Provost's Update No. 10 (March 18)
| Review of Post-18 Education and Funding |
| The much-trailed Review of Post-18 Education and Funding was announced some weeks ago (although in news terms it’s been somewhat swamped by other events). Its perhaps worth noting that this is a slightly odd review – its technically not an independent review but a government-led one, reporting to the education secretary, the chancellor and the prime minister. And it has ruled out and major changes to the current system, affirming as a principle that students should contribute to the cost of their studies. The review (which is expected to report in Spring 2019) is required to address: 1. Access to tertiary education for all, including maintenance support for disadvantaged students. 2. More informed choice (and competition) between the options available. 3. Delivering the skills that the economy needs, to support the industrial strategy. 4. Value for money - for students, graduates and taxpayers. There appears to be no intention to cap student numbers for post-18 education but there is a concern about the apparent preferences for university education over technical education (which seems to make some interesting assumptions and perhaps overplays the differences). There is a desire for more variation in fees and delivery, although notions of differential fees by subject lack any substantial popular support. The review will not look at pre-2012 loans, free tuition, any overall increase in costs, or a graduate tax. |
| Industrial Action |
| I know there is lots of information being pushed your way and there is more coming with some updated guidance from the Academic Continuity Group around the issues relating to missed/replacement teaching and assessment. And you might want to be aware that Regulation 41 has been invoked to allow some flexibility around the operation of examination boards. Externally it is suggested that informal engagement between UCU and UUK is taking place in search of a way forward and USS has asked Universities to suspend consultation on the default scheme that came from the JNC (ie the move to a DC scheme). For now though, no more information, and I would just like to thank you all for the work you have been doing in relation to a range of challenging and stressful issues. It has been a really difficult four weeks and Academic HoDs have inevitably found themselves on the front line in terms of engaging with both staff and students. Your commitment to trying to understand and balance some diverse and conflicting agendas is very much appreciated. |
| Academic Promotions |
| At its meeting earlier this week, Senate gave approval to the new framework for academic promotions (see previous consultations on insite). We hope that this will be a fairer and more transparent process and one that will recognise the importance of contribution and performance across the full range of academic activity: Research and Scholarship. Learning and Teaching. Impact, Outreach and Engagement. Collegiality, Leadership and Management. The intention is that this framework will be implemented for the 2018 promotions round. There is still quite a bit of work to be done around the operational detail of the associated processes and I know you will all want to see these as soon as possible. These are now being developed as a priority to ensure that we can brief you and also prospective applicants about the way in which the new framework will function. There will also be some further communication about job titles and while formal changes will take longer to get in place, we hope to offer everyone the opportunity to use the new job titles from the start of next academic year, if they wish. |
| Impact Agendas |
| A number of activities have been on-going (with leadership from the Research Executive) to ensure that we support and reward impact activities in a similar way to academic research activities. I thought it might be helpful to draw these four threads together. Impact is now one of four key activities that are part of our newly proposed criteria for promotion (see above), so that contributions to impact are included proportionately in assessing promotion. Impact is also very much a part of the criteria for merit pay and SSR. We have also asked all departments to ensure that time used in developing impact is included in allocation of work tasks. For impact activities demanding substantial time that is not supported elsewhere there will be the opportunity to apply for a newly created impact leave scheme to operate in the lead-up to REF); this can be used flexibly for a block of time or a certain amount of time per week for activities that cannot be funded elsewhere. (Details will follow) |
| Subject Level TEF |
This week saw the release of the formal consultation on the new subject level TEF. There was a surprising amount of press coverage, much of which seemed to imply that this was an exciting initiative that was completely new to the sector, despite it having been under consideration for some time! Much of the discourse around the release of the consultation has focused on the importance of subject level TEF in guiding student choice. The University will be preparing its response to the consultation and we have a colleagues involved on both the main panel and a subject panel for the pilot work which will give us a good opportunity to learn from the initial pilot studies. In brief the consultation proposes two options for subject-level TEF:
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| University Size and Shape |
| As part of the work on refreshing the University’s strategy, a forward look on University “size and shape” was presented to Senate earlier this week. If you’d like to see the full paper, please let me know and I’d be happy to share. But in brief, the paper highlighted the benefit of having a clear sense of how we would like to see student numbers grow over time and the importance of linking this to current master-planning work so that we are able to develop the right infrastructure to support expansion. The paper proposed a modest growth strategy to 2030 which (given the overall population growth) has the potential to enable the University to strengthen intake quality. The proposed approach would allow growth across the full range of subject areas but with some rebalancing towards STEMM subjects where our scale of activity is felt to be smaller than it should be given our research aspirations. |
Adam Waddingham
19 Mar 2018 10:26
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