Provost's Update No. 6 (September 2017)

Confirmation and Clearing for 2017-18 Entry

UG recruitment targets were set conservatively for this year to try to improve accuracy in in income forecasting and to recognise some of the implications of the demographic downturn. As context, UCAS have reported a 4% decline in total numbers of applications to Undergraduate UK Higher Education. We have recruited well at UG level as the figures below show. Although these figures will change slightly, the overall position looks promising with the University likely to be slightly over target. It is worth being aware that a significant number of international students who have accepted places will decide to go elsewhere so the current numbers will drop. HEU figures will be subject to rather less change.

The current position is

· confirmed HEU accepts currently at 3,852 (+185 against target of 3,667)

· confirmed overseas accepts currently at 1,082 (+152 against target of 930)

· 336 HEU and 56 overseas clearing accepts

· 40 home and 3 overseas adjustment accepts; 16 students adjusted away from Warwick

· We’ve out-performed our widening participation targets (192 LPN accepts against target of 165; 513 Low Sec against target of 470)

· Current average tariff is 181 (equivalent to just over A*A*A* at A Level)

There is a more mixed picture at departmental level. A small number of departments have significant overshoots: a number have more modest overshoots and some are noticeably below target. The position on PGT is still uncertain and we won’t really know the outcome until registration, although forecasts suggest that there might again be some modest overshoots in some departments and some undershoots in others. Thus far, we comfortably have enough University owned/managed accommodation available to meet demand.

ARC Planning 2017-18

There has been some further thinking over the summer about the planning process for 2017-18 and we’ll shortly circulate some more detail for comment and discussion. Current thinking suggests that we should look to move beyond the existing Scheme of Delegation and simply establish gross margin targets for departments based on an income budget. Departments would then have responsibility for managing their cost base in order to deliver the target gross margin. This would reduce the number of business cases that would be needed in year, give departments greater discretion (within limits) and ideally create budget space to support strategic initiatives. Both the ARC Autumn Review and the annual planning round would continue but with a reduced number of meetings and stronger linkages between the evaluations associated with the Autumn Review and the forward strategic thinking that should be part of the planning round.

We will work up some greater detail on the practicalities associated with these ideas and we will be looking for more detailed feedback and reflections from HoDs on these and other possible enhancements to our planning and budgeting within ARC

Capital Space and Amenities Group

You may be aware that Lawrence Young is stepping down as Chair of CSAG and Deputy Chair of ARC. I’m grateful to him for all the work that he’s done in these roles over a number of years. I will take over as Chair of CSAG, with two Deputy Chairs of CSAG (Kate Seers and David Haddleton) to assist with the workload that the Committee brings.

STP

Many of you will be involved in the practicalities of implementing STP and the project team are dealing with a range of queries about unusual cases that aren’t always fully specified within the framework. These queries will be used to generate a series of FAQs which will help us to share good practice for future rounds of STP contracts. This first implementation will be a learning period and while the project team are available to help you with these queries, we’d also encourage you to simply work within the spirit of the framework if you do have some atypical cases to deal with.

Fundraising Dinner in Singapore

The Friends of the University of Warwick in Singapore recently organised a fund raising dinner; this group has already supported 3 scholarships for disadvantaged/first in family students from Singapore to study here at Warwick. Our existing scholarship students joined the dinner and proved to be fantastic ambassadors for the University. Last week’s dinner raised enough to support a further full scholarship.

Race Equality Charter Mark and Stonewall Equality Index

The University made its submission for the Race Equality Charter Mark in July. In September, we will be making our submission for the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. Our next round of Athena Swan submissions will be made in October and we plan to re-submit for our Athena Silver Swan in April next year.

Adam Waddingham : 04 Sep 2017 09:10 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem