New Beginnings

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Higher Education is currently entering a maelstrom of change – we are waiting with bated breath the publication of the Green Paper, and as suggested previously in this blog much of what is possibly going to change is intensley political and driven much by the treasury. More early hints appeared on the ConservativeHome website this week:

Johnson’s proposals begin with the student experience. Some University teaching is excellent; too much is “execrable”, to borrow a word sometimes used in the department. To help raise the standard, he wants Universities to be rewarded for better teaching. The metrics used will include lower drop-out rates, good graduate outcomes for disadvantaged students, and an improved national student survey. His friends claim that evidence shows students value better teaching above lower fees: there is an reflection here of Nick Hillman’s finding, over at the Higher Education Policy Institute, that they are “less motivated by student issues, like tuition fees, than has often been supposed”.

and as we know there will be changes to QA processes:

If the new inspection body is to be the stick, there will also be a carrot. As George Osborne announced in the Budget, Universities that teach better will be allowed to raise fees in line with inflation from next year. Permitting further rises later has not been ruled out. There will be no shortage of objections to all this. Some Universities don’t want to be challenged by new entrants. There will be questions of detail, such as whether the metrics will work. There will be those of principle, such as whether it is really government’s business to tell the Universities how to conduct theirs.

More locally, we have our own disruption, reflecting on ” Smarter Futures”, and looking at the kind of university we want to be in the future as we enter a period of strategic planning. As part of that we are embarking on updating the  Academic Strategy for the university. So far, this has been discussed in various management groups and committees and is about to be available for wider consultation.

The rest of this blog piece will focus on the changes to the learning and teaching section of that strategy. Smarter Futures asks us on: recruitment and retention: challenging and supporting our students; and finally making sure they can achieve and become employable.

Writing a distinctive strategy is never easy – the aims of all universities to an extent can tend to be the same, as has been reported in a blog article on the Times Higher website this week – where it is suggested that a lack of boldness leads to all strategies looking like a whiter shade of pale.

I know that in writing this, we were urged to make sure we strived for excellence.  At the risk of this becoming a race to mediocrity and an “all shall have prizes” mentality, we’ve tried to highlight the areas we we feel we will be excellent, and those key strategic themes that we need to address.

However, we mustn’t lose sight of what a university is supposed to be – we may be driven by various metrics, both internal and external, but there has to be an underpinning commitment to the ideas of scholarship, for both students and academics, if we are to  attract both groups to be part of our community.

We have to support the notion of higher education as a transformational experience, not just a  transactional marketised service. We should be aware that we are changing lives through what we do, and this should influence the way in which we teach. As Thomas Docherty writes in “For the University, Democracy and the Future of the Insitution“:

Facts are, of course, important in teaching; but, if teaching and learning are to be historical, if they are to be allowed to make a difference to people’s lives in such a way as to give those pupils the autonomy necessary for the assertion of their own authorities, then facts become subservient to experience. It used to be ‘a fact’, for example, that the world was flat; but the experience of circumnavigating the globe changes this ‘fact’, and the experience produces new facts that are themselves, in turn, subject to further modification. If learning is anything, it is a process of transformation and most certainly not of transmission or transfer. It is a process in which I can become something, and in which I can become something other than I am at present. Learning puts me in possession of new facts; and it does this not simply by a process of abstract rationalization, but primarily through historical experience.

Working in an environment where still there are confused manifestations of marketisation and consumer behaviour then we should use our learning and teaching strategy to reinforce the broad goals of HE and scholarship, as well as delivering the right outcomes for external metrics. As Joanna Williams concludes in her book “Consuming Higher Education, Why Learning Can’t be Bought”:

Students and lecturers need to be united in the common goal of developing and interacting with disciplinary knowledge. Too often lecturers and students are presented as being on opposite sides with mutually exclusive interests – lecturers perhaps seeking to protect research time, students to ensure a better service.Learning often depends on the relationships between lecturers and students, and such relationships are prevented from developing if opposition is assumed.

Williams ends with questioning the funding for HE but reiterates the need for “the purpose of education (to be) placed at the heart of the university rather than job training or social inclusion”

As a university committed to success of all of our students, we’ve included sections on employability and inclusion but in the context of offering transformational education.

So here are our six themes, and what we mean by them.  We have tried to identify what we want to do, without reducing ourselves to something less than the ideals of higher education.

1.Developing confident and capable learners

Our learning and teaching has to be able to support all students once they arrive with us, and show them how to become lifelong learners.This is the key which will allow the fullest benefits of higher education to be attained. This is where we tall about students engaging with discipline knowledge as well as wider attributes

2.Providing challenging and supportive learning and teaching

We want to create amazing learning environments – both physical and virtual. Lots of work is already going on to change campus, and we need to keep looking at what others are doing. This week for example I visited the new Diamond building at Sheffield University – an incredible space, open 24/7 for student learning and teaching, including laboratories, workshops, study areas and a lecture theatre. We will be making sure all our new rooms, as aprt of Campus Transformation are designed to allow learning to flourish.

Online we need to transform the way we support learners. We have a  generation of first year undergraduates who  went through secondary school, with BBC iPlayer and a smartphone in their pocket that could access the web no matter where they were. Putting PowerPoint slides (that we read out earlier) into BlackBoard won’t cut it any more. I’ll be writing another short piece this week about how we will be embracing digital in future

3.Raising attainment and achievement.

This has been raised many times before in this blog – we want our students to achieve to their maximum potential. We’ve got lots of work already ongoing this year as part of the Raising Attainment Roadmap, but this remains a key strategic focus. Higher education is meant to be challenging, so we want our students to be challenged and then supported to be able to achieve.

4.Developing Employability

This blog has long argued that higher education is a transformational process, not a simple instrument to lead students into jobs. Nonetheless, improved employabiliity is a key outcome of HE, and it could be argued that many of the other benefits of HE that accrue come about partly through enhanced employment opportunities. As well as all the work already ongoing in employability, the new strategy picks up on three key issues: social and cultural capital; numeracy and data handling, and digital fluency or capability, The first will help students get through the door in the first instance, and the second two will provide enhanced skills in two areas that all graduates need today, based on the demands we see from major employers.

5.Delivering innovative learning and teaching

No L&T strategy would be complete without this – for us this means further development of enquiry and practice based learning, more use of alumni and employers in designing authentic learning tasks and an embedding of all the staff development and sharing opportunities that we have, to make sure we all move forwards.

6. Supporting a diverse population of students

As a modern university, we have a more diverse undergraduate body than many. We also have significant numbers of international students, of part time learners, of mature students. We know that we have one of the highest percentages of WP students in the country. In order to make sure that all of our students are able to attain, we will get better at mining our data to be able to identify trends in differential attainment, and build inclusive practice into all that we do, so that all student groups have an equal chance of success.

As well as these 6 themes, our strategy also talks about what it means to be an academic at Staffordshire University, as well as what it means to be a student.  I hope you’ll read and feedback on the detail once it goes out for consultation.

 

Politics and the TEF

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Prior to the general election, I wrote a blog post reviewing the various parties’ views on HE. Following the conservative majority I wrote another piece which concluded with “What is still not clear is how universities might be regulated, how quality mechanisms will operate in future, and how the regulatory and quality regime will be changed to encompass the more diverse range of providers”

Following the various party conferences we now enter a period when we await, with bated breath, the green paper on higher education. For an insight into the Conservative conference, then I recommend “Welcome to the Northern Powerhouse of Cards” by Martin McQuillan of Kingston University

There’s little point in looking at the other parties right now – there is not likely to be an election till 2020, and Labour haven’t identified their position on fees, let alone how they will carry out the role of opposition to the green paper.

The Conservatives are in an interesting situation. Cameron as leader, who has acted as a CEO has already indicated his intention to step down. Hence for everyone else it “eyes on the prize”. As deputy CEO, Osborne has been calling the shots on HE policy, since the Treasury is dictating policy more clearly than any other department. May is setting out her stall, and showing clear opposition to overseas students which will win her no friends in universities. Boris is harrumphing around the margins, and looking more widely Hunt is exerting everyone to work harder.Meanwhile, Javid is happy to drive through large cuts at BIS, and we can expect that many of the organisations that currently work in the HE sector may cease to exist.

It’s into this environment, with his boss supporting 40% cuts to BIS, that Johnson will need to produce  a green paper and ultimately drive legislation through parliament

All of a sudden,this looks threatening to HEFCE. The HEFCE consultation on QA is in tune with government and seems to promote a move to a deregulatory ideology and imply the demise of QAA. More recently though, with questions being asked about whether the remaining amounts of funding could be administered from elsewhere, and the need for a body to run TEF, then HEFCE themselves look more vulnerable.

The Teaching Excellence Framework will clearly be a big part of the green paper. It was a commitment from Osborne (that Treasury driver again) and is detailed in the government’s productivity plan “Fixing the foundations:Creating a more prosperous nation”

Excellence in teaching
4.7 The government will introduce a new Teaching Excellence Framework to sharpen incentives for institutions to provide excellent teaching, as currently exist for research. This will improve the value for money and return on investment for both students and the government, and will contribute to aligning graduate skills and expectations with the needs of employers. The government will consult later this year on how a Teaching Excellence Framework can be developed, including outcome-focussed criteria and metrics. The Teaching Excellence Framework will inform student decision-making, continue to support a high average wage premium for graduates and ensure that students’ hard-won qualifications keep their value over time.
4.8 To support teaching excellence, the government will allow institutions offering high quality teaching to increase their tuition fees in line with inflation from 2017-18, and will consult on the mechanisms to do this. This will reward excellent institutions with higher fee income, while ensuring students get good value from the tuition loans that the government underwrites.

Johnson now needs to steer this through parliament, at the same time as BIS is facing large cuts, and he needs to produce something that will work, both as a fix in the short term, and as a longer term evaluation of teaching.

To be able to have variable fees from 2017-18 will mean measures in place during the current academic year. Inevitably this will be based on existing measures – NSS, Hesa returns, DLHE initially.

Longer term though, then a new set of measures will come in which will provide challenges to the sector, and to individual institutions. From the Times Higher Johnson has made it clear how he would like the metrics to be set up:

Widening participation and access will be intimately linked to the TEF. One of the core metrics we envisage using in the TEF will be the progress and the value add [for] students from disadvantaged backgrounds, measuring it for example in terms of their retention and completion rates. And their [universities’] success in moving students on to either further study or graduate work.

On having an impact on further marketisation, then Johnson says:

the system should “not only have the capacity for more rapid market entry, but we [should] have the capacity for more rapid market share shifts between universities than we have hitherto seen in the sector”.

and  that

he wanted a system where “market share can shift towards where teaching quality really resides. Our teaching excellence framework will be an important signal to students of where quality resides, discipline by discipline, institution by institution.”

He’s asking an awful lot from a set of metrics that are not yet defined, and that will have numerous questions raised by many in the sector.

In the meantime, what can individuals and institutions do?

Firstly there is the opportunity to respond to the government’s inquiry into assessing the quality of HE, which asks specific questions such as:

  • .What should be the objectives of a Teaching Excellence Framework (‘TEF’)?
  • What are the institutional behaviours a TEF should drive? How can a system be designed to avoid unintended consequences?
  • What should be the relationship between the TEF and fee level?

Secondly we can  start looking at the various measures of value added or learning gain for different groups of students. HEFCE are already supporting a range of projects involving over 70 institutions to look at learning gain.

One of the unintended consequences that TEF might bring about is a gaming of the system. I’m not suggesting that data returns that feed into league tables are inaccurate, but one part of a successful league table result is a set of carefully constructed data returns. It’s equally likely that it will be possible to do something similar with any TEF submission, so all institutions will learn very quickly how to report data in the best possible way

Finally, recognising that TEF will be used to drive rapid shifts in market share (a euphemism?) then we will all need to get very good, not only at supporting the widest range of students, but also at understanding how the metrics apply to us, and how we can build internal systems to replicate them.

 

 

 

The Midnight Bike Ride

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Once again a small number of hardy souls from the University will be taking part in the annual British Heart Foundation Midnight Bike Ride from Manchester to Blackpool, over the night of 26th-27th September.

If you’d like to join us, there is still time to book into the event via the BHF website – it’s not a race, so endurance is more important than speed, just let me know if you’re coming along and we can meet up at the beginning. And maybe the end.

Even better, it would be great if you could sponsor one of us – here is the link to my JustGiving page

Bike Ride_1018789795

(from visitblackpool.com).

I promise not to flood this blog next week with pictures of me or other senior colleagues dressed in lycra……

Differences in Degree Outcomes

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New from HEFCE this week, a report on “Differences in Degree Outcomes:the Effect of Subject and Student Characteristics“, which looks at the outcomes of students who graduated in 2013-14. Some of this data I have previously reported when looking at HESA data on the impact of ethnicity on degree outcomes for the previous year.

The results of the HEFCE survey are not startling – they almost reinforce things that we already know in terms of what factors have an impact on achievement: the challenge now is to learn how to address each of these, and with the recent comments by the new universities minister on widening participation, and our own commitment to supporting a diverse population of students then awareness of these trends and how we then tackle them will be crucial for success of individuals and of the institution.

HEFCE considered the following variables when looking at the differences in outcomes:

  • age
  • disability status
  • ethnicity
  • The Participation of Local Areas measure (important for high WP populations)
  • sex
  • subject of study
  • prior attainment (in terms of qualifications held on entry to higher education)
  • previous school type
  • institution attended

The interesting part of the analysis is not the differences in outcomes that can be seen, but how much these differences can or cannot be explained by the influence of other factors.

Subject

Certain subjects are more likely to award 1sts/2(i)s, and the table below represents those subject we offer at Staffordshire – it will be interesting to compare our recent results with those for the sector by subject.

Subject % first or upper second % first
Subjects allied to medicine 69% 24%
Biological sciences 70% 18%
Physical sciences 73% 25%
Mathematical sciences 73% 35%
Computer science 66% 28%
Engineering and technology 74% 30%
Social studies 73% 16%
Law 69% 12%
Business and administrative studies 71% 21%
Mass communication and documentation 75% 15%
Historical and philosophical studies 82% 19%
Creative arts and design 72% 21%
Education 68% 18%
Combined 60% 16%

I always thought it was apocryphal that law didn’t award firsts – across the sector it would appear to be true!

Entry Tariff

On entry tariff, there is a clear relationship – higher entry leads to higher numbers of good degrees, which can also be seen when looking at league table data. This is one of the reasons that the Guardian league table uses a “value added” measure which seeks to adjust for entry tariff..

hefce1st1

 

Mode of Study

In general, part time students have worse outcomes compared with full time. Even adjusting for variations on entry tariff, part time students have worse outcomes than full time.

Age

The raw data shows that young students are 11 percentage points more likely to gain a good degree compared with mature entrants.

Gender

Across all entry tariffs, women are more likely to gain good degrees than men.

Disability

Graduates with a disability are slightly less likely to gain a good degree than those without a declared disability.

Ethnicity

This is the area with the biggest gap. 76% of white students gain a good degree, compared to 60% of black and minority ethnic students.

Even allowing for other factors, the unexplained gap is still equivalent to 15%.

Previous School

In most cases students from state schools outperform those from independent schools.

Neighbourhood HE Participation

Students coming from neighbourhoods with the highest rates of HE participation also gain the highest numbers of good degrees.

Implications

The recent speech by Jo Johnson referred to the importance of universities in driving social mobility and the sector’s work in widening participation.

This data provides further information that could be used to justify the costs of supporting WP in universities, and for focusing on trying to close gaps in attainment.

Much focus is given to looking at the data provided by UCAS but to understand how well the sector and individual universities are performing in terms of closing these gaps, then much fuller datasets need to be considered, taking into account retention and progression and ultimately employment – even if all our students gain the degrees they deserve, but still fail to progress into appropriate graduate roles, then social mobility isn’t realisable for everyone.

As we move into a potential quality regime that could be metrics based, together with a Teaching Excellence Framework, which will certainly use a variety of metrics (possibly including learning gain), then there will be plenty of work to be done in generating data and analysing it..

However, the focus also has to go beyond analysing data. How can we use it to understand our students both as individuals and as cohorts? How can we use data to support our staff better in teaching and assessing their students? Finally, how can we learn to change practices and behaviours based on evidence?

 

 

 

Good University Guide 2016

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The final big league of the year was published today – the Good University Guide, which comes from the Sunday Times.

Details of methodology and subject tables are available on the Sunday Times website, behind a paywall, so won’t be discussed here, however this iteration of this guide does use the results of REF2014, and unlike the other major guides published this year uses the NSS data published last month.

Big winners this year are Harper Adams, Bath Spa, Manchester Met while biggest drops are from Arts Bournemouth, Chester, Arts London, Cardiff Met, BCU, Cumbria.

The great news for Staffordshire is that we have risen a further 6 places, which means a rise in all the league tables this year.

Our individual data shows:

Performance Measure Score Rank
Teaching Quality 81.80% 49=
Student Experience 82.80% 80=
Research Quality 16.50% 55
UCAS Entry Points 274 118
Graduate Prospects 58.40% 111
Firsts and 2(i)s 63.20% 98=
Completion Rate 78.40% 115
Student-Staff Ratio 16.8:1 59=
Services/Facilties Spend £1,620 81

Notable results for us then are our ranking in research – although we submitted a relatively small number of academics, the editorial in the paper does comment on our increased size and scope of research, noting our best results were in Sport and Exercise and with psychology scoring high for external impact.

The impact of our teaching quality score is pleasing,and if we can improve this together with the overall student experience score, we will see further improvements in this guide next year.

The new work we are doing this year to enhance student employability together with our Roadmap for Raising Attainment, both of which will be reflected in the new Learning and Teaching Strategy, will lead to further improvements in good degrees and graduate prospects.

As alluded to earlier, the tables are behind a paywall, but parts can be constructed from the press releases from the Sunday Times as below:

Name Ranking 2016 Ranking 2015 2015 National student survey Teaching excellence 2015 National student survey Student experience Graduate prospects Completion rate
(%) (%) (% in professional jobs or graduate-level study) (%)
Cambridge 1 1= 83.8 86.3 89.3 98.4
Oxford 2 1= 83.1 86.8 87.1 96.3
Imperial College 3 4 79.8 87.8 91.1 96.5
St Andrews 4 3 83.2 86.8 83.3 95.3
Durham 5 6 81.9 86.7 84.4 96.6
Warwick 6 8 79.6 85 79.8 96.7
Exeter 7 7 82.6 87.7 79.8 95.7
Surrey 8 11 86.9 90.3 78.8 92.2
LSE 9 5 72.1 78.4 78.5 94.8
University College London 10 9 74.2 81.3 83.1 94.6
Lancaster 11 12 82.3 85.4 82.5 93.5
Bath 12 10 82.7 87 85.2 96.1
Loughborough 13 13 84.5 89.3 83.7 93.2
Leeds 14 17 83.7 88 78.4 93.5
York 15 16 81.7 86.6 76 94.3
Southampton 16 18 79.3 86.5 78.1 92.5
Birmingham 17 15 80.8 84.2 86.7 94.8
East Anglia 18 14 83.2 88.8 70.3 91.9
Sussex 19 25 78.6 85 84.1 92.9
Bristol 20 19 75.5 81.5 79.6 96.6
Sheffield 21 21 81.3 87.2 75.7 94.4
Edinburgh 22 22= 74.5 82.4 78.6 91.3
Newcastle 23= 22= 82 88.4 79.1 95.1
Kent 23= 30 81.5 85.4 76.7 90.7
Nottingham 25 22= 79.5 83.9 81.3 93.2
Glasgow 26 26 80 86.9 79.3 88.4
King’s College London 27 29 73.9 79.7 85.7 92.8
Leicester 28= 20 77.5 84.4 72.1 92.5
Manchester 28= 28 79 84.7 78.5 92.9
Aston 30 34 83.3 87.9 78.8 90.9
Reading 32 33 80.5 85.8 70.3 92.3
Cardiff 33 27 80.7 86 80.1 93.4
Queen Mary 34 37 80.5 83.3 73.3 91.2
Essex 35 32 83.7 88 64.1 85.6
Royal Holloway 36 34 82.6 84.1 62.7 92.3
Dundee 37 45 84.4 87.1 80 86
Liverpool 38= 36 77.9 83.4 76.1 91.3
Heriot-Watt 38= 41 80.8 84.2 78.1 87.4
Buckingham 38= 48 88 88.4 83.4 86.3
City 41= 46 82.7 85.6 78.9 86
Swansea 41= 43 82.6 86.5 81.4 89.7
Keele 43 40 87 90.2 76.1 90.8
Soas 44 31 75.2 80.8 68.3 80.7
Aberdeen 45 44 77.4 83.7 76.2 84.1
Strathclyde 46 39 76.2 85.6 72 87.6
Coventry 47 42 87.6 89.3 74.2 85.8
St George’s 48 – 78.7 81.6 93.4 92.7
Harper Adams 49 63 82.6 89.3 73.3 90.6
Stirling 50 53 78.7 82.3 73.3 85.7
Royal Agricultural 51 – 79.3 85.6 69.7 96.3
Bangor 52 50 85.8 87.8 67.7 81.8
De Montfort 53 54 82.4 84.6 76.9 86.5
Nottingham Trent 54 52 83.6 85.8 67.6 89.6
Oxford Brookes 55 49 83.2 85.7 69.2 89.4
Falmouth 56 51 83.7 83.5 74.5 85.4
Bath Spa 58 70 85.8 85.8 55.1 89.9
Portsmouth 59 57 83.4 85.9 66.9 87.6
Brunel 60 47 78.2 83.8 63.4 87.7
Norwich Arts 61 – 83.8 83.5 63.4 88.7
Lincoln 62= 60 81.1 84.6 70.7 87.6
Creative Arts 62= 74 82.7 81.5 52 85.8
Northumbria 64= 66 82.9 85.1 66.3 87.6
Winchester 64= 61 84.2 85 60.7 85.2
Goldsmiths 66 55 76.6 76.3 56 82.4
Hull 67 58 80 83.8 66.7 86
Edge Hill 68 72 83.2 83.5 63.8 86.2
Huddersfield 69= 77= 82.2 84 74.1 83
Robert Gordon 69= 64 80.6 83.5 83.1 83.4
Chichester 69= 65 84 85.3 57.5 89.9
Sheffield Hallam 72 62 80.9 83.9 64.7 86.9
West of England 73 68 80 82.5 70.8 84.9
Liverpool John Moores 74 71 81.6 85 63.3 84.2
Bradford 75 76 78.8 84.4 75.2 83.8
Hertfordshire 76 79 78.6 82.8 75.3 86
Manchester Metropolitan 77 89 81 82.2 63 84.4
Roehampton 78 73 78 79.9 60.9 81.7
Liverpool Hope 79= – 86.8 86.4 53.9 82.8
Aberystwyth 79= 93 78.4 80.4 62.5 89.3
Arts Bournemouth 81 59 81.4 80 61.4 92.3
Northampton 82= 56 82.3 84.1 60.7 85
Bournemouth 82= 88 75.2 78.8 66.4 86
Derby 84 81 84.4 85.3 60 83.7
Middlesex 85= 75 78.7 81.8 64.9 77.8
Plymouth 85= 80 82.3 84.1 60.2 84.8
Chester 87 67 82.7 83.7 63.6 80.5
Gloucestershire 88 83 79.8 82.6 55.7 86.3
York St John 89 87 82.4 83 65.3 90.4
Brighton 90 82 78.6 80.9 66.9 86.9
Leeds Trinity 91 91 83.5 82.3 65.8 81.7
Central Lancashire 92 77= 80.4 83.5 62.4 81.6
Edinburgh Napier 93 97 80.2 83.7 69.1 81.2
Glasgow Caledonian 94 84 77 82.5 70.2 83.2
Staffordshire 95 101 81.8 82.8 58.4 78.4
Queen Margaret, Edinburgh 96 86 78.9 82.3 59.6 82.4
Abertay 97 106 80 83.1 65.6 75.5
Salford 98 105 80.1 80.9 59.5 79.5
Arts London 99 85 75.9 74.5 59.2 85.5
St Mary’s, Twickenham 100= 100 80.5 84.5 66.7 83.7
Worcester 100= 107 81.4 84.5 63.9 85.8
Teesside 102 94 82.9 84.3 59.8 80.8
Cardiff Metropolitan 103 90 79.1 81.8 59.8 82.2
Sunderland 104 99 82.5 84.2 62.3 81.4
Birmingham City 105 91 78 79.3 64.8 84.4
Greenwich 106 98 79.2 82.4 58.2 84.7
Canterbury Christ Church 107 96 80.7 81.9 57.8 82.3
Anglia Ruskin 108 110 82.5 83.9 65 79.3
Buckinghamshire New 109 116 81.5 81.1 57.6 82.5
Bedfordshire 110 108 80.4 82.7 58.3 80.1
Kingston 111 117 76.1 79.9 60.7 82.2
Bishop Grosseteste 112= 102 80.9 80.6 69.1 90
South Wales 112= 114 77.5 78.3 59 81.7
Leeds Beckett 114 111 78.5 82.7 58.5 78.8
Westminster 115= 112 72.9 80.6 55.1 80.4
Southampton Solent 115= 115 79.5 82.1 54.6 76.8
Newman 115= 104 83.1 84.6 54.6 73.3
West of Scotland 118 118 81.8 81.8 65.7 70
Cumbria 119 95 76.9 77.6 64.9 85.7
London South Bank 120 122 77 81.3 67.9 74.6
West London 121 109 76.9 77.5 60.5 73.9
Glynd?r 122 113 80.5 79.3 66.3 75.8
Bolton 123= 120 81.6 80.8 60.1 71.2
St Mark & St John, Plymouth 123= 102= 76.3 77.3 60.4 82.6
London Met 125 123 76 78.6 47.7 75.3
Highlands and Islands 126 121 78.8 76.5 56 68.6
East London 127 119 75 78.5 45.6 67.5

Jo Johnson’s Speech to UUK

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For the second time, our Minister with responsibility for universities makes a speech on HE, this time to Universities UK and an assembled throng of Vice Chancellors. Our own VC’s impressions will be in his blog next week.

The full text of the speech is here, Higher education: fulfilling our potential, but are there any hints of what is to come?

there is considerable unfinished business and the green paper will seek views on the changes the government believes will be necessary to ensure that higher education continues to be a great national success story in the years to come

We can expect to see the Green Paper that will address this unfinished business in the current session of parliament.

The next section of the speech is about “teaching at the heart of the system”, which is different from the previous mantra of “students at the heart of the system” which has subsequently become a strapline in many a university mission statement.

At the centre of this vision are the young people contemplating their futures in a world where no one owes them a living, where they must depend on their wits and drive to survive.

Well-equipped students ready to contribute to society and to businesses keen to employ increasing numbers of skilled graduates

So once again is higher education being seen as a transactional good, rather than a transformational experience, just for young people to enter the employment market, red in tooth and claw? Even though a majority of students may be young, we need to remind ourselves that HE is not just for young people, and not just to deliver training for employment.

Moving on to talk about the proposed Teaching Excellence Framework (however with no proposals or suggestions at this stage), Johnson refers to teaching staff who go the extra mile providing feedback and email replies at weekends, as well as those who think:

we’ll award you the degree as the hoped-for job ticket in return for compliance with minimal academic requirements and due receipt of fees’

I’m sure plenty will take issue with this – although in a sector that employs over 194,000  academic staff (HESA data 2013-14), there must be a few individuals in this category although we wouldn’t expect an institution to behave overall in this way. The speech goes on to talk about the variability of student experience and:

There is extraordinary teaching that deserves greater recognition. And there is lamentable teaching that must be driven out of our system. It damages the reputation of UK higher education and I am determined to address it.

Is the comment on lamentable teaching about individuals or about entire institutions? The TEF is  to  assess an institution, not individual performances. The answer to that might provide an answer of whether solutions are to be centrally driven or can be dealt with through internal management processes and enhancement activities.

Johnson suggests that more information will be provided in future about kind of teaching that students will receive. Having been to a number of open days in other institutions recently I’v e been struck by the willingness to brag about high contact hours, with little reference to what they actually involve.

The new framework will “reward universities that do most to stretch young – and also not so young – minds”. At last a recognition that not all students are 18 years old – but the devil will be in the detail of this: how will the framework actually measure the amount of stretch? This may lead us to look at ideas of learning gain and value-added, but can this be put in place quickly enough for TEF to be ready for 2017?

Johnson asks for there to be  a shift in how we think about teaching – and in an institution that is focused more on teaching than research, then this should be good news.

Widening Participation appears as a major part of the speech – and at a time when cuts to the BIS budget are due, and many commentators suggesting that the Student Opportunity Fund which supports WP activities is likely to be under threat, then we have a series of laudable ideas but which will need money to support.

There is a clear commitment to the use of HE as a driver of social mobility with particular emphasis given to participation rates of working class white boys, and students from BME backgrounds.

Plenty of reference is made to the data provided by UCAS, which will provide the necessary information on recruitment into universities, and a comment is made about linking this to other datasets. If we are serious about being able to understand how well WP activities are working, then we need to look not just at UCAS and recruitment data, but also at information on retention, progression and achievement – only when we can see significant reductions in the differences between different groups in all of the relevant factors would we be able to say that we are making steps to increase social mobility. Much of this information is already held within universities, and plenty of them provide analysis of this to explain their outcomes.

On alternative providers, Johnson recognises that not everyone wants to study a 3 year degree, and praises the alternative provider sector in being able to offer other provision, through validation arrangements with existing universities, but suggests that the current process “stifles competition, innovation and student choice, which is why we will consult on alternative options for new providers if they do not want to go down the current validation route.”

On regulation, Johnson states that this a a deregulatory government, and the recent consultation on QA from HEFCE seemed to push towards a system of no central agency, but with increased role of governance (similar to the rise in the school sector of  Academies and removal of Local Authority control?).

So we need a simpler, less bureaucratic and less expensive system of regulation. A system that explicitly champions the student, employer and taxpayer interest in ensuring value for their investment in education and requires transparency from providers so that they can be held accountable for it. One that protects institutional autonomy and academic freedom and maintains the highest quality of higher education, safeguarding the strong international reputation of English universities

And this is clealry talking about the role of HEFCE rather than universities in countries with devolved administrations.

Overall – will this please the sector?

  • A commitment to great teaching won’t be argued with – the mechanisms of assessing it will be.
  • The change in regulation for alternative providers might be seen as a threat to some institutions (probably only those in the bottom quartile of league tables, or current FE providers of HE)
  • The focus on widening participation should be welcomed – provided that funding and full data analysis is part of the deal.

As ever, the details have yet to merge and plenty of other commentators will have more to say on this speech than I, and we will all eagerly await the Green Paper, and in particular the plans for a Teaching Excellence Framework and a renewed focus on widening participation.

 

Do the numbers matter?

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We are now at the point in the year where we start getting hold of course level metrics – from employability through DLHE, for student experience from NSS and on student performance in terms of retention and attainment through our own datasets.

Bringing these together means that we can create a snapshot of how “well” a course might have performed in the last years.

There have been a number of publications over the summer on the use of numbers and metrics, in particular the report “The Metric Tide” which reflects in the use of metrics to assess research excellence.

However this publication also contains chapters on management by metrics and on the culture of counting, and as someone who works extensively on looking at the performance of our portfolio of courses, as well as league tables, this was of interest.

“Across the higher education sector, quantitative data is now used far more widely as a management aid, reflecting developments in the private sector over recent decades. ……………….., most universities now plan resource allocation centrally, often drawing on the advice of dedicated intelligence and analysis units that gather information from departments and faculties. The use of such systems has helped universities to strengthen their reputation as responsible, well-managed institutions. The relatively robust financial position of the sector, and the continued trust placed in universities by public funders to manage their own affairs, is in part founded on such perceptions of sound financial governance.

The extent to which management systems in HEIs help or hinder institutional success is of course contested. On the positive side, such systems have helped to make decision making fairer and more transparent, and allowed institutions to tackle genuine cases of underperformance. At the same time, many within academia resist moves towards greater quantification of performance management on the grounds that these will erode academic freedoms and the traditional values of universities. There is of course a proper place for competition in academic life, but there are also growing concerns about an expansion in the number and reach of managers, and the distortions that can be created by systems of institutionalized audit.”

 

What is important then is how we deal with  data. A list of numbers alone does not create useful management information. Indeed even a collation or aggregation of all the data (similar to a league table approach) still is only one part of the picture.

What data or information such as this does provide us with, are some insights into how different parts of the university are faring, or how our different groups of students see us.

The useful work starts when we realise how to use the numbers – this is where we now have those conversations with course teams to find out why a metric is particularly high or low. Is there some really great practice that can be shared with other people? Is there a reason for a disappointing NSS score?

Only by going beyond the numbers and engaging with the course teams will we get the full insight into why the results are as they are.

This is not to say that everything can be explained away. The whole point of building up a metrics approach to assessing what we do is threefold:

  • To make sure all colleagues are aware of how measurable outcomes affect us reputationally and reflect the results and experience of actual students
  • To provide a consistent reliable management information to act as a trigger
  • To raise the data understanding capability of all groups of staff.

We should not be afraid of looking at metrics to judge a programme, but as well should become better at using that information  to be able to understand exactly why we perform that way.

As well as looking at the raw data, we also need to look closely at what it is we are trying to achieve, and how this might influence how we set up benchmarks and targets. Some examples might be:

  • Benchmarking NSS results for subjects against the sector average for that subject. This shows how well we do in comparison with others rather than a comparison against an internal university average score (guess what – half our courses were above average)
  • Considering a calculation of value added instead of good degree outcomes. For a university with a significant intake of widening participation students, this might be  a better reflection of “distance travelled” and show the results of our teaching. Any VA score should have to be different form that used in one of the league tables, which only considers 1sts and 2(i)s as a good outcome. For some students, a 2(ii) might be appropriate.

We should all be aware that using metrics to assess quality and performance is becoming increasingly important.

The current consultation from HEFCE on the future of quality assurance has a number of major themes, but two of these are around data and governance.

In the proposals are the suggestions that quality could be assured by a university identifying its own range of measures that indicate quality, and that governing bodies will be in a position to make judgements of success against these.

This could be an opportunity to create a set of metrics that really measure where we want our successes to be and that are actually aligned to the mission of the university., rather than the ones that might suit another university more readily.

Secondly, it does mean that governing bodies (and the people that brief them) will need to become more aware of data, its limitations and meanings.

Finally, and this is a concern – the proposed Teaching Excellence Framework will most likely be put in place very quickly, and will be metrics based. In the time available, this might only be based on metrics and measures that are already well known and used – NSS, DLHE, good degrees (not dissimilar to a league table so far). Since the ability to charge increased fees will depend on success in the TEF, then it does mean that despite in future possibly being able to identify what our measures of success will be, in the short term we cannot stop focussing on those key indicators.

 

Consultation on QA Arrangements

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In case you missed it last week, HEFCE have now published their consultation into arrangement for quality assurance in higher education.

Much of what appears in the document was already trailed, perhaps what is most interesting is the reaction seen across the sector since publication.

The key themes as described by HEFCE are:

  • A shift from process-driven assurance to analysis of student academic outcomes. A number of respondents to the first phase of the review wished to see this shift. It builds on existing institutional activity to drive excellence and innovation in learning and teaching in the context of an institution’s own mission, location and modes of delivery, and the nature of their student body.
  • Strengthening the existing external examining system to protect the integrity of academic standards. There was strong support in the first phase of the review for the external examining system, but recognition of the need for further modernisation and professionalisation.
  • An enhanced role for universities’ and colleges’ own assurance systems. Governing bodies would confirm that their senates or academic boards were reviewing the quality of their students’ academic experience and (for institutions with degree awarding powers) academic output standards, and provide assurance that there were appropriate action plans in place where necessary

Reading through the document, then for me, three theme become of increasing importance:

  • the increasing role of university governance
  • the need for internal data to provie assurance
  • the development of a teaching excellence framework.

One organisation who don’t get a mention at all in the document is QAA. Their response included:

‘QAA can bring extensive expertise to this debate. We will be offering ideas to shape a genuinely risk-based, proportionate approach, tailored to the track record and circumstances of each individual college or university; an approach that is truly UK-wide and underpins the reputation of UK higher education internationally”

In a speech earlier in the week by the Chief Exec of QAA, Anthony McClaren, their view was made a little more forcefully:

There are also a number of fundamental principles missing from what is being proposed.

The value of external cyclical review and the critical role it has in protecting the interests of our students, supporting providers developmentally through enhancement, providing public assurance, complying with European standards and safeguarding the global reputation of the sector. And not, as suggested in the consultation, merely a ‘repeated retesting against baseline requirements’.

Nor does it properly recognise the importance of a coherent system with a single independent quality assurance body, a single body which avoids fragmentation and weakening of the system, and enables a level playing field covering not only publicly funded universities and colleges, but also alternative providers.

Also, the retention of a UK-wide system and, critically, a single UK-wide framework as we have today, which is respected and trusted globally.

And a system which continues to meet fully now – not as an aspiration for the future – both European and wider international expectations.

And with international quality assurance activities which continue to support UK providers both in recruiting international students to this country and with their transnational education activities overseas.

QAA, working with the UK sector, is known, trusted and respected round the world as the safeguarder of quality and standards in UK higher education. Given the international objectives of the sector and also our government’s export ambitions, our work will become even more crucial in the future.

We will be responding to this consultation.

 

Million+ responded to the consultation with a piece by it’s Chair, our VC Prof Michael Gunn:

 

The consultation raises a number of complex issues and universities will wish to carefully consider their responses. However if the end result is that England loses an independent external quality assurance system there would be concerns about the impact on the reputation of UK higher education both within the UK but also overseas.

Universities UK responded with:

Effective quality assessment will continue to play a central role in securing our global reputation and providing assurances to students, the government, and the public more widely. It is important that this remains fit for purpose for the whole of the United Kingdom and in a significantly changed higher education environment, adapting to increasing diversity in students and institutions. The proposals set out by the English, Welsh and Northern Irish funding bodies pick up this challenge, setting out clear proposals for reform

In response to the various voices making themselves hear, and in particular the fact that the original document does seem to have a few bits missing, then HEFCE provided a blog article entitled “No consultation document survives first contact with its stakeholders (without the need for further elaboration)”.

Here HEFCE say:

The consultation document’s first formal engagement with the world has revealed the need for further elaboration and explanation, but the proposals themselves are holding up.  And the purpose of the consultation is to set out proposals and then to gather and test responses.  And then to think some more

Clearly this is going to be a major piece of work through the summer, not just for HEFCE, but for all relevant stakeholders.

Areas that we might want to think about are how we involve governance more centrally in assuring standards, which links to how we provide information to allow such judgments to be made.

Finally this week the new universities minister, Jo Johnson, announced  plans to create a Teaching Excellence Framework. Clearly this is links to the HEFCE consultation, and will be the next challenge for us to face. Hopefully we won’t just be replacing one review of quality that focused on process rather than outcomes,  with another for teaching that focuses on process.

 

 

 

 

Jo Johnson – First Speech

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Our new universities minister has broken cover and delivered his first speech about higher education, entitled “Teaching at the Heart of the System” to UUK this week.

Here’s the edited highlights:

On helping students to make informed choices:

we can now start to assess the employment and earnings returns to education by matching Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Education (DfE) education data with HMRC employment and income data and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits data.

We will be able to see which institutions and subjects provide the greatest financial benefits to students, and reflect this back to potential applicants.

On value for money:

While independent learning is vital, universities must get used to providing clearer information about how many hours students will spend in lectures, seminars and tutorials, and who will deliver the teaching.

Indeed the Competition and Markets Authority have advised higher education providers that information should be available to prospective students to meet the requirements of consumer law.

I’ve been rewriting module handbook templates recently for one of our faculties, with a focus on managing student expectations, and clealry identifying how we deliver courses, how much independent learning is expected, and crucially, what we expect our students to do through independent study.

On employability:

Last year’s CBI/Pearson Education and Skills survey suggested that 47% of employers felt universities should do more to help students become job-ready.

Government, business and the university sector need to come together to address this mismatch between supply and demand in the graduate labour market.

Businesses should not just be seen as customers of universities, recruiting the graduates they educate or buying research expertise, but as active partners.

Although this seems to reinforce the narrative that universities are just in the business of providing work ready employees, we do recognise the importance of developing employability skills, hence our recent Learning and Teaching Conference that focused on this very topic.

The big announcement though is this one:

There must be recognition of excellent teaching – and clear incentives to make ‘good’ teaching even better.

Some rebalancing of the pull between teaching and research is undoubtedly required.

It is striking that while we have a set of measures to reward high quality research, backed by substantial funding (the Research Excellence Framework), there is nothing equivalent to drive up standards in teaching.

That is why my priority as Universities Minister will be to make sure students get the teaching they deserve and employers get graduates with the skills they need by introducing the Teaching Excellence Framework we promised in our manifesto.

While no one would argue that we shouldn’t have excellent teaching, the difficulty here will be in finding a way of assessing excellence without becoming overly prescriptive or burdensome (REF anyone?), although the minister does say that “any external review must be proportionate and light touch, not big, bossy and bureaucratic”. Interestingly, there is a hint of a future role for QAA in developing the framework (just as they may be losing the remit of institutional quality assurance).

On good degrees, Johnson notes the rise in the number of 1sts and 2(i)s being awarded, saying:

To the extent this expansion in the number of firsts and 2:1s is to do with rising levels of attainment and hard work, I applaud it.

But I suspect I am not alone in worrying that less benign forces are at work with the potential to damage the UK higher education brand.

On the face of it, the facts are certainly startling.

There has been a 300% increase in the percentage of firsts since the 1990s

Maybe the less benign forces come from the impact of league tables and the need to succeed in these to maintain institutional success? Alternativley, maybe universities have recognised how they can improve student attainment and success through the right kinds of interventions?

The proposed Teaching Excellence Framework will be expected to tackle degree classification inflation ( assuming that this does of course exist)

So far the speech has been cautious welcomed (TEF will be the biggest concern) with UUK saying:

Providing a high-quality, world-leading experience for all students is central to what our universities do, and they are always seeking to improve what they offer to students. We will be considering carefully how a new Teaching Excellence Framework can best add value to all students, whatever their choice of subject or university, and whatever their background and aspirations. The challenge is how to construct a single Framework that can effectively respond to that tremendous diversity. Universities UK will be contributing to the consultation process in the coming months

And from million+:

Professor Michael Gunn, chair of the university think-tank million+ and Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University said:

“Universities are engaged in high quality teaching and research but too often teaching has played second fiddle in discussions about the value and contribution of higher education to society and the economy.

“We warmly welcome Jo Johnson’s recognition that the student body is talented and diverse in background, age, mode of study and pre-entry qualifications.

“His commitment to work with employers to highlight shared responsibilities for graduate employability also opens up the potential to improve recruitment practices in ways that would benefit many students.

“The Minster has undoubtedly set a number of challenges and we welcome his commitment to consult widely and the opportunity to explore ways to value the excellent teaching and support for learning in universities.”

There will be a Green Paper in the autumn, so something else (as well as the HEFCE consultation on QA) for policy wonks to get excited about.

 

Tips for Graduation

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Every year, at around this time, we’ll see articles for students on what to expect at graduation, and how to get through the day.Our own university Facebook feed has promoted this blog by one of our students Queenie Goredema who rightly focuses on outfit and makeup.

Previously we shared with students 49 thoughts that everyone has at graduation. Some of these are a bit sweary.

grad

What we never see is the rules and guidance for staff, so here are some pointers.

Academic Dress

This is the only time of the year that you will wear robes. However, unlike your graduating students, you must wear with studied nonchalance – oh this old thing, I just threw it on. And really, that is how it should look. Graduands want to look perfect. Staff need to be so other worldly that the hood can be worn in a more “casual” manner. But never on the head.

This is an opportunity to check out the robes and hence academic background of your colleagues. The rules here are easy. Simple robes represent old and highly respected universities. The newer the institution, the gaudier the robes. Robes with significant amounts of embroidery were rarely awarded for academic success. Robes with gold embroidery usually represent management in private sector or overseas providers.

Under the Robes

Having reinforced the stereotype of what robes look like, and how to wear them, then we must take a deep breath and look at what goes beneath.

No matter what the standard wardrobe during the teaching year might be, this is a day when for men a tie really is needed. This is because it will hide where the hood attaches to the shirt. Ties should not match robe colours.

Again for men, suits are expected. This is because in midsummer, a woolen jacket, topped off with a gown and hood (possibly fur lined) is ideal, particularly under the hot lights on stage.

For women, again smart business wear. And safety pins to attach that hood.

For either gender, skirts or kilts are a minefield. Possibly cooling on a hot summer day. Potentially disturbing to the audience  if too short and you are sitting on the front row of the stage.

The Procession

The families of graduands will take this opportunity to video and take photographs of you. Try to look as if this is something you do every day (and for some people next week there could be 10 ceremonies to attend). Look as though you are having a deep academic conversation with whomever you are walking with. Keep your voice down though – nobody wants their parents’ video memories of graduation to have recorded your comments on  the snacks available before the ceremony

The Speeches

Look interested. You may have heard the same speech several times for the last however many years. Remember to laugh at the joke. Not too heartily.

Speeches by recipients of honorary doctorates should be attended to carefully. This might give you an insight into their possible benefit to the institution in future. Although you will probably never hear of them again.

Presentation of Students to the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor

Keep clapping. And again, keep clapping. Look delighted. Do not express surprise to your neighbour when someone who failed your first year appears. Do not mutter under your breath “plagiairist”, appeal”, “complaint” as the more challenging students cross the stage.

Shoes have become a major part of the graduation wardrobe for students, so you might be expected to notice. Don’t bother, just hope no one falls over.

Cheer raucously when a student kisses the VC or high fives them. Follow this with mentally arranging your next meeting with HR.

Post Ceremony

Keep your robes on. You may now have lost several kilos in fluid, but you are now a prop for photographs. Here, if you have a degree from a lesser institution, with those gaudy robes, then you will be a prime candidate to appear in photographs for overseas students whom you are not sure that you have taught. But at least you look pretty.

If you can gatecrash the senior staff reception, then this is the place for the best snacks. Make sure you engage a visitor in deep conversation as soon as you can. It’s much harder to be thrown out when you are looking busy. Leaving the reception clutching a couple of bottles of stolen bubbly doesn’t go down well. Hide it under your robes.

Remember, this is a day for your students, so enjoy, and remember that no one expects you to be reading your email or having work related discussions with managers. Enjoy it. Tomorrow it’s back to normal.