August 19, 2019

Provost's Update for Academic Heads #18 (July 2019)

ARC SIF Bidding Round
An update on the final decisions in relation to SIF Bids – these were signed off by ARC and UEB at the end of the planning round. As you may recall, a key feature of the SIF was the wish to use the investment to generate additional income, such that we could keep the fund going for investment in future planning rounds. Not all of the SIF investments have been income generating – some have been focused on quality enhancement, and some of the investments (eg the CDTs) are about supporting core activities where there will be less easily quantifiable benefits for the longer term. In the current SIF round we again have a mix of such bids. The successful bids are:
  • Faculty level recruitment posts which will be centrally managed via SROAS (and we have clear income expectations);
  • High achievers scholarships to support UG recruitment in the Faculty of Arts (also income expectations via increased numbers);
  • The development of a Law Clinic facility to enable Law students to offer support to the community and enhance their practical skills and to drive additional recruitment (will support improved student numbers);
  • The development of Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) courses which are non-credit bearing programmes offered to trainee Secondary teachers to ‘top-up’ their subject-specific knowledge – eligible students are DfE funded and the initial focus will be on Maths;
  • Investment in IATL to support the work associated with the three-strands of the institutional education strategy for interdisciplinary, internationalisation and student research;
  • Continued support for PAIS to develop their teaching partnership with VUB as part of the broader European strategy.
In addition the SIF will continue to support a number of Departments that are working through their strategy renewals. We anticipate there being a further call for SIF funding later this year.
Admissions and Recruitment
We are well advanced in terms of preparations for Clearing; web pages are live and there is a broad based communications plan for the clearing week. We will be particularly looking to target WP students through this process. Forecast numbers are changing very little on the UG side – we are still forecasting to be around 200 below target for HEU following clearing and about 80 over target for International. On the PGT, there is a much higher level of uncertainty and while we expect to be below target for HEU (perhaps by around 100) we think that international numbers may be closer to 300 over target.
Warwick in London
As many of you will be aware, Warwick in London continues to expand its non-traditional educational activity with summer schools and pre-university taster programmes developing particularly well. And the team continue to support a range of recruitment and outreach events in London – including a programme for next year which many of you will be familiar with. However, the costs of having all staff based in London are high and for the coming year we will be relocating the operational team back to the main campus and will retain only essential office space in London. We will still have access to meeting and event space in the Stanley Building and the team will continue to provide the same support as they have done in the past but from a main campus base.
Changes to Study Leave Processes
The Academic Processes team are currently looking at options to simplify the study leave process and in particular to speed up the decision making process. Delays arise for a number of reasons including the process of checking entitlement (number of terms service accumulated), reviewing at Faculty level and then reviewing at University level. The current thinking would be that an annual check on every applicants eligibility should probably stop and that HoDs would be given an update on current eligibility for their staff. We would ask individuals only to apply when eligible (or eligible with mortgage) and decisions would be made at Dept level with a summary to CoF only. We would need to take a firmer position around the proportion of staff allowed to be on leave and we may need to consider some light touch appeals/exceptions process. You will get to see a more detailed draft of proposed processes in due course, but we think this could lead to much quicker decisions for individuals and departments and efficiencies within HR.
STP Review
The Review Group is continuing its work on the development of an employment contract model for sessional teachers and the intention remains that we should implement this for September 2020 (for PGR sessional teachers in the first instance). We are working closely with UCU and the SU on this and we are close to being able to scope a model which we think is workable. As ever, regulations relating to Tier 4 Visa holders remain a challenge and these do introduce some complexities. We are working on a new set of contractual arrangements and processes but the intention is to retain the existing framework for the allocation of roles/hours. Based on feedback from the SU we will be looking to do some further work around training and guidance. Consultation plans are under development so you can expect to get more information in the autumn.


- No comments Not publicly viewable


Add a comment

You are not allowed to comment on this entry as it has restricted commenting permissions.

Trackbacks

August 2019

Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
Jul |  Today  | Sep
         1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31   

Search this blog

Tags

Galleries

Most recent comments

  • That will happen! Estates are scoping an extercise in masterplanning for Westwood and will engage wi… by Christine Ennew on this entry
  • Thanks for this update. Really helpful communication of the 'headlines' and encouraging trends. As w… by Gill Frigerio on this entry

Blog archive

Loading…
Not signed in
Sign in

Powered by BlogBuilder
© MMXXIV