Tag: Cycle

  • UCAS End of Cycle, 2025: access and participation

    UCAS End of Cycle, 2025: access and participation

    While one end of your university is focused entirely on the number of undergraduate students that get a place (and pay a fee) each year, another equally important driver is who these students are and where they come from.

    A part of the initial quid pro quo offered to the sector when we lost the last vestiges of student number control and managed expansion in 2012 was that some of this new capacity would be made available for students from non-traditional backgrounds – and that this would happen from everywhere: from the poshest ancient university to the most practical and locally-focused further education college.

    Though regulators all over the UK do keep an eye on how providers are doing at making this egalitarian dream a reality, in England at least the focus has been more on what providers are doing to widen access (and how they know it is working) and less on the actual numbers or entry rates.

    Deprivation

    UCAS has always provided data on what proportion of main scheme UK applicants from major demographics end up with an offer. Because of some smart choices by UCAS in its data design, I can also offer you an main scheme acceptance rate: the proportion of applications that end up with an accepted offer.

    (UCAS main scheme? That’s the one where an applicant applies to up to five courses before the 30 June deadline. It doesn’t include stuff like direct entry to clearing, or records of prior acceptance – where someone applies directly to the provider.)

    We don’t get as many metrics as we used to (what’s happened to UCAS’ own Multiple Equality Measure, or MEMs, I wonder) – and I’ve chosen to look at indices of multiple deprivation as a common way of thinking about participation from economically disadvantaged small areas. There are four of them (SIMD, WIMD, NIMD, and IMD – one for each home nation) and it makes no sense to see them all on one graph. By default we are seeing England (more data points!) but you can also choose to see Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland using the “nations/regions” filter.

    You choose your quintile of interest at the top (default is one, the most deprived 20 per cent), a year (default is 2025), chosen measure (offer rate or acceptance rate) and Age (default is “all”). This changes the display at the top: an ordered plot of providers, with the size of the dot showing the number of accepted students. Mouse over a dot to show annual proportions by quintile for main scheme applications, offers, and accepted applicants.

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    By default you can see the proportion of applications that end with an accepted applicant – but a low score does not mean a provider is terrible at widening access. Recall there are a lot of variables here, with as much to do with student choice (or portfolio) and performance as what the provider does. For this reason the offer rate (how many applications end with an offer being made) is a more popular measure.

    Entry qualifications

    I feel like I keep saying this, but you can’t really talk about access without talking about what qualifications an applicant is likely to be bringing with them. A level performance is a spectacular proxy for how rich your parents are and how nice your house is – even the choice to take A levels is less common among disadvantaged groups.

    On the first issue we still don’t get data on actual (A level or tariff) points at provider level as structured data. The data exists – it’s on course pages at an individual course level, but supposedly it is far too commercially powerful to publish openly in a structured way at provider level. It feels like a policy from another age, and it doesn’t make anyone look good.

    The best we get is a provider-level look at the types of qualification held by accepted applicants (and those that get offers). I’ve not plotted this to enable comparison, but it is fascinating to find individual providers slowly moving away from recruiting A level students only and into the “other” qualification that suggest mature learners, and (less clearly) local rather than national recruitment.

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    Unconditional

    Back at the end of the 2010s there was a great deal of policy concern around the idea of unconditional offers. This was eventually refined into the “conditional unconditional offer”, a situation where a “firm” commitment from an applicant was rewarded with a lack of insistence on a particular set of grades or tariff points.

    Though there were often valid reasons given for direct unconditional offers (for example, when admission to an arts course was by portfolio, or where – rarely – a provider set its own entrance exams or used a detailed interview process to inform selection) nobody ever really managed to convincingly defend the conditional unconditional offer in a way that stopped being banned (with the briefest of blips when it was accidentally unbanned for a month or so in the 2022 cycle). It was odd as the best available evidence showed that such offers didn’t have an impact on student outcomes.

    I’ve been starting to hear stories about a growth in other forms of unconditional offers in this last cycle – the pressure to lock in applicants may be prompting usual academic requirements to be suspended or lowered. The available data suggest a very slight growth in “other unconditional offers” that regulators may want to keep an eye on, but only back to roughly 2023 levels from a slight dip last year.

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    In England, at least, we’ve rather taken our eye off the ball when it comes to participation metrics – they exist, but there’s very little (other than the required existence of an access and participation plan for those who want to charge higher fees) to connect them to regulation. There have been some suggestions from ministers that this may change, and if you are in planning or strategy you may wish to get yourself reacquainted with the state of the art in 2025.

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  • UCAS End of Cycle, 2025: provider recruitment strategies

    UCAS End of Cycle, 2025: provider recruitment strategies

    On the face of it, running a successful recruitment round is fairly straightforward.

    It’s a bit like making a salad. Everything needs to look fresh and appetising, and you don’t want too much of one thing in case people don’t like it.

    I mean, it’s not rocket science.

    The provider level data from UCAS nicely illustrates the other, less straightforward end of the equation. We know surprisingly little about what applicants actually want to do, and where they want to do it.

    Sure, there’s near-certainties – medicine at UCL is unlikely to want for well-qualified applicants any time soon – but some things are rather less expected. Computing and IT focused courses, which have been growing in popularity for years, appear to have hit a wall. Is it the onset of generative AI “vibe coding” hitting employment prospects? Is it a change in the public perception of technology companies?

    We pretty much know it is affordability (and the slow atrophy of the student maintenance system) that prompts applicants from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds to choose to study locally. But we don’t know why selective providers that have historically recruited nationally have decided en masse to move into this very specialised market, or what changes they have made to their standard teaching (and indeed offer-making) approach to make this work.

    It’s questions like these that make the insights available from this year’s UCAS End of Cycle data so fascinating, and the choice of data that is released so frustrating.

    The Russell Group ate my students!

    There’s been a lot of talk (and a lot of quite informed data driven evidence) to suggest that traditionally selective providers have been accepting students with uncharacteristically low grades in greater numbers than in previous years.

    A couple of unexpected new additional data tables shed a little more light. This last (2025) cycle saw selective (high tariff) providers recruit more students with 15 A level points or below than in any previous year – while medium tariff providers are doing less well in students with between 9 and 11 points than any year outside the pandemic, and low tariff providers had their worst year on record for between 10 and 12 points, and their worst year since the pandemic for between 8 and 6 points.

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    A level points? Yes, for reasons best known to UCAS this is not the same as tariff points (so only includes A level performance, not vocational qualifications or grade 8 piano). You get 6 points for an A*, down to 1 point for an E – and only your best three A levels count. So 12 points means three Bs or thereabouts.

    The counter story is that this change in behavior hasn’t shifted the overall averages by that much. For high tariff providers the average accepted applicant has 13.9 A level points (down from 14 last year or 14.3 in 2016 – that’s round about AAB. Medium tariff is about BCC (10.4), Lower tariff is near enough CCC (9.4 – up very slightly on the historic average).

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    Usually I’d suggest that this stasis is down to a regular recalculation of tariff groups – but I know that the last time UCAS allocated providers to groups was back in 2012. We’ve also never been told which providers are in which tariff group – this is a different split to the DfE or OfS variants, unhelpfully. And we don’t get data on A level (or tariff) points by provider, which would offer a much more helpful level of granularity to this point of sector-wide interest.

    A peep at provider strategies

    There’s been a welcome update to the release of the provider level End of Cycle dataset: previously we used to get offermaking only within a rather vestigial dataset known as “equalities” – 2025 adds the offermaking data plus a range of new equalities parameters to the main provider level release.

    For all tariff bands or sector-level data is interesting, the increasing diversity of (and increasing competition within) the sector means that provider-level changes in behavior are by far the most interesting component of this release. The new information means that the chart that you lost your morning to last year is now looking very likely to make you lose your entire day.

    This is a complex but powerful dashboard, which shows the difference between the most recent year (2025) of data and a comparator year you can choose (by default last year but you can choose any year since 2019) across two dimensions (you can choose from applications, offers, and accepted applicants for each). I’ve added filters by domicile (UK, international, or all) and subject group (the familiar top level – CAH1 – list).

    It’s a lot of data on one chart, so I’ve added a group filter, which by default removes some smaller providers from the display – and there’s a highlighter to help you find a provider of interest.

    A dot being further up or further right means that measure has grown between the comparator year and the current year, further down or further left means it has shrunk.

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    There’s a nearly infinite number of stories to tell from this chart. Here’s some notable ones.

    Firstly Canterbury Christ Church University has accepted substantially fewer applicants in 2025 than in 2024. A dig around in the data suggests that decline is focused on UK domiciled applicants studying business subjects, which suggests to me that this shows the end of one or more franchise or partnership arrangements. I asked Canterbury Christ Church University for a comment – nothing yet but I’ll add it if it comes in – I’d imagine that this is the most visible of a wave of providers calculating that the increasing regulatory risk (with both OfS and DfE taking action) is not worth the hassle of running such provision – I’m tentatively pointing at Buckinghamshire New University and Oxford Brookes University as other similar (but smaller) examples).

    Not all of the Russell Group is following the same recruitment strategy – there are instances (Nottingham, Glasgow, Cardiff) where fewer applicants have been accepted than in 2024. Some Russell Group providers (for example Leeds, York, Southampton, and Cardiff) have seen fewer applications than in previous years – the first three in that list have nevertheless increased acceptances over last year. Because we can now see the number of offers made using the filters at the top, it is apparent that the entire group (excepting Cardiff and Southampton) made more offers than last year.

    League leaders

    If you are playing along with the dashboard you’ll have spotted that University College London accepted nearly 2,500 more applicants than last year (after making a genuinely startling 12,000 more offers) . The majority of this increase (2,290 accepted applicants, 10,650 offers) related to international applicants – with growth in pretty much every subject area contributing to this performance.

    That’s not the largest growth in accepted applicants, however (it’s the second largest). For the league leaders, we look to the University of Wolverhampton – which accepted an impressive 3,625 extra applicants compared to last year. Unlike UCL, these are all UK-domiciled students, and nearly all (2,970) are studying business subjects. To me, this suggests a new partnership – I asked Wolverhampton about this, and am waiting to hear back.

    But who made the most offers in 2025? For international students, it’s UCL and it isn’t even close. But for home students it was the University of Exeter, which made 7,130 more UK domiciled offers this year than last year (a total of 37,515 offers in the 2025 cycle!) across a mix of subject areas. Exeter wasn’t able to get me a comment before publication – I’ll add one if it comes in later.

    And I did promise a look at computing recruitment. It is a decline in both applications and acceptances pretty much across the board – with the exception of an 800 student growth in accepted applicants at Bath Spa University. UCL did recruit 40 more students than last year, but this is against a 1,520 decline in applications. There’s still a bit of growth at the University of Manchester, and the University of York – but note also Escape Studios (a growing independent visual effects specialist that was once known as Pearson College, which delivers degrees validated by the Coventry University).

    School leavers

    I’ve also put together a version of this chart that shows only the recruitment of 18 year olds. The direct path between school or college and university is no longer the dominant one in the UK, and hasn’t been for some time – but in policymaking and political discussions it is still where minds tend to go.

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    Focusing on UK 18 year olds, we can see that the University of Exeter has grown most spectacularly compared to last year on applications, offers, and acceptances. Large amounts of growth in this part of the market tends to be concentrated in more selective providers, but we can also see credible performances from big civic providers like Nottingham Trent University, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Liverpool John Moores University.

    Conversely we can see smaller but notable declines in applications and acceptances from providers including the University of the West of England, Birmingham City University, and the University of East London. The noticeable pattern is that there is no pattern – recruitment among school leavers can go cold anywhere at any time it would seem. And there are some ways around this – both the University of York (up 1,285) and the University of Leeds (up 3,180) upped school-leaver offer making despite a small decline in applications

    A sense of the sector

    Competition is clearly heating up. For those who have hit on a winning recruitment formula, the challenge becomes a need to ensure that every additional undergraduate gets the high quality experience they have been led to expect. An increase in fee income is almost all going to go to investment in capacity (be that more staff, retaining existing staff, or providing more resources). If your expansion has been into applicant groups you have little experience in teaching, the need to invest rises.

    Conversely, for those who have yet to hit upon the way to attract applications reliably there will already have been internal discussions about what needs to be done or what needs to change. Recruitment can and does figure in portfolio review and course revalidation questions: all of which comes down to whether a provider can afford to do what it would like to continue doing. Losing resources or capacity is a very last resort – once you wave goodbye to a course or department it is very difficult to spin back up.

    There will also be attention paid to sector trends – the kind of stuff I plotted back in December when we got the first phase of the End of Cycle release. Is it something your provider is doing, or a more general societal change, that means recruitment is growing or shrinking on a particular course. These are difficult, painful conversations, and need careful, considered, responses.

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  • UCAS End of Cycle sector level data, 2025

    UCAS End of Cycle sector level data, 2025

    There’s any number of stories that can be told from UCAS’ sector level end of cycle data release.

    UCAS itself, for instance, focuses on the new data on student residence intentions – 31 per cent of 18 year old applicants in 2025 intend to live at home (rising to 46 per cent in Scotland).

    If we add in information on deprivation (IMD) and acceptance route, we learn that 50 per cent of the less advantaged quintile of students aged 18 intend to live at home while studying, compared to just 18 per cent of their peers in quintile 5.

    And there are interesting regional variations – two thirds of the least advantaged 18 year old accepted applicants in Scotland intend to live at home (mouse over the map to see the regional breakdowns – and of course UK wide IMD isn’t a thing so treat that as indicative only).

    Likewise, 75 per cent of the least advantaged group applying via main scheme Clearing will be living at home.

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    Tariff wars

    But you know and I know there has only been one recruitment story this year, and it is one that is best described via a very familiar chart:

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    Higher tariff (what we once called “selective”) providers are recruiting more 18 year old students than ever before, a trend that has become more prominent since the end of pandemic restrictions. The chart above shows acceptance rates, demonstrating that – simply put – as an 18 year old you are now substantially more likely to end up at a high tariff provider if you apply there.

    One of the commonly proposed explanations for this phenomenon is the way in which applicants are using the “decline my place” functionality (on the UCAS platform since 2019) to trade up to a more prestigious provider. But the data neatly disproves this – movement tends to be within rather than between tariff bands:

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    So what else might be going on?

    We also get data by tariff group and acceptance route in this release – and from that we can see some very interesting underlying trends. Here the thick bars are the proportions and the thin ones the raw numbers, with the colours showing acceptance routes.

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    Gradually higher tariff providers have been taking a lower proportion of their 18 year old students via firm acceptances, and a higher proportion from other main scheme choices (including clearing). But this shift needs to be set against enormous expansion in numbers across the board – high tariff providers took more 18 year olds overall this year than their entire 2019 intake, and more firm or insurance 18 year old applicants this year than their entire 2023 intake.

    In contrast, proportions of 18 year olds by route have stayed broadly similar by proportion in medium and low providers, with medium tariff numbers staying steady and low tariff numbers slowly falling.

    More data please?

    So, even though high tariff providers have been slightly more active in clearing than in recent years (and even then, it is not outside of historic proportions) the growth comes simply from making offers to more applicants who apply to them, and then accepting them.

    What I really wanted to know is on what terms. There’s already a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that high-tariff providers are making low tariff offers – and I was hoping that this release would give us the data we needed to be sure.

    But UCAS has always been very coy about the association between tariff groups and the actual grades they accept. I can kind of understand the commercial in confidence arguments about detailed data at provider level (but the more I think about it the less I do…) – I cannot see any reason why we are not allowed to see grades by tariff group.

    So I am taking a roundabout route using the data we have got, and we start by looking at the relationship between achieved A level points and POLAR4 quintiles. I’ve generally held the opinion that A levels are a fantastic way of telling how middle class an 18 year old applicant is so there are no surprises that people from better off background are more likely to apply, more likely to be accepted if they apply, and more likely to have better grades than their peers when they do – here’s that in graphical form.

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    Outside of the years of the examnishambles proportions remain pretty stable, even though numbers have increased in all cases. Roughly a third of POLAR quintile 5 (most advantaged) accepted applicants get AAA or above, roughly three in ten of POLAR quintile 1 (least advantaged) accepted applicants get CCC or below.

    We run into another wrinkle in the UCAS data here: we don’t get tariff group acceptances by POLAR, though we do get it by IMD (and we don’t get A level points by IMD, but we do by POLAR). I’m pretty sure UCAS invented the multiple equality measure (MEMS) for precisely that reason, but we don’t appear to get that at all these days.

    So here is a plot of acceptance applicants by IMD quintile (note that you can only really look at one home nation at a time due to differences in methodologies). And what is apparent is the familiar slow steady growth in less advantaged 18 year accepted applicants attributed to widening access initiatives.

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    Unfortunately this is a case of what we don’t see. There’s a potential happy ending where we learn that high tariff providers are massively expanding their recruitment of applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that this explains both the rise in numbers and any decline in average offermaking. The growth in high tariff recruitment from low advantage quintiles is welcome, but not anything like huge enough to explain the growth in numbers.

    We are left to conclude that the expansion is in all groups equally – and given that most of the best A level scores tend to go to the top of the league tables anyway, it is hard to dismiss the idea that tariffs are falling. Perhaps January’s provider level release will offer us more oblique ways to examine what should be a very straightforward question – and one (that given the influx of less academically experienced students into providers that have not historically supported students like that) may well attract regulatory interest.

    Bonus charts

    We randomly got a really lovely dataset showing entry rates by Westminster constituency – and I could hardly resist plotting it alongside the 2024 election results. There is a mild correspondence between a lower entry rate and a higher Reform UK vote.

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  • We are in the cancel culture part of the tragedy cycle

    We are in the cancel culture part of the tragedy cycle

    First, two children lost their father and a wife her husband. Then people lost their humanity. And now, a nation loses another piece of its soul. This part of the cycle is its own special kind of awful: the cancel culture machine.

    It goes like this: A tragedy happens. Someone reacts by celebrating that tragedy for whatever reason. Then the social media mob comes to demand this person be fired, expelled, or otherwise punished for their views.

    Time and time again, we resort to this mob mentality when tragedy strikes. When Barbara Bush died. When the Queen died. Rush Limbaugh. Otto Warmbier. George Floyd. After 9/11. After October 7. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

    As free speech advocates, it places us in a painful position. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an attack on free speech and open discourse. In a free society, we must not be afraid to express our views, no matter how strongly some might oppose them. That’s the point of free speech. But it is precisely for that reason why we must not respond to mockery of Kirk’s assassination by canceling everyone who offends us: because that too creates a society where people are afraid to express themselves.

    Cancel culture ends when we decide that people can be horrifically wrong and still entitled to the grace that enables us all to grow from our worst moments. 

    Among the people targeted in the aftermath of Kirk’s heinous murder include:

    Businesses

    • The Carolina Panthers have fired a PR staffer for social media posts.
    • A DC comic book writer has had her series cancelled for her social media posts.
    • PHNX Sports has fired a staff writer for his posts.
    • The general manager of a burger restaurant in Quincy, Illinois, was fired for a post.
    • A restaurant in Wayzata, Minnesota, said it would review security camera footage and fire any employee seen to have celebrated.
    • Wausau River District has fired their executive director over her social media post.
    • A political contributor to MSNBC was fired over his on-air comments; Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, subsequently cancelled a scheduled speech.

    Schools and universities

    • The Florida Department of Education has said it would investigate every teacher who makes “disgusting comments” about the tragedy.
    • An assistant dean of Middle Tennessee State University has been fired for a social media post.
    • Naples (NY) Central School District has started a formal investigation of one staff member’s posts.
    • A cheerleading coach from Meridian (ID) High School was fired over a video.
    • A teacher at Ridgeview Elementary School in Lakeside, Florida, has been suspended for her posts.
    • A teacher at Greenville (SC) County Schools was suspended and then terminated for his post after a member of congress called for his firing.
    • A teacher at Lake Norman Charter School in Huntsville, North Carolina, has been placed on leave pending an investigation of his post.
    • A teacher at Gaston County (NC) Schools is under investigation for their post.
    • A teacher at the School District of Lancaster (PA) is facing some action, described as a “personnel matter,” for their posts.
    • A teacher at Lee County (FL) School District is being investigated for their post.
    • The University of Mississippi fired an executive assistant over her post, after a member of the state house said he would vote against continued university funding until her firing.
    • Linden (NJ) Public Schools had to shelter in place after the school received threats because a post was erroneously claimed to have been written by an employee. In reality, the author never worked there.
    • A teacher at Wachusett (MA) Regional School District has been suspended for her social media posts.
    • A teacher at Framingham (MA) Public School District has been suspended for her social media video.
    • A teacher at Vassar (MI) Public Schools has been suspended for her social media posts.
    • A teacher at Oksaloosa (IA) High School has been suspended for his social media post after U.S. Rep. Marionette Miller-Meeks promised to contact the school.
    • A teacher at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights (OH) School District has been suspended for alleged social media posts.
    • A professor at East Tennessee State University has reportedly been suspended after state lawmakers complained about his posts.

    Legislators and government officials

    • The U.S. State Department has warned that it will review the legal status of immigrants who mock the tragedy.
    • U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles have called for the firing of a Cumberland University professor over his post.
    • U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert has called for the firing of a Colorado Department of Health staffer for a social media post.
    • U.S. Rep. Riley Moore has called on West Virginia University to remove a state lawmaker from a gender equity council based on her posts.
    • A Michigan state senator has demanded a University of Michigan professor be fired for his post.
    • A Virginia state senator has demanded a dean at the Chesterfield School Board be fired for her posts.
    • A Texas state senator has demanded a teacher be fired for liking someone else’s post.
    • A city councilman in Jacksonville, Florida, called for the removal of a city appointee over a now-deleted post.
    • A South Carolina state lawmaker called for the firing of a Clemson University professor over his posts.
    • The Louisiana attorney general is calling for the firing of a New Orleans firefighter for a now-deleted post.
    • The Toledo Fire Department is investigating one firefighter’s post. 

    Have no doubt: There will be more. 

    A website is actively soliciting reports of posts “celebrating Charlie’s death” to preserve them for, presumably, posterity. (Take my word for it or don’t. Linking the website would tend to undermine the larger goal here.)  And in a counter-cancellation remarkable for its willingness to victim-blame, a Tennessee lawmaker has called for all events by Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, to be cancelled “out of fear of violence and threat to public safety.” 

    When state lawmakers and officials make demands to employers to fire people for their speech, those demands can violate the First Amendment. When private people and businesses do the same, it undermines the culture of free expression we all want to cultivate. To be clear, a business owner can fire employees for any lawful reason. At times, a misalignment of values or a need to retain customers will be those perfectly legitimate reasons. But performative firings are participation in a cancel culture that undermines American values.

    Violence must never be a response to speech

    America must be an open society where we feel safe to share our ideas in the public square, not just from behind bulletproof glass and bulletproof vests.


    Read More

    None of us are immune to these instincts. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, maintains a Professor Watchlist. As we noted back when it was launched in 2016, the watchlist is protected speech. But as we also noted and predicted, the watchlist has been used to call for sanctions on professors for their protected academic expression, contributing to the scourge of cancel culture. We have opposed those calls, too.

    Governments and lawmakers must do better. The rest of us should do better, too. 

    When someone indulges their worst impulses after a tragedy, we should use our own voices to challenge them. Or if we’re really courageous, we can be like Daryl Davis, a black musician and activist who through love, compassion, and constructive dialogue has convinced dozens of people to leave and denounce the Ku Klux Klan. We should remember we don’t win an argument by ruining someone’s life. We just ruin someone’s life. 

    We are not so fortunate, in this imperfect world, that Charlie Kirk’s murder is the last tragedy we experience. Nor is it the last time that some of us take a moment that calls for compassion and fill it with vitriol. If we (as a society) were to wait for either of those things to stop being true before ending cancel culture, that’s the same as ceding freedom of speech to the assassins and the mobs. 

    Cancel culture ends when we decide that people can be horrifically wrong and still entitled to the grace that enables us all to grow from our worst moments. 



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  • AI in Education: Beyond the Hype Cycle

    AI in Education: Beyond the Hype Cycle

    We just can’t get away from it. AI continues to take the oxygen out of every edtech conversation. Even the Trump administration, while actively destroying federal involvement in public education, jumped on the bandwagon this week.

    Who better to puncture this overused acronym than edtech legend Gary Stager. In this conversation, he offers a pragmatic perspective on AI in education, cutting through both fear and hype. Gary argues that educators should view AI as simply another useful technology rather than something to either fear or blindly embrace. He criticizes the rush to create AI policies and curricula by administrators with limited understanding of the technology, suggesting instead that schools adopt minimal, flexible policies while encouraging hands-on experimentation. Have a listen: