantly rethink what we thought we knew. That is why there is an additional dimension to higher education quality. It is not just about checking we are still doing the same thing effectively, it is also about quality enhancement – that drive continuously to improve the processes, both incrementally and transformationally. 

PQs

  • Student Loans: the modelled overall reduction in future costs to taxpayers from student loans…are wholly attributable to the two-year tuition fee freeze and changes to student loan repayment terms, as set out on page 13 of the higher education policy statement & reform consultation, and do not incorporate other elements of the reform package. The savings do include the changes to the Plan 2 repayment threshold for 2022/23 financial year, announced on 28 January 2022, prior to the announcement of the whole reform package.
  • Levelling Up White Paper: which NHS-university partnerships will receive the £30 million in additional funding; and what the criteria is for the allocation of that funding.

Other news

Young Welsh Priorities: The Welsh Youth Parliament chose its areas of focus for the Sixth Senedd.: mental health and wellbeing, climate and the environment, and education and the school curriculum.

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JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

VC’s Policy Advisor                                                              Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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