Tag: change

  • The time for change is now: reducing pension costs in post-92 universities

    The time for change is now: reducing pension costs in post-92 universities

    This blog was kindly authored by Jane Embley, Chief People Officer and Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, both of Northumbria University.

    It is welcome that the government’s recent white paper acknowledges the very real funding pressures on the university sector and outlines some measures to address them. It is rather disappointing, however, that one of the causes of that financial pressure recognised by both employers and trade unions – is somewhat sidestepped – namely the crisis in the post-92 institutions caused by the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS). While the government has pledged to better understand the problem, this will presumably lead to a period of consultation before any new proposals come forward. The cost of TPS compounds the financial difficulty of many institutions, and the severity of the current situation means the moment for change is now.

    The TPS cost crisis

    At the beginning of 2025, we wrote a piece for this website that outlined the problem in general terms, and particularly, for Northumbria University. To briefly summarise, post-92 institutions are all required to enrol their staff who are engaged in teaching in TPS. The cost of TPS for employers (and employees) is rising, and having historically been similar to other pension schemes in the sector is now much more expensive than schemes such as the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) or the local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). TPS employer contributions are now 28.68% whereas for USS they are 14.5%, and for Northumbria’s LGPS fund are 18.5%.

    This means that for an academic salary of £57,500, in addition to NI costs, the employer pension cost is £8,300 per annum for USS, but for a TPS employee it is £16,500. Put simply, it is now considerably more expensive to employ a member of staff to do the same job in one part of the sector than another.

    The figures are striking. For every 1,000 staff, an institution would face more than £8M per annum of additional costs if their colleagues were members of TPS rather than USS. For Northumbria, given the number of colleagues we have in TPS, the additional cost of this scheme compared to USS is more than £11M per annum. To put it another way, the fees of more than 800 Northumbria students are fully consumed by paying the additional cost of TPS, versus USS.

    Why alternatives fall short

    There are ways that universities can find alternatives to TPS – institutions can take steps to employ their academic staff via subsidiary companies and reduce pension costs by using defined contribution schemes. This has multiple disadvantages for individuals as well as institutions – not least because colleagues employed by that mechanism are not counted within the HESA return, for example, and as such are not eligible for participation in the Research Excellence Framework or for Research Council funding. As such, colleagues employed via such mechanisms cannot fully contribute across teaching and research and may find it difficult to progress their careers or move between institutions in the future.

    At Northumbria, as a research-intensive institution, we did not consider the above to be a path we could take. As there are no clear proposals forthcoming from government we have had to seek recourse to a different solution.

    Northumbria’s strategic response

    As we predicted in our previous blog, individual institutions have no choice but to take control of the total cost of employment. Since then, at Northumbria, we have been thinking about how we might do just that. We have settled on an approach that follows a three-part solution, something which we believe offers flexibility and choice while managing the University’s pension costs down to an acceptable level in the medium to long term.  

    First, we are offering colleagues in TPS an attractive alternative – the main pension scheme in the sector, USS, following a recent agreement to change our membership terms. Over 200 colleagues at Northumbria are already members (having joined Northumbria with existing membership), and going forward, USS membership will be available to all our academic colleagues. Of course, we acknowledge that there are differences in the membership benefits of each scheme. USS is a hybrid scheme with defined benefits up to a threshold and then defined contributions beyond that. TPS is a career average defined benefit scheme. We will help our TPS members with this transition by providing personalised, independent financial information and guidance, as pensions are complex and any decision to move from TPS to USS will need careful consideration.

    However, we do need to be confident that we can address the very high cost of TPS employer pension contributions, and have recently begun discussions within our university about moving to a total reward approach to remuneration.

    Using the two pension schemes, we want to provide colleagues with the choice as to how much of their total reward they receive as income now and how much we pay in pension contributions.

    For each grade point in our pay structure, we are aiming to establish a reward envelope, based on the total cost of salary plus employer pension contributions, reflecting USS rather than TPS rates. As such, a colleague remaining in TPS would have no reduction in their salary, although they will, initially, have a total reward package that exceeds the envelope for their grade point.

    Our goal will be to increase the total reward envelope for each grade point each year by the value of the pay award determined via national collective pay bargaining. In this model, the cost of the total reward envelope will be the same, but colleagues will be able to choose how they construct their reward package based on their own personal preference or circumstances. Salaries for colleagues who are members of USS will increase in line with the rest of the sector. Those colleagues who choose to remain in TPS will not see an increase in their take-home pay, as this, plus the cost of their pension contributions, exceeds the envelope for their grade point. However, over time, when the value of the total reward envelope for colleagues in USS and TPS has equalised, the salaries for those choosing TPS will increase again.

    Looking ahead: a fairer, sustainable future

    We understand that many of our colleagues might find this change unpalatable; however, we feel the additional monthly cost of almost £1M cannot be justified. While to some this will be controversial, ultimately, our proposed approach will mean that over time (likely to be up to seven years) the reward envelope (or cost) for USS and TPS employees will have equalised and as such we will have eliminated the differential costs of employing these two groups of colleagues undertaking the same roles, and be on an equal footing with other universities.

    We anticipate that by adopting this approach USS will, in time, become the normalised pension scheme for our academic staff, as it already is across the pre-92 universities. Along with competitive pay, colleagues will be members of an attractive sector-wide scheme, with lower personal contribution levels resulting in higher take-home pay. Of course, we will keep the whole approach under review as the employer pension contribution rates change over time, and we will be actively engaging with our colleagues over the coming months to seek their views on our proposal and to shape our future plans.  

    Finally, we are also encouraging our colleagues to consider carefully whether to opt out of TPS and join USS now. In order to gain traction and make earlier progress, we are offering existing salaried staff in TPS the choice to move early, with the University recognising this decision via a one-off payment, which shares the longer-term financial benefit of this with the University. Colleagues may receive the value of the savings made over the first year – typically between £5,800 and a maximum of £10,000 – as a taxable payment or via a payment into their pension, subject to a number of conditions in relation to their future employment.

    As we have outlined, the time for change is now, and we cannot wait for the outcome of a consultation or for the government to decide how it will seek to address this obvious disparity in the sector. Ultimately, we believe that moving towards a total reward approach, as outlined above, is advantageous for both the University and for our colleagues. It provides choice – no one will be forced to leave TPS, and as such, colleagues can continue to choose to receive the benefits of that scheme by more of their total reward being paid in pension contributions than salary. Or colleagues can choose to access more of their total income now in their salary, while joining a hybrid pension scheme that is already in place across the sector and which delivers defined benefits, and defined contribution benefits for higher earners. We believe that this is a novel approach to what has been, for some time, an intractable problem in the sector.

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  • Why so much confusion over climate change?

    Why so much confusion over climate change?

    Bwambale estimates that less than 1% of the global population truly grasps the implications of climate change. “Even worse are Ugandans,” he said.

    Gerison pointed out that much of the population of Uganda is young. “With 80% below the age of 25, many haven’t witnessed the full extent of climate changes,” he said.

    A diminishing crop is easily understood.

    Janet Ndagire, Bwambale’s colleague, said it is difficult for Ugandan natives to connect with climate campaigns. They often perceive them as obstacles to survival rather than crucial interventions.

    “Imagine telling someone who relies on charcoal burning for survival that cutting down a tree could be hazardous!” Ndagire said. “It doesn’t make sense to them, especially when the tree is on their plot of land.”

    Reflecting on personal experiences, Ndagire recalled childhood days of going to sleep fully covered. Nowadays it is too hot to do that, he said.

    Ssiragaba Edison Tubonyintwari, a seasoned bus driver originally from western Uganda but currently driving with the United Nations, recounts the challenges of driving between 5 and 9 AM in the Albertine rift eco-region especially around the Ecuya forest reserve.

    “It would be covered in mist,” said Tubonyintwari. “We’d ask two people to stand in front, one on either side of the bus, signalling for you to drive forward, or else, you couldn’t see two metres away. Currently, people drive all day and night!”

    Irish potatoes in the African wetlands

    What happened? Tubonyintwari pointed to unauthorised tree cutting in the reserve, residential constructions and the cultivation of tea alongside Irish potatoes in the wetlands. The result was rising temperatures.

    His account supplements a Global Forest Watch report which puts commodity-driven deforestation above urbanisation.

    It’s notable that Tubonyintwari didn’t explicitly use the term “climate change,” yet the sexagenarian can effectively explain the underlying concept through his detailed description of altered environmental conditions.

    Global Forest Watch reports alarming deforestation trends, with 5.8 million hectares lost globally in 2022. In Uganda, more than 6,000 deforestation alerts were recorded between 22 and 29 November this year.

    The consequences of such environmental degradation are dire. Ndagire emphasised that those who once wielded axes and chainsaws for firewood are now the very individuals facing reduced crop yields due to extreme weather conditions.

    Even as Uganda grapples with the aftermath of a sudden surge in heavy rains from last October, Bwambale questions the country’s meteorological department, highlighting the failure to provide precise explanations and climate-aware preparations.

    These interconnected narratives emphasise the need for accessible climate campaigns and community-driven solutions. As COP28 gathers elites, the call for a simplified narrative gains prominence, mirroring successful communication models seen during the Covid-19 pandemic; else it’s the same old throwing of good money after bad.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why does deforestation continue in places like Uganda when people know about its long-term consequences?

    2. In what ways are high level discussions about climate change disconnected from people’s everyday experiences?

    3. In what way do you think scientists and environmentalists need to change the climate change narrative?

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  • Change the incentives to change the economy

    Change the incentives to change the economy

    Incentives are a delicate thing.

    As we learned from the former chief executive of UKRI, if you try to measure every single outcome, every pound spent, and direct every bit of the ecosystem toward something (whatever that something is) it’s possible to cause an enormous amount of damage. Get the input wrong, follow the wrong priority, or make a decision on a less than full picture amongst all of the complexities in an ecosystem and then enormous sums of money can be wasted.

    The underlying assumption in the public theory of research is that directing research toward a clearer end is desirable, possible, and value for money. Intuitively this makes sense. The central feature of modern economic thought is that firms should specialise within a market. In doing so they develop expertise, market advantage, and the wider economy benefits from the most innovative and efficient firms. Market competition then dictates who gets to be the most profitable firms until new firms come along and old firms die through a process of creative destruction.

    Advantages

    In business R&D forms part of the critical advantage. In theory, the firms that can make the most use of the right R&D assets (tangible and intangible) should be the most innovative, secure the greatest market share, and then grow their profits. R&D spending has natural constraints within business. A defence firm is not going to spend money on research outside of defence any more than a carpenter is going to spend money on hypersonic missiles.

    Universities do not face any such natural constraints. In fact, they have precisely the opposite incentive where to maximise income (not profitability) they should do as much research and research adjacent activity as possible. As long as a link between volume, income, and reputation exists, the rational seeking university should do as much as possible. As a secondary benefit is that it is also easier to tell staff, governments, funders, that universities will do more, not less.

    The three major constraints in universities are capital, capacity (staff and facilities), and the direction of funding bodies. If the funding incentive is toward doing more then if the government wishes to introduce greater specialisation in the sector, as set out in the post-16 white paper, it must therefore introduce some new incentives. In particular, as purely from an incentive perspective, it makes very little difference to universities whether their research is economically useful or not.

    The white paper sets out lots of things the government might do including moving teaching incentives through research, changing the REF, rewarding research potential, and encouraging universities to do fewer things better. Post white paper there have been two key research announcements that highlight the difficulty in setting out the right incentives. The funding allocations to UKRI which we will know more about in December and some mooted reforms of HEIF.

    The reform of HEIF promises to introduce new accountability statements tied to a reform of the funding formula over the next few years. The first part of the reform is that universities will be expected to demonstrate how HEIF funding is contributing to economic growth amongst other goals. There is very little knowledge exchange activity where if you squint hard enough it does not contribute to economic growth. This isn’t a strong incentive but a useful nudge toward what universities should be doing. Over time, it is possible to see how the new methodology with a greater focus on causal links and inputs could lead to a different kind of HEIF.

    Outcomes

    If the HEIF is going to be “outcomes focussed” this implies that HEIF should be more actively driving university activity toward specialisation within a local, national, and regional context. This would align closely with the white paper but HEIf is only a small portion of the overall funding research mix. Should the government think there needs to be more economic-growth align university activity, and it thinks HEIF is a tool to do that, it should consider whether it can improve the HEIF incentives with greater funding.

    The proof will be whether the changing accountability statements produce and new activity or whether universities simply account for their existing activity in a different way. Perhaps the more interesting reforms will come in 2027-28, at the earliest, where there will be a review to the funding formula to support contributions to economic growth.

    It would be an error if this was carried out in isolation and not as part of a wider look at the incentives in research. HEIF cannot move the sector toward more useful economic research ends alone and nor will it change the underlying unit of resource which encourages universities to do everything all of a time. HEIF can be a message, a guide, a statement, but without shifting funding it will not be a bigger enough incentive to move the sector.

    It would also be an error if HEIF’s accountability statements and any funding revisions flow to the same places to cover the same activity. Specialisation implies winners and losers but aggregate benefit across the sector and for the economy. The revision to funding formula could, for example, fund different kinds of economic activities differently, add regional multipliers, reward collaborations different, or any other number of useful economic objectives.

    The challenge is that however the incentives are constructed they must be coherent with the wider direction of travel set out in the white paper. The opportunity is to use research funding to reward the places doing economically interesting things that aren’t always recognised in traditional research metrics.

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  • WEEKEND READING: The Renters’ Rights Act: How will students’ tenancies change and when?

    WEEKEND READING: The Renters’ Rights Act: How will students’ tenancies change and when?

    This blog was kindly authored by Martin Blakey, the former Chief Executive of the student housing charity Unipol and a member of the British Property Federation’s Student Accommodation Committee.

    On Wednesday, 22 October 2025, the Renters’ Rights Bill passed through its final stage in a thinly occupied Commons chamber, and obtained Royal Assent on 28 October. HEPI has taken a close interest in how the Act’s changes would affect students, and a number of previous blogs that have charted the Bill’s progress are listed at the end of this one.

    The Bill has a long history, first appearing under the previous Conservative government under the title the Renters’ Reform Bill in May 2023 and then being resubmitted, after some redrafting, by the new Labour Government only 10 weeks into power in September 2024. Even under a Labour Government with a large majority, it has taken 13 months to progress the Bill through all of its stages, and that parliamentary process has had to deal with over 450 amendments in the last year.

    This is a substantial Act, and its various provisions will be phased in over a period of time. The Act contains many enabling powers, allowing Ministers to implement more detailed proposals on aspects of policy as further consultations take place. The right to redress (the ombudsman proposals), the landlord database and the Decent Homes Standard are, or will be, consulted on and detailed regulation will appear over the next year.

    Even in the final stages of the Bill, the Government did not give any timetable for implementation. Still, it is reasonable to conclude that tenure reform, which is not subject to much secondary regulation, will be implemented first. All the Government now has to decide is how long it should allow to raise the awareness of landlords and tenants about these significant impending changes, and how long it should give to those running private sector housing to make the necessary legal adjustments for existing and future tenancies.

    Because the mechanics of the Act are now known, it is possible, for the first time, to say what will happen to student tenants and make a reasonable and educated guess at the timescale involved.

    Timescale

    It is now clear that today’s student tenants (studying across 2025/26) and new tenants signing up for the 2026/27 academic year will see their tenure status change.

    As Matthew Pennycook said on 8 September 2025:

    …we will introduce the new tenancy for the private rented sector system in one stage. On this date the new tenancy system will apply to all private tenancies – existing tenancies will convert to the new system, and any new tenancies signed on or after this date will also be governed by the new rules. Existing fixed terms will be converted to periodic tenancies…

    So, all tenancies will change on a given date and the familiar fixed-term assured tenancy (AST) which has been used by virtually all students renting from the private sector will be replaced by the new assured tenancy. The fixed term within those ASTs will cease to exist, and rent payment periods in excess of four weeks’ rent will be unenforceable.

    Depending on who you listen to, this change is likely to come into effect between April and June 2026 and so it will affect today’s student tenants.

    There are a lot of questions about how these changes will come about, and it is now possible to provide a roadmap of how this will all work.

    There are no ‘interim’ stages. So landlords signing students up in the past and now, and up to the implementation date of tenure change under the Act, will continue to use fixed-term ASTs because that is the current system.

    Landlords and tenants on current contracts or signing up for the future would best see their agreement as entering into a general contract for a residential tenancy. That tenancy will have its precise status determined, in respect of these changes, at the point when a tenant actually takes possession and can move in (which is when the tenancy is actually granted).

    So, let’s go through a variety of scenarios and see what is going to happen.

    Students currently living in off-street shared houses – a house multiple occupancy (HMO)

    These students will currently be on a joint or individual AST, almost always, with a fixed period stipulated in that agreement. On the date of the Act’s tenure implementation this will become an assured tenancy, and that means that the fixed-term nature of the agreement falls away.

    The Government accepted that, in order to maintain the lettings cycle of student shared houses in line with the academic year, landlords would be able to seek repossession of their property by using a new ground for possession 4a. This allows landlords to give tenants notice of their intention to seek repossession on a given date between June and September.

    Following implementation, landlords will have to notify tenants within the first 30 days of their intention to use ground 4a. After this transitional provision, landlords will have to notify tenants of their intention to use ground 4a at the time of signing the contract.

    Under ground 4a landlords can give tenants 4 months’ notice to leave and can enforce that through the courts.

    Some legal experts have pointed out that if implementation is between April and June, then, as many fixed-terms expire in June or July, there would not be sufficient time under ground 4a to give 4 months’ notice. So, in theory, tenants could simply choose to stay in the property and give 2 months’ notice whenever they wanted to move out. This is the case, and for the first few months of operation, landlords may find that they cannot take advantage of ground 4a –  leaving them exposed if they have let the property to a new set of tenants without having a property with vacant possession to let. Whether a court would hold a landlord responsible for any financial claim or compensation sought by incoming tenants who would have to find alternative accommodation is unlikely, particularly if the landlord had tried to mitigate any loss by, say, finding and offering alternative accommodation.

    But landlords have other things they can do to bring their tenancies to an end over the implementation period. Until the date when ASTs become assured tenancies, the landlord can still give notice using the current ‘no fault’ eviction procedure under Section 21 (S21), giving a minimum two-month notice period. A S21 notice can be given at any time after the first 4 months of the AST, so most landlords will issue a S21 notice to their resident students while the tenancy is still an AST, giving them, in most cases, a right of repossession at the end of their AST fixed term. The Renters’ Rights Act does not revoke a valid S21 notice. Only after tenure change has been implemented is it no longer possible to issue a valid S21 notice.

    So long as the landlord gives notice under S21 on an existing AST before the introduction of assured tenancies, they will be able (as they are at present) to assume that tenants leave and new tenants will arrive as normal.

    It is just worth noting that serving a notice of intention to seek repossession does not mean a tenant can be removed from the property, and only a Court can evict a tenant. This is the case now, but generally, very few students fail to leave at the end of their tenancy, so it is important not to predict problems where these have not occurred in the past.

    Students currently living in smaller off-street houses

    This is the same as stipulated above for a shared house in respect of serving a valid S21 notice, but here, once the Act has been implemented, ground 4a cannot be used because its use is restricted to only off-street HMOs. So once tenure reform has taken place and the time period for issuing S21 notices has expired, tenants in this kind of property can remain as long as they wish until they give 2 months’ notice to leave. Landlords letting these smaller houses and flats may well find that they are housing non-students.

    Several attempts were made during the discussion of the Bill to extend ground 4a to all properties occupied by students, but the Government firmly rejected that approach.

    Baroness Taylor of Stevenage made the Government’s position clear on 15 October 2025:

    The Government recognise that the new tenancy system will have an impact on the way the student market operates. While we believe the ground covers the majority of the market, there is no one-size-fits-all solution that covers all circumstances. We think it is reasonable that the ground will apply to full-time students in larger house-share situations. Removing this restriction could lead to students who need more security of tenure – such as single parents living with their children or postgraduate couples living together who have put down roots in the area – being evicted more regularly.

    So the Government expects that some property previously occupied by students is likely to remain occupied, and this stock will therefore leave the student market and enter the general rental market.

    Students living in off-street housing after implementation

    These students will have assured tenancy status and will fall fully under the provisions of the new Act. With the exception of ground 4a in shared student houses, they will be able to stay as long as they wish in the property until they give notice and will be able to give 2 months’ notice, at any stage of the year, to leave the property.

    Currently, they will be signed up using ASTs but after implementation, most of those tenure conditions will be replaced by the provisions of the new Act.

    Students currently living in Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA)

    The Government decided that private PBSA that had signed up to the government-approved codes of practice (The ANUK/Unipol Code) should be removed from the effects of the Act by changing ‘specified educational institutions’ to ‘specified institutions’ under provisions to be found in the 1988 Housing Act. This technical change means that PBSA providers will become specified institutions (as most educational institutions already are) and their tenancies will be common law tenancies, and this means that fixed-term tenancies can continue in those properties.

    But existing contracts in private sector PBSA will go through a ‘transitional period’ because only tenancies granted after specified status has been granted will be common law tenancies.

    As the Government explained:

    To apply the exemption retrospectively would carry significant risk, as it would turn one of these existing PBSA tenancies into what is known as a ‘common law’ tenancy: that is, a tenancy almost entirely regulated by what is in the tenancy agreement. This could cause unintended consequences, such as those PBSA tenancies containing significantly fewer rights for tenants than the assured shorthold tenancies they will have signed… We do not consider it to be the right approach, therefore, to simply exempt pre-existing PBSA tenancies from assured tenancy status.

    So existing AST tenancies in PBSA will fall under the assured tenancy status. After specified status has been granted (which will be from the date of tenure implementation) then future tenancies will be common law tenancies.

    The Government made some special concessions to minimise these ‘transitional effects’. This means the property will not have to be an HMO to use ground 4a repossession, and the July to September time frame 4a will not apply.

    PBSA providers will still be able to use S21 notices (as detailed previously) before implementation, and after that they will be able to use new ground 4a on all PBSA properties. This is likely to be useful because tenancies ending in September (mainly relating to studios) will allow sufficient time to give those tenants 4 months’ notice under the new Act.

    There will still be a moment of anxiety if a student who is not issued with a S21 notice decides simply to stay, although they could be given 4 months’ notice under new ground 4a at any stage after implementation. This risk is, however, much lower for PBSA where it is likely, if any inconvenience occurred for incoming tenants because of a ‘stayer’, that alternative accommodation may be available to be provided within the same building or in a nearby building, so the risk to the provider will be mitigated.

    Students signing up to live in Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) in the future

    At present, students will continue to be signed up on ASTs because that is the current system.

    As mentioned previously, any new tenancy will have its status determined by when a tenant ‘takes possession’ and can move in (which is when the tenancy is actually granted). If the moving-in date occurs after the PBSA manager / supplier has specified status, then tenants will have a common law tenancy. This common law tenancy means that the terms of the letting are those outlined in the tenancy agreement between the tenant and the landlord, and these will fall outside of the tenure provisions of the Act, which applies primarily to assured tenancies. A common law tenancy allows for fixed-term tenancies where repossession can be granted on the contractual terms outlined in the tenancy agreement, and rent payment periods will be as detailed in the tenancy.

    Although tenants in PBSA will have fewer rights under the Act than other tenants, membership of the Approved Code will ensure deposit protection continues and that tenants can give 4 weeks’ notice if they fail to get their required grades and no longer need their accommodation, if they stop studying and leave the institution, or they withdraw because of illness. The Code complaints system has also been tightened and improved. So tenants renting from PBSA will still see an improvement in tenure flexibility.

    Most tenancies in PBSA for 2026/27 are likely to be common law tenancies because they will come into effect after specified status has been granted.

    Conclusion

    So long as implementation takes place around April to June 2026, the annual summer 2026 changeover should be relatively smooth. The use of S21 notices by landlords is likely to be widespread and should ensure most tenancies can be brought to an end. In the unlikely event that implementation is earlier than April, then the 4 months’ notice under new ground 4a can also be used.

    The danger area relates to off-street non-HMOs and how many of those students, or ex-students, will choose to stay, reducing that supply of housing to future students. The prediction is that, over a couple of letting cycles, much of this type of housing will join the mainstream housing rental stock and move outside of the timing of the academic cycle. Educational institutions and students’ unions would be wise to try to monitor that shift and any loss of this accommodation to determine its effect on admissions.

    One interesting provision, regarding the use of ground 4a is that, for future signings, it will not apply if students signed their contracts 6 months before they can move in. It will be interesting to see whether this has any impact on ‘early letting’ in the off-street market and whether this impacts current PBSA practices.

    What can educational institutions and their students’ unions do to assist in the smooth implementation of the Act?

    Anything to do with tenure is necessarily complex, but every effort should be made to explain to students what this change will mean for them. What information exists suggests that student awareness of the Act is very low, with StuRents reporting that 69% of students said they had never heard of the Renters Rights Bill, and only 15% saying they understood how it could affect them. A recent study by Unipol also reported that 62% of students had not heard of the Bill.

    There will be real and immediate advantages for student renters who will be on assured tenancies, such as the ability to give two months’ notice and, perhaps the biggest gain of all for hard-up students, only needing to pay rent four weeks in advance. In the longer term, they will also have minimum standards set under the Decent Homes Standard and will have a right of redress through an ombudsman.

    Of course, some may temper these immediate advantages by predicting that the Act will see a reduction in student housing supply resulting in rent rises, an increase in the use of guarantors with rising deposit levels (to counter-act the risk of shorter rent payment periods) and that most shared student houses (HMOs) already fall under licencing which should already ensure that the property is safe and being kept in good order.

    The reality is that no one knows how the Act will affect the market and students specifically. With that in mind, it will be important for institutions to try to monitor how the Act affects their students in their local property market.

    In PBSA, the Act will have less effect, but this also comes at a time of rapid change in that market, with issues such as a slow-down in development; the challenges of keeping ageing stock up to standard; the growth of commuter students; greater regulation post-Grenfell with the Building Safety Regulator; and problems associated with higher rent levels and affordability.

    These market and legislative changes will mean that both housing suppliers and students are likely to see a significant transformation of student housing over the next couple of years. It is important that advice about housing rights and supply reflects those changes and assumptions that ‘things will continue as before’ are set aside.

    Previous HEPI publications dealing with this issue are:

    Renters (Reform) Bill and the impact on higher education 24 May 2023 by Rose Stephenson https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/05/24/renters-reform-bill-and-the-impact-on-higher-education/

    How the Renters (Reform) Bill can deliver for all tenants – including students 13 November 2023 by Calum MacInnes https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/11/13/how-the-renters-reform-bill-can-deliver-for-all-tenants-including-students/

    Students and the Renters (Reform) Bill: the government has listened but it needs to listen some more parts I and II run across 29 and 30 January 2024 by Martin Blakey https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/01/29/students-and-the-renters-reform-bill-the-government-has-listened-but-it-needs-to-listen-some-more-part-i/ and https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/01/30/students-and-the-renters-reform-bill-the-government-has-listened-but-it-needs-to-listen-some-more-part-ii/

    The Renters Reform Bill: after the fall – Where should student housing go from here? 19 June 2024 by Martin Blakey https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/06/19/the-renters-reform-bill-after-the-fall-where-should-student-housing-go-from-here

    Renters’ Rights Bill and Student Accommodation: The Final Stretch? 9 October 2024 by Martin Blakey https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/10/09/renters-rights-act-and-student-accommodation-the-final-stretch/

    Renters’ Rights Bill Update – into the Lords 2 February 2025 by Martin Blakey https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/02/03/renters-rights-bill-update-into-the-lords/

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  • Advance HE must deepen our expertise in supporting transformation and change

    Advance HE must deepen our expertise in supporting transformation and change

    The challenges for higher education and research institutions – both in the UK and in many countries across the world – are acute and immediate.

    A combination of funding pressures, changing student demands, the rapid development of AI, international conflict and restrictive visa regimes are necessitating significant change and transformation.

    These tough challenges require all those working in higher education to think differently about how we lead, teach, support students and operate. Yet within these challenges lie opportunities for innovation and positive change.

    I am three months into the role as chief executive of Advance HE. My recent conversations with many of our members have reinforced the need for us to focus on how we can enhance our support for transformation and change.

    Time for a change

    I believe that to be successful, higher education institutions need good leadership; effective governance; they should promote excellence in teaching and learning; and embed equality, promote diversity and inclusion. These are the four key pillars of Advance HE’s work and will continue to be so. However, we cannot stand still. Supporting higher education institutions in this difficult and changing context means that Advance HE needs to change and modernise. Our portfolio, programmes and products need regular review, refreshing and revamping, to remain relevant, to be high value and high impact.

    There has been excellent work led by Universities UK’s transformation and efficiency taskforce, which set out a number of recommendations and challenges for the sector. Advance HE can play an important role in supporting transformation and change both at a sector level and an institutional level. In the context of financial pressures, changing student needs, international uncertainty and digital developments – we need to be an enhancement agency – a trusted partner for higher education and research institutions.

    Supporting enhancement, change and transformation will now be at the heart of what Advance HE does – embedded across our member benefits, our programmes and our consultancy. To help institutions through these challenging times we will apply our expertise, experience and resources to best support enhancement and service improvement, where it is needed.

    Collaborating with partner organisations that are supporting transformation and change will be central to our approach. Blending our expertise in leadership development, educational excellence, equality and inclusion, governance effectiveness with the experience of partners that have different but complementary skills and capabilities.

    Overall, our focus is primarily on people. We can play a role to enhance capabilities at all levels to lead and manage transformation and change – academics, professionals services, governing bodies.

    What we will do

    There are three practical steps I am taking now to strengthen our support for transformation and change:

    Firstly, we have made supporting transformation and change a core part of our membership offer. We are drawing on the areas where we have deep expertise – leadership development, educational excellence, governance effectiveness – to apply our expertise directly to the most pressing issues facing our members.

    For example, the new Educational Excellence Change Academy, a structured virtual six-month programme designed to help higher education staff to lead systemic educational transformation. The programme provides practical support to redesign curriculum to align with workforce needs, reimagine pedagogy to be inclusive, digital, and engaging; and enhancing student support models to strengthen wellbeing and retention.

    Additionally, we have launched the Merger Insights and Roadmap, a new resource for navigating institutional collaboration, partnerships and mergers. Drawing on recent case-studies from successful transformations, it considers early option-testing and due diligence through to culture integration and regulatory engagement.

    Secondly, later this autumn I will announce a new strategic advisory group who will work with our in-house expert to further enhance our support for transformation and change. We will further evolve our membership offer; review our portfolio of products and services; lead new research to share insights; and bring knowledge and learning from other sectors that have delivered significant transformation. We will also recruit new associates with deep and relevant transformation experience to work with our in-house experts.

    Thirdly, we will do more to realise the benefits of Advance HE being a global organisation with an international membership. Our 470 members are from 34 countries – with almost a third of our members outside the UK – in Australia, Ireland, in the Gulf, across Europe, in South-East Asia and beyond. The challenges facing higher education institutions in one part of the world are often mirrored in another. The solutions, approaches and innovations being developed in different contexts can offer fresh perspectives and practical ideas that translate across borders. We will do more to draw on the fact that we have a diverse, global membership to share insights, solutions, and good practice across our membership.

    At a time of significant challenge for higher education and research, institutions are increasingly needing to deliver transformational change in the way they operate. Advance HE is committed to supporting people working in higher education to do this successfully.

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  • Is it time to change the rules on NSS publication?

    Is it time to change the rules on NSS publication?

    If we cast our minds back to 2005, the four UK higher education funding bodies ran the first ever compulsory survey of students’ views on the education they receive – the National Student Survey (NSS).

    Back then the very idea of a survey was controversial, we were worried about the impact on the sector reputation, the potential for response bias, and that students would be fearful of responding negatively in case their university downgraded their degree.

    Initial safeguards

    These fears led us to make three important decisions all of which are now well past their sell-by date. These were:

    • Setting a response rate threshold of 50 per cent
    • Restricting publication to subject areas with more than 22 respondents
    • Only providing aggregate data to universities.

    At the time all of these were very sensible decisions designed to build confidence in what was a controversial survey. Twenty years on, it’s time to look at these with fresh eyes to assure ourselves they remain appropriate – and to these eyes they need to change.

    Embarrassment of riches

    One of these rules has already changed: responses are now published where 10 or more students respond. Personally, I think this represents a very low bar, determined as it is by privacy more than statistical reasoning, but I can live with it especially as research has shown that “no data” can be viewed negatively.

    Of the other two, first let me turn to the response rate. Fifty per cent is a very high response rate for any survey, and the fact the NSS achieves a 70 per cent response rate is astonishing. While I don’t think we should be aiming to get fewer responses, drawing a hard line at 50 per cent creates a cliff edge in data that we don’t need.

    There is nothing magical about 50 per cent – it’s simply a number that sounds convincing because it means that at least half your students contributed. A 50 per cent response rate does not ensure that the results are not subject to bias for example, if propensity to respond was in some way correlated with a positive experience the results would still be flawed.

    I would note that the limited evidence that there is suggests that propensity to respond is not correlated with a positive experience, but it’s an under-researched area and one the Office for Students (OfS) should publish some work on.

    Panel beating

    This cliff edge is even more problematic when the data is used in regulation, as the OfS proposes to do a part of the new TEF. Under OfS proposals providers that don’t have NSS data either due to small cohorts or a “low” response rate would have NSS evidence replaced with focus groups or other types of student interaction. This makes sense when the reason is an absolute low number of responses but not when it’s due to not hitting an exceptionally high response rate as Oxford and Cambridge failed to do for many years.

    While focus groups can offer valuable insights, and usefully sit alongside large-scale survey work, it is utterly absurd to ignore evidence from a survey because an arbitrary and very high threshold is not met. Most universities will have several thousand final year students, so even if only 30 per cent of them respond you will have responses from hundreds if not thousands of individuals – which must provide a much stronger evidence base than some focus groups. Furthermore, that evidence base will be consistent with every other university creating one less headache for assessors in comparing diverse evidence.

    The 50 per cent response rate threshold also looks irrational when set against a 30 per cent threshold for the Graduate Outcomes survey. While any response rate threshold is arbitrary to apply, applying two different thresholds needs rather more justification than the fact that the surveys are able to achieve different response rates. Indeed, I might argue that the risk of response bias might be higher with GO for a variety of reasons.

    NSS to GO

    In the absence of evidence in support of any different threshold I would align the NSS and GO publication thresholds at 30 per cent and make the response rates more prominent. I would also share NSS and GO data with TEF panels irrespective of the response rate, and allow them to rely on their expert judgement supported by the excellent analytical team at the OfS. And the TEF panel may then choose to seek additional evidence if they consider it necessary.

    In terms of sharing data with providers, 2025 is really very different to 2005. Social media has arguably exploded and is now contracting, but in any case attitudes to sharing have changed and it is unlikely the concerns that existed in 2005 will be the same as the concerns of the current crop of students.

    For those who don’t follow the detail, NSS data is provided back to Universities via a bespoke portal that provides a number of pre-defined cuts of the data and comments, together with an ability to create your own cross-tabs. This data, while very rich, do not have the analytical power of individualised data and suffer from still being subject to suppression for small numbers.

    What this means is that if we want to understand the areas we want to improve we’re forced to deduce it from a partial picture rather than being laser focussed on exactly where the issues are, and this applies to both the Likert scale questions and the free text.

    It also means that providers cannot form a longitudinal view of the student experience by linking to other data and survey responses they hold at an individual level – something that could generate a much richer understanding of how to improve the student experience.

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  • The white paper is wrong – changing research funding won’t change teaching

    The white paper is wrong – changing research funding won’t change teaching

    The Post-16 education and skills white paper might not have a lot of specifics in it but it does mostly make sense.

    The government’s diagnosis is that the homogeneity of sector outputs is a barrier to growth. Their view, emerging from the industrial strategy, is that it is an inefficient use of public resources to have organisations doing the same things in the same places. The ideal is specialisation where universities concentrate on the things they are best at.

    There are different kinds of nudges to achieve this goal. One is the suggestion that the REF could more closely align to the government missions. The detail is not there but it is possible to see how impact could be made to be about economic growth or funding could be shifted more toward applied work. There is a suggestion that research funding should consider the potential of places (maybe that could lead to some regional multipliers who knows). And there are already announced steps around the reform on HEIF and new support for spin-outs.

    Ecosystems

    All of these things might help but they will not be enough to fundamentally change the research ecosystem. If the incentives stay broadly the same researchers and universities will continue to do broadly the same things irrespective of how much the government wants more research aimed at growing the economy.

    The potentially biggest reform has the smallest amount of detail. The paper states

    We will incentivise this specialisation and collaboration through research funding reform. By incentivising a more strategic distribution of research activity across the sector, we can ensure that funding is used effectively and that institutions are empowered to build deep expertise in areas where they can lead. This may mean a more focused volume of research, delivered with higher-quality, better cost recovery, and stronger alignment to short- and long-term national priorities. Given the close link between research and teaching, we expect these changes to support more specialised and high quality teaching provision as well.

    The implication here is that if research funding is allocated differently then providers will choose to specialise their teaching because research and teaching are linked. Before we get to whether there is a link between research funding and teaching (spoiler there is not) it is worth unpacking two other implications here.

    The first is that the “strategic distribution” element will have entirely different impacts depending on what the strategy is and what the distribution mechanism is. The paper states that there could, broadly, be three kinds of providers. Teaching only, teaching with applied research, and research institutions (who presumably also do teaching.) The strategy is to allow providers to focus on their strengths but the problem is it is entirely unclear which strengths or how they will be measured. For example, there are some researchers that are doing research which is economically impactful but perhaps not the most academically ground breaking. Presumably this is not the activity which the government would wish to deprioritise but could be if measured by current metrics. It also doesn’t explain how providers with pockets of research excellence within an overall weaker research profile could maintain their research infrastructure.

    The white paper suggests that the sector should focus on fewer but better funded research projects. This makes sense if the aim is to improve the cost recovery on individual research projects but improving the unit of resource through concentrating the overall allocation won’t necessarily improve financial sustainability of research generally. A strategic decision to align research funding more with the industrial strategy would leave some providers exposed. A strategic decision to invest in research potential not research performance would harm others. A focus on regions, or London, or excellence wherever it may be, would have a different impact. The distribution mechanism is a second order question to the overall strategy which has not yet dealt with some difficult trade offs

    On its own terms it also seems research funding is not a good indicator of teaching specialism.

    Incentives

    When the White Paper suggests that the government can “incentivise specialisation and collaboration through research funding reform”, it is worth asking what – if any – links there currently are between research funding and teaching provision.

    There’s two ways we can look at this. The first version looks at current research income from the UK government to each provider(either directly, or via UKRI) by cost centre – and compares that to the students (FTE) associated with that cost centre within a provider.

     

    [Full screen]

    We’re at a low resolution – this split of students isn’t filterable by level or mode of study, and finances are sometimes corrected after the initial publication (we’ve looked at 2021-22 to remove this issue). You can look at each cost centre to see if there is a relationship between the volume of government research funding and student FTE – and in all honesty there isn’t much of one in most cases.

    If you think about it, that’s kind of a surprise – surely a larger department would have more of both? – but there are some providers who are clearly known for having high quality research as opposed to large numbers of students.

    So to build quality into our thinking we turn to the REF results (we know that there is generally a good correlation between REF outcomes and research income).

    Our problem here is that REF results are presented by unit of assessment – a subject grouping that maps cleanly neither to cost centres or to the CAH hierarchy used more commonly in student data (for more on the wild world of subject classifications, DK has you covered). This is by design of course – an academic with training in biosciences may well live in the biosciences department and the biosciences cost centre, but there is nothing to stop them researching how biosciences is taught (outputs of which might be returned to the Education cost centre).

    What has been done here is a custom mapping at CAH3 level between subjects students are studying and REF2021 submissions – the axis are student headcount (you can filter by mode and level, and choose whichever academic year you fancy looking at) against the FTE of staff submitted to REF2021 – with a darker blue blob showing a greater proportion of the submission rated as 4* in the REF (there’s a filter at the bottom if you want to look at just high performing departments).

    [Full screen]

    Again, correlations are very hard to come by (if you want you can look at a chart for a single provider across all units of assessment). It’s almost as if research doesn’t bring in money that can cross-subsidise teaching, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever worked in higher education.

    Specialisation

    The government’s vision for higher education is clear. Universities should specialise and universities that focus on economic growth should be rewarded. The mechanisms to achieve it feel, frankly, like a mix of things that have already been announced and new measures that are divorced from the reality of the financial incentives universities work under.

    The white paper has assiduously ducked laying out some of the trade-offs and losers in the new system. Without this the government cannot set priorities and if it does not move some of the underlying incentives on student funding, regional funding distribution, greater devolution, supply-side spending like Freeports, staff reward and recognition, student number allocations, or the myriad of things that make up the basis of the university funding settlement, it has little hope of achieving its goals in specialisation or growth.

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  • Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change

    Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change

    This story first appeared in Hechinger’s climate and education newsletter. Sign up here. 

    In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union won a contract with the city’s schools to add solar panels on some buildings and clean energy career pathways for students, among other actions. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators demanded that the district create a task force on environmental issues and provide free metro passes for students. And in California, the Los Angeles teachers union’s demands include electrifying the district’s bus fleet and providing electric vehicle charging stations at all schools. 

    Those are among the examples in a new report on how unionized teachers are pushing their school districts to take action on the climate crisis, which is damaging school buildings and disrupting learning. The report — produced by the nonprofit Building Power Resource Center, which supports local governments and leaders, and the Labor Network for Sustainability, a nonprofit that seeks to unite labor and climate groups — describes how educators can raise demands for climate action when they negotiate labor contracts with their districts. By emphasizing the financial case for switching to renewable energy, educators can simultaneously act on climate change, improve conditions in schools and save districts money, it says. 

    As federal support and financial incentives for climate action wither, this sort of local action is becoming more difficult — but also more urgent, advocates say. Chicago Public Schools has relied on funding for electric buses that has been sunsetted by the Trump administration, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. But the district is also seeking other local and state funding and nonprofit support.

    Bradley Marianno, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that educator unions embracing climate action is part of a move started about 15 years ago in which more progressive unions — like those in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere — focus on “collective good bargaining,” or advocating for changes that are good for their members but also the broader community. But this approach is unlikely to catch on everywhere: “The risk lies in members feeling that core issues like wages and working conditions are being overlooked in favor of more global causes,” he wrote in an email. 

    I recently caught up with Potter, the CTU vice president, about the report and his union’s approach to bargaining for climate action. Collaborating with local environmental and community groups, the Chicago Teachers Union ultimately succeeded in winning a contract that calls for identifying schools for solar panels and electrification, expanding indoor air quality monitoring, helping educators integrate climate change into their curriculum, and establishing training for students in clean energy jobs, among other steps. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

    The report talks about contract negotiations being an underused — and effective — lever for demanding climate action. Why do you see that process as such an opportunity for climate action?

    On the local level, our schools are 84, 83 years old on average. There is lead paint, lead pipes, mold, asbestos, PCBs, all kinds of contamination in the HVAC system and the walls that require upgrades. By our estimate, the district needs $30 billion worth of upgrades, and right now I think they spend $500 million a year to just do patch-up work. We’re at a point where it’s a system fail of epic proportions if we can’t figure out a way to transition and make things healthier. And so if you’re going to do a roof repair, put solar on it, have independence from fossil fuels, clean air in areas that have faced environmental racism and contamination. 

    We’re also dealing with a legacy of discrimination and harm, and that is true of the nation. So how do we get out of this and also save the planet and also prevent greater climate events that further destabilize vulnerable communities and put people at risk? It made sense for us to use our contract as a path to do both things — deal with this local crisis that was screaming for new solutions and ideas, in a moment when the climate is on fire, literally.  

    How challenging was it to get educators to view climate issues as a priority? There are so many other things, around pay and other issues, on the table. 

    When we started, it almost felt like people in the membership, in the community, viewed it as a niche issue. Like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute, you care about green technology.’ As we figured out how to think about it and talk about it and probe where people were having issues in their schools, it became really obvious that when you started talking about asbestos, lead and mold remediation — and helping communities that have been hit the hardest with cumulative impacts and carcinogens and how those things are present in schools — that became much more tangible. Or even quality food and lunch and breakfast for students who are low-income. It went from bottom of the list to top of the list, instantaneously. 

    Your contract calls for a number of climate-related actions, including green pathways for students and agreements with building trade unions to create good jobs for students. Tell me about that. 

    We’re trying to use the transformation of our facilities as another opportunity for families and students in these communities that have been harmed the most to get the greatest benefit from the transformation. So if we can install solar, we want our students to be part of that project on the ground in their schools, gaining the skills and apprenticeship credentials to become the electricians of the future. And using that as a project labor agreement [which establishes the terms of work on a certain project] with the trades to open doors and opportunities. The same goes for all the other improvements — whether it’s heat pumps, HVAC systems, geothermal. And for EV — we have outdated auto shop programming that’s exclusively based on the combustible engine reliant on fossil fuels, whereas in [the nearby city of] Belvidere they are building electric cars per the United Auto Workers’ new contract. Could we gain a career path on electric vehicles that allows students to gain that mechanical knowledge and insight and prepares them for the vehicles of the future? 

    The report talks about the Batesville School District in Arkansas that was able to increase teacher salaries because of savings from solar. Have you tried to make the case for higher teacher salaries because of these climate steps?  

    The $500 million our district allocates for facility upgrades annually comes out of the general fund, so we haven’t at all thought about it in terms of salary. We’ve thought about it in terms of having a school nurse, social worker, mental health interventions at a moment when there is so much trauma. We see this as a win-win: The fewer dollars the district has to spend on facility needs means the more dollars they can spend on instructional and social-emotional needs for students. In terms of the Arkansas model, it’s pretty basic. If you get off the fossil fuel pipelines and electric lines and you become self-sufficient, essentially, powering your own electric and heat, there is going to be a boon, particularly if there are up-front subsidies. 

    Math and climate change 

    When temperatures rise in classrooms, students have more trouble concentrating and their learning suffers — in math, in particular. That’s according to a new report from NWEA, an education research and testing company.

    The report, part of a growing body of evidence of the harms of extreme heat on student performance, found that math scores declined when outdoor temperatures on test days rose above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Students in high-poverty schools, which are less likely to have air conditioning, saw declines up to twice as large as those in wealthier schools. 

    The learning losses grew as temperatures rose. Students who took tests on 101-degree days scored roughly 0.06 standard deviations below students who tested when temperatures were 60 degrees, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the learning a fifth grader typically gains in a school year. 

    It’s not entirely clear why student math scores suffer more than reading when temperatures rise. But Sofia Postell, an NWEA research analyst, said that on math tests, students must problem-solve and rely on their memories, and that kind of thinking is particularly difficult when students are hot and tired. Anxiety could be a factor too, she wrote in an email: “Research has also shown that heat increases anxiety, and some students may experience more testing anxiety around math exams.”

    The study was based on data from roughly 3 million scores on NWEA’s signature MAP Growth test for third to eighth graders in six states. 

    The report urged school, district and state officials to take several steps to reduce the effects of high heat on student learning and testing. Ideally, tests would be scheduled during times of the year when it wasn’t so hot, it said, and also during mornings, when temperatures are cooler. Leaders also need to invest in updating HVAC systems to keep kids cool. 

    “Extreme heat has already detrimentally impacted student learning and these effects will only intensify without action,” wrote Postell. 

    Mea culpa: A quick note to say I got two things wrong in my last newsletter — the name of the Natural Resources Defense Council was incorrect, as was the number of hours of learning California students have missed so far this year. It’s more than 54,000. 

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about teachers unions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter on climate and education.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • When young girls pay the cost of climate change

    When young girls pay the cost of climate change

    Jaffarabad, Balochistan: When floodwaters swept through Shaista’s village in 2022, they didn’t just take her family’s home and farmland, they also took away her childhood. Just 14 years old, Shaista was married off to a man twice her age in exchange for a small dowry. 

    Her father, a daily wage laborer, said it was the most painful decision he has ever made.

    “I didn’t want to do it,” he said, his eyes fixed on the cracked earth where his fields used to be. “But I have four other children to feed and no land to farm. We lost everything.”

    Stories like Shaista’s are becoming increasingly common across Balochistan, Pakistan’s poorest province. In 2022, devastating floods there driven by record-breaking monsoon rains and accelerated glacial melt linked to climate change, displaced over 1.5 million people.

    There is worldwide recognition that extreme weather events — not just floods, but drought, heatwaves, tornados and hurricanes — are becoming more frequent and less predictable as the planet warms. These events have devastating and long-term consequences for people in poor regions. 

    Young girls as assets 

    In districts like Jaffarabad and Chowki Jamali, the aftermath of the disaster has left families grappling with deepening poverty, food insecurity and crushing debt. For many, marrying off their young daughters is no longer just a tradition, it’s a form of survival.

    A 2023 survey by the Provincial Disaster Management Authority reported a 15% spike in underage marriages in flood-affected regions. Child rights activists warn that these numbers likely underestimate the scale of the crisis, as most cases go unreported.

    “In flood-hit areas, families are exchanging their daughters to repay loans, buy food or simply reduce the number of mouths to feed,” said Maryam Jamali, a social worker with the Madad Community organization. “We’ve documented girls as young as 12 being married to men in their forties or fifties. This isn’t about tradition anymore, it’s desperation.”

    Bride prices, once a source of negotiation and family prestige, have plummeted due to the economic collapse. Activists report instances where girls are married for as little as 100,000 Pakistani rupees (roughly US$360), or in some cases, simply traded for livestock or debt forgiveness.

    “There are villages where girls are married off like assets being liquidated,” said Sikander Bizenjo, a co-founder of the Balochistan Youth Action Committee. “It’s not just a violation of rights, it’s a systemic failure rooted in climate vulnerability, poverty and legal gaps.”

    Marriage as debt payment

    In Usta Muhammad, another flood-ravaged district, 13-year-old Sumaira (name changed) was married off just weeks after her family’s mud house collapsed. Her parents received 300,000 rupees (a little over $1,000) from the groom’s family, which they used to rebuild their shelter and repay moneylenders. 

    Now pregnant, Sumaira, has dropped out of school and rarely leaves her husband’s house.

    “I miss my friends and school,” she told us softly. “I wanted to become a teacher. But my parents said there was no other way.”

    Child marriages like Shaista’s and Sumaira’s carry lasting consequences: early pregnancies that endanger both mother and child, disrupted education, psychological trauma and lifetime economic dependence. 

    A study following the 2010 floods found maternal mortality rates in some affected regions were as high as 381 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the world.

    “These girls are thrust into adult roles before they’re ready,” said Dr. Sameena Khan, a gynecologist in Quetta. “They face dangerous pregnancies, and many have no access to medical care. Their childhood ends the moment they say ‘yes’ or are forced to.”

    Giving girls an alternative to marriage

    The crisis unfolding in Balochistan is not unique. Across the world, climate shocks and civil strife are causing displacement that intensifies the risk of child marriage. 

    In 2024, News Decoder correspondent Katherine Lake Berz interviewed 14-year-old Ola, who nearly became a child bride after her Syrian family, displaced by war and facing severe poverty, began arranging her marriage to an older man. But before that coil happen, Ola was able to enroll in Alsama, a non-governmental organization that provides secondary education to refugee girls. In less than a year, she was reading English at A2 level.

    Alsama, which has more than 900 students across four schools and a waiting list of hundreds, has been able to show girls and their parents that education can offer an alternative path to security and dignity.

    In Balochistan, the absence of legal safeguards compounds the crisis. The Sindh province banned child marriage in 2013 under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act which set the legal age at 18 for both girls and boys. But Balochistan has yet to enact a comparable law. 

    Nationally, Pakistan remains bound by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires nations to end child marriage but enforcement remains patchy. And Pakistan is not one of the 16 countries that have also signed onto the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages, which forbids marriage before a girl reaches puberty and requires complete freedom in the choice of a spouse. 

    Pakistan needs to reform its laws, said human rights lawyer Ali Dayan Hasan. “Without a clear provincial law and mechanisms to enforce it, girls are at the mercy of social pressure and economic collapse,” Hasan said. “We need legal reform that matches the urgency of the climate and humanitarian crises we are facing.”

    Attempts to introduce child marriage laws in Balochistan have repeatedly stalled amid political resistance and lack of awareness. Religious and tribal leaders argue that such laws interfere with cultural norms, while government officials cite limited administrative capacity in rural areas.

    Bringing an end to child marriages

    The solution, experts agree, is multi-pronged: legal reform, economic recovery and access to education.

    “We can’t end child marriage without rebuilding livelihoods,” said Bizenjo. “Families need food, land, healthcare and hope. If they can’t survive, they’ll continue to sacrifice their daughters.”

    Grassroots organizations like Madad and Sujag Sansar provide vocational training, safe shelters and legal awareness sessions in flood-affected areas. In one case, Sujag Sansar intervened to stop the marriage of 10-year-old Mehtab in Sindh, enrolling her in a sewing workshop instead.

    UNICEF estimates that child marriages could increase by 18% in Pakistan due to the 2022 floods, potentially reversing years of progress. The agency is urging governments to integrate child protection into climate adaptation and disaster relief programs.

    “Girls must not be forgotten in climate response plans,” said UNICEF Pakistan’s representative Abdullah Fadil. “Their future cannot be the cost of every flood, every drought, every crisis.”

    Back in Jaffarabad, Shaista now lives with her husband’s family in a two-room house. Her dreams of becoming a doctor have faded, replaced by household chores and looming motherhood. “I wanted to study more,” she said. “But now I have to take care of others.”

    Questions to consider:

    1. How does the marriage of young girls connect to climate change?

    2. How can societies end the practice of child marriage?

    3. Why do you think only 16 countries have signed the UN treaty that requires consent for marriages?

     

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  • The higher education sector needs an honest broker to support structural change

    The higher education sector needs an honest broker to support structural change

    Of all the current headwinds faced by the higher education sector, one of the most challenging is a lack of expertise and experience in the area of structural change.

    In an environment where radical collaboration and merger are increasingly seen – rightly or wrongly – as a solution to the sector’s financial challenges, the expertise needed to broker and execute a successful merger or other collaboration seems to be patchy.

    As, arguably, are the somewhat different competences required to steward the longer term strategic integration of two or more distinct institutions, each with their own teaching and research portfolios and cultures. The answer to the question “who has done this before?” can only be answered in the affirmative by a handful of people.

    This issue was acknowledged in Mills & Reeve’s joint report with Wonkhe Connect More with the following insight from a one of the heads of institution we interviewed:

    We all have a skills matrix for boards and for courts and for councils. I think, increasingly, that needs to reflect people who’ve got some expertise and some background in this space…I don’t think there are many vice chancellors who would necessarily have the skills, the knowledge, and the background. Really, this is new territory, potentially, for us, it’s new turf.

    Of course, it wasn’t always thus. One of the ironies of the current dearth of experience is that large numbers of providers are themselves the product of historic mergers and collaborations. Taking the long view, the history of many providers is a complex genealogy, a narrative of mergers past and more recent.

    In part, the steady decline in institutional experience of these things was the natural result of a relatively benign financial environment. It’s easy to forget in the current climate but the period of low inflation and cheap borrowing meant that, at an institutional level, there was little impetus to challenge the operating model and, of course, the introduction of a marketised funding model meant that competition, rather than collaboration, was very much the order of the day.

    That marketised model was also accompanied by a marked shift in approach from the regulator. While HEFCE adopted a relatively low-key approach to mergers and collaboration – generally leaving the impetus to come together to institutions themselves – it did publish guidance on mergers and had a collaboration and restructuring fund to assist institutions to explore and implement structural change.

    Crucially, HEFCE was widely accepted to be a neutral broker who would help facilitate institutions coming together – and it had the funding to help smooth the path. By contrast, OfS, in its response to a question from the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee, made it clear that it does not consider itself to have “the remit, powers or funding to intervene to prevent closure or to facilitate mergers or acquisitions.”

    Skills gap

    Where, then, does that leave providers? Typically, there is a reliance on the institution’s executive team, in particular, the vice chancellor, to steer the merger. But most higher education executives are not from the business world with experience in mergers and to a significant degree they have a conflict of interest. There is also a need to continue with their day jobs and manage business as usual in case the merger doesn’t happen.

    The next most obvious port of call is to look for expertise among their own governing bodies, and, specifically, their external members. After all, one of the main motivations of having lay external members is to draw upon their expertise and to fill gaps which (understandably enough) exist within the skill sets of senior management teams and the institution more widely.

    The problem, however, is that merger and radical collaboration require a very particular set of skills. It’s very easy for universities to get starry-eyed about a governor just because they happen to be an investment banker, an accountant, or have experience of public sector mergers in the NHS, for example. But the skills required in a university merger or a complex debt restructuring are very specific and even a governing body which is well-stocked with members from across different professional services and backgrounds cannot assume that its trustees have the requisite expertise to drive forward a merger of two institutions.

    Of course, an institution can buy in a certain level of expertise. But what perhaps can’t always be replicated by professional advice are the experience and war stories of those who have lived and breathed mergers and collaborations from the inside – particularly from the education and adjacent sectors. In Mills & Reeve’s joint report with KPMG UK – Radical collaboration: a playbook – we drew out some of those lived experiences in the form of case studies. However, written case studies need to be seasoned with real-life personal experience. What is really needed when scoping a potential merger or other kind of radical collaboration is access to a “hive mind” of critical friends.

    An HE Commissioner model

    Other sectors have taken a strategic approach to developing this expertise. The Further Education Commissioner is the most obvious parallel. Between 2015 and 2019 the FE sector saw 57 mergers, three federations, three joint FE and HE institutions and 23 academy conversions. If most of UK higher education no longer has institutional memory of mergers, FE has it in bucket loads.

    The FE Commissioner and their team offer a range of services to FE colleges – ranging from informal chats and financial health checks, through to more formal invention assessments. Their team – a mix of former leaders and finance professionals from within the sector – have genuinely seen and done it all before. Higher education deserves the same deep pool of knowledge to draw on, especially if the worst case scenario of institutional insolvency and/or disorderly market exit is to be avoided.

    For this to work successfully in HE there would need to be some level of funding and a decision as to whether a commissioner’s role might sit within DfE or OfS. Our sense – particularly given the size and complexity of universities and the involvement of key stakeholders such as banks and private placement bondholders – is that there will still be a large role played by private sector consultants, lawyers, and accountants. However, there is room for a more collegiate level of engagement from DfE and OfS than arguably exists at present.

    As well as pooling expertise on how to collaborate, placing an HE commissioner role on a formal footing might also allow it to broker conversations between providers seeking to work together more closely – something which, in our experience, is done very hesitantly at present, both because of the fear of breaching competition rules and, more generally, because every potential collaboration partner is, in a very real sense, also a competitor.

    What can’t be underestimated is how urgently this function is needed. Providers are capable of doing this alone, as recent examples such as the Anglia Ruskin/Writtle and St George’s/City mergers testify. However, how much better for the long-term future of the sector it would surely be if providers had ready access to some critical friends and some “protected” spaces to have conversations about how best to achieve and implement forms of radical collaboration.

    This article is published in association with Mills & Reeve. 

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