Tag: HEPI

  • Reasons to be cheerful – HEPI

    Reasons to be cheerful – HEPI

    Author:
    Nick Hillman

    Published:

    • Pamela Baxter is Chief Product Officer and Managing Director of IELTS Cambridge at Cambridge University Press & Assessment

    At a time when the value of higher education is being called into question, the OECD’s latest Education at a Glance report offers an unequivocal statement of support for the sector – both globally and in the UK.

    This annual report gives a snapshot of the state of education in the world’s developed nations. By gathering comparative data covering the OECD’s members as well as partner countries, it lets policymakers measure their country’s achievements and set standards against best international practice.

    The 2025 report’s focus on tertiary education gives many reasons for optimism. The highlight is that, with 48% of young adults in surveyed countries holding a tertiary qualification, educational attainment is higher than ever. 

    The share of 25 to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment increased over the last five years across OECD and partner countries – rising from 45% (2019) to 48% (2024). In the UK, tertiary education among the same cohort grew from 52% to 60% over that period – twelve percentage points above the OECD’s average.

    The report is unambiguous in stating the benefits of higher education: “Supporting equitable access to tertiary education”, it tells us, “remains crucial to strengthening social mobility as educational attainment is closely reflected in labour market outcomes.”

    Adults with an undergraduate university qualification (or equivalent), the report tells us, earn on average 54% more than those with only upper secondary education. (This goes up to 83% when those adults have a postgraduate degree.)

    But the benefits are not only financial. The report emphasises how tertiary education is directly linked to higher employment rates, and even to better health – with 51% of tertiary-educated adults rating their health as very good or excellent, compared to 26% of those with below upper secondary education.

    The report also pinpoints areas where the developed world as a whole must do better. We are told, for instance, that completion rates of young adults going into tertiary education are low – particularly among men – with under half of new entrants finishing their programmes within the expected duration. 

    The rise and rise of international student mobility

    The 2025 report shows the continuing growth of international student mobility in OECD countries, with the number of mobile students as a proportion of total student numbers more than doubling over the past decade. This is good news.

    I was especially heartened to read that the UK continues to be one of the most attractive destinations for international students: 23% of all tertiary students in the UK were international according to 2023 numbers – an increase of six percentage points since 2013, and well above the OECD average of 7%. 

    International students contribute almost £42 billion a year to the UK economy – the equivalent of every UK citizen being £560 better off. This pipeline of international talent is essential to the UK government’s high-growth economic sectors, as well as our universities’ global reputation and competitiveness.

    At Cambridge University Press & Assessment we are deeply aware of the importance of international students to the UK’s educational landscape – and indeed to the country’s wider strengths. International students’ ability to fully participate in, and contribute to, their chosen courses is essential not only to their future success, but to the UK’s prospects as an intellectual, economic and cultural power. We consider it our responsibility to make sure that those globally mobile students seeking paths to higher education are equipped with the right skills to thrive. We’re not alone in that.

    The 2025 edition of Education at a Glance provides a vivid snapshot of the state of global education. It tells us what we are doing well and, crucially, where there is room for improvement. Cambridge welcomes these findings, and we are proud to be sponsoring its launch.

    Source link

  • English lessons: Review of Nick Gibb’s book on educational reform after 2010 – by HEPI Director Nick Hillman

    English lessons: Review of Nick Gibb’s book on educational reform after 2010 – by HEPI Director Nick Hillman

    • HEPI Director Nick Hillman reviews Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 and How This Was Achieved by Nick Gibb and Robert Peal.
    • On Tuesday, 9 September 2025, HEPI will be hosting the launch of the OECD’s flagship Education at a Glance report. Book a place (in person or online) here.

    This is the second book on education in a row that I have reviewed on the HEPI website that comes from a right-of-centre perspective. The previous review (of a book by the President of the New College of Florida) garnered some pointed attacks underneath – ‘No doubt we’ll soon be seeing articles offering a “more balanced” perspective on Putin and Orban’s records in office’. So let me start by noting HEPI has also run many reviews (by me and others) of books written by left-of-centre authors as well as centrist authors, such as Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeve, Simon Kuper, Francis Green and David Kynaston, Melissa Benn, and Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin.

    Let me also note that we are always on the lookout for reviews of recent books that are likely to be of interest to HEPI’s audience, irrespective of where on the political spectrum the authors of the books in question or – indeed – the reviewers sit. When we started running book reviews on the HEPI site many years ago, they tended to receive less engagement than other output, but that has changed over the years and they are often now among our most-read pieces. We hope this remains true on our brand new website. So the door is wide open. Come on in.

    Now down to business. Reforming Lessons is a defence of the changes wrought by the long-standing and thrice-appointed Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb, and to a lesser extent his boss Michael Gove, co-written by Gibb himself. The other author is Robert Peal, who was one of a group of young state-school teachers (often, like Peal, powered by Teach First) who made up the advancing phalanx for the school reforms that were implemented by the Coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments. (John Blake, the Office for Students’s Director for Fair Access and Participation was another member of this front line and merits a mention in the book, as was Daisy Christodoulou, who has contributed a Foreword and who features multiple times.)

    At the risk of further brickbats, it would be absurd for HEPI to have ignored this particular book at this particular time, for it is currently a huge talking point among educationalists. But is not just about education; it is also a book about the practice of politics. As the authors themselves write, it is an account of ‘the virtues of a subject-specialist minister driven by conviction in a specific cause rather than personal ambition.’ It fulfils this brief very well indeed, so it should be read far beyond the education world, especially by aspiring ministers in any field where they want to make a difference. But, and I do not mean this to be in any way rude, I suspect it was not – in one important sense – all that hard for Gibb and Peal to make their case.

    This is because the key international data on school performance, which come from the OECD’s comparative PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), show England forging ahead, including against other parts of the UK, between 2009 and 2022. So Gibb and Peal had a secure evidence base on which to build their story.

    We may argue that PISA is not a perfect measure: it tests only a small number of disciplinary areas and to a fairly basic level of knowledge and it has not always been completed the same way (sometimes on paper and sometimes on screen), but it is better than anything else we have when it comes to comparing school systems – and infinitely better than anything we have in higher education. So anyone who wants to shoot down the book’s central claim that Nick Gibb succeeded as a Minister will struggle to find equally robust performance data for their argument – though they could presumably focus on other evidence such as on an apparent narrowing of the curriculum (though Gibb and Peal get their defence on this in first – see pages 123 and 124).

    Near the start, the book takes a look at how any education changes begun in 2010 had to be extremely cost-effective – cost-cutting or else free – given the dire fiscal position which led every major political party to promise drastic spending cuts at that year’s general election. Gibb and Peal also paint a picture of the ineffectiveness and wastefulness of the expensive centralised initiatives based on existing orthodoxies that preceded the Coalition. The multi-billion pound Building Schools for the Future programme was perhaps the archetype for, as Gibb shows, tens of millions of pounds were spent on building individual schools with open-plan classrooms where staff struggled to teach and pupils struggled to learn. Another challenge during the 2000s is that schools were overwhelmed with bureaucracy: in 2006/07 alone, we are told, there were around 760 missives to schools from Whitehall and quangos – four-per-day for the whole school year.

    Yet Nick Gibb is far from being a free-for-all libertarian right-winger. He is, rather, someone who wants to use the power of the state to drive policy, including how to teach reading (synthetic phonics) as well as how to shape other aspects of the school curriculum. It is easy to see how this approach could have gone wrong but Gibb’s primary goal is always to follow the evidence as he sees it, and I cannot be the only parent who was amazed by how quickly their children started to read during their initial school years in the second half of the 2010s. Gibb has given more thought to schooling than any other modern politician and he rejects many of the ideas of his colleagues as much as those from the political left: he did not favour a wave of new grammar schools, he did not want GCSEs to be replaced by O-Levels and he opposed Rishi Sunak’s Advanced British Standard.

    The book might begin and end somewhat immodestly and uncollegiately by reminding readers that many commentators picked out education as the one and only really big success of the Coalition and Conservative years, yet this is not by any stretch of the imagination a selfish book. Nick Gibb shows how his worldview was built upon teachers like Ruth Miskin, academics like ED Hirsch and others – even his researcher Edward Hartman gets a namecheck (or rather two) for introducing him to Hirsch. He shows how his agenda was carried forward by people like Hamid Patel, Katharine Birbalsingh and Jon Coles.

    Political colleagues like Michael Gove and David Cameron are given credit for changing Whitehall’s approach to schooling. The triumvirate of advisers, Dominic Cummins, Sam Freedman and Henry de Zoete all receive praise, as does Nick Timothy for his stint in Number 10 as Theresa May’s Joint Chief of Staff. Andrew Adonis garners the most praise of all for starting ‘the revolution we undertook whilst in office’, and Kenneth Baker is lauded for getting the successful City Technology Colleges (the forerunners of academies) off the ground in the 1980s. Gibb and Peal note there have been ‘squabbles’ between Conservatives and Lib Dems over who designed the Pupil Premium policy but they do not join in, concluding instead that ‘we should celebrate that it was jointly pursued and agreed upon by the Treasury’.

    There is high praise even for the man who temporarily displaced Gibb as the Minister for Schools, David Laws, especially for the design of the school accountability measure Progress 8 as well as for Lord Nash, who oversaw academies and free schools from the House of Lords. Gibb admits he did not agree with Nicky Morgan, who replaced Michael Gove as the Secretary of State for Education in 2014, on pushing ‘character education’ as a discrete concept but he excuses her on the grounds that ‘she had been transferred to Education from the Treasury with no notice, so never had the luxury of time I had enjoyed to read up on education philosophies.’

    The tales from Gibb’s period as a backbench MP and then Shadow Minister also remind us that the most effective Ministers have typically learnt their briefs in the years before they take office rather than on the job. They then stay in post long enough to make a difference (or, in Gibb’s case, do the job more than once). Even for bold reforming ministers, like Gibb and Gove, good policy tends to be patient policy. In contrast, many of Gibb’s predecessors as the Minister for Schools (who include the current Minister for Skills, Jacqui Smith, who did the job in 2005 to 2006) were not in post for long enough to make a major sort of difference. Gibb’s account of his time in office also serves to remind us that it is wrong to think effective ministers must have worked in the field they are overseeing before entering Parliament: Gibb was an accountant, not a teacher, just like David Willetts, the well-respected Minister for Universities and Science during the Coalition, was a civil servant rather than an academic or scientist.

    The book is peppered by illustrative and illuminating anecdotes. The one I found most shocking is about a visit Nick Gibb made in the mid-1990s to a school in Rotherham, where he was fighting a by-election: a headteacher ‘explained how she had completed an “audit” of her school library, removing any old-fashioned books that simply conveyed information.’ (A few years later, Tory party HQ abolished their library altogether, so it was not just schools that fell down this hole.) The second most shocking anecdote, at least to me, concerns the first draft of the rewritten National Curriculum for primary schools: ‘when the first draft of the curriculum was sent out for informal consultation amongst maths subject associations, it returned with all 64 mentions of the word “practice” expunged from the document.’ The funniest anecdote is one about Gibb visiting a successful academy that had converted from being an independent school: ‘On my train up to Yorkshire, I saw a pupil’s tweet expressing disappointment to find out the politician visiting her school was not Nick Clegg, as she had been led to believe, but instead “some random” called Nick Gibb.’

    Personally, I dislike the language used by those who talk of an educational ‘blob’, not least because it paints all educationalists in the same negative light. Gibb dislikes the term too, and he was uncomfortable with his political colleagues throwing it about. He is pro-teachers and there were always some classroom teachers who held out against the knowledge-light ‘progressivist ideology’ even at its height. Gibb’s reforms were designed to dilute the educational orthodoxy of unions and quangos and to give power to trusted headteachers as well as to multi-academy trusts instead – the mantra was ‘high autonomy and high accountability’. His core goals were to find the best resources and teachers, then to free school leaders to make the biggest differences they could and finally to encourage others to emulate them, especially via high-performing multi-academy trusts. If Blair’s mantra was ‘education, education, education’, Gibb’s was ’emulation, emulation, emulation’.

    But while rejecting the ‘blob’ term, the book does help one to understand how the moniker came to gain such currency. Gibb tells a story, for example, of how, as an MP and a member of the Education Select Committee, he was summoned to the ‘salubrious offices in Piccadilly’ of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority. Once there, the Chief Executive and Chairman demanded Gibb stop asking parliamentary questions about their work. It was an error of immense proportions – perhaps if they had known Gibb had circulated anti-communist propaganda in Brezhnev’s Russia, they would have had a better idea of how tough he is under the polite demeanour. Either way, the scenario served to remind Gibb not to back down in battles once he became a minister.

    One surprise in the book is the degree to which Gibb thinks his reforms have deep roots and are here to stay. He makes a persuasive case for this, especially in the Conclusion, when he notes how embedded and successful some multi-academy trusts now are. Yet his book also recounts how Scotland and Wales have in recent years moved in the opposite direction to England, downplaying knowledge in their school curricula (and suffering the consequences in international comparisons). So one-way travel is surely not guaranteed.

    Keith Joseph talked of a ‘ratchet effect’ in British politics and it might be too early to tell if the Gibb / Gove reforms are locked in or whether the pendulum could now swing back. What I saw after the 2024 general election from my vantage point of being a long-standing Board member of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) gives me less confidence that educational policy is now settled. Despite Gibb’s belief his reforms will last, even he notes in passing the recent attempt to water down the freedoms enjoyed by academies. What is taught in schools, and how, will surely continue to be fervently debated and it is why HEPI has sought to focus minds in higher education on the important Curriculum and Assessment Review under Professor Becky Francis.

    The book is all about the pipeline to higher education but it is not really about higher education except near the end, where the authors take a look at teacher training. Those running university education departments were among the people who did not take Nick Gibb seriously while in Opposition or in Government and they too paid the price for it:

    ‘Of all the different sectors of the education establishment, university education faculties were – by a stretch – the most difficult with which to work. … the main message I received whenever I visited university education faculties was, as Jim Callaghan had been told 40 years previously, “keep off the grass”. Meetings I had usually consisted of being talked at for 90 minutes in a boardroom with no appetite or opportunity for discussion. If I, as a minister, showed any interest in what they thought, they would mistily invoke the virtues of “academic independence”, and insist the government had no place stepping on their hallowed turf.’

    At the very end of the book, Gibb bemoans the fact that, when it comes to ‘the evidence revolution in English education’, ‘university education faculties have been – with one or two exceptions – notable only by their absence’. And when it comes specifically to school teaching, Gibb regards universities as part of the problem rather than the solution. (So perhaps we should not be surprised that Gibb and Peal do not mention the short-lived attempt by Theresa May’s Government to get universities to sponsor academies.) As Universities UK prepare to release new research on public perceptions of higher education institutions, I was left wondering whether there might be lessons for how the higher education sector can best engage with Ministers and officials. 

    While Twitter / X may often be a sewer today, Gibb argues that various education bloggers and tweeters (often from the political left) played a vital role in shoring up his reforms, for example in helping Michael Wilshaw sort out Ofsted, who we are told ‘succeeded where Chris Woodhead could not.’ Gibb may point the finger of blame at those who pushed the ‘progressivist ideology’ that he has fought against but when it comes to A-Level grade inflation, for example, he does not limit his criticism to the Blair / Brown Governments, also complaining about his Conservative predecessors. Yet despite the ferocious attacks he was subjected to as a Minister, Gibb does not respond in kind, confident instead that his policies rested on evidence from the UK and overseas rather than polemic.

    This is a lengthy book and a very very good one, though it does not stop me wanting to know more about what Gibb thinks in one or two areas. For example, we surely do not talk enough about demographics in education. Yet it was the growing number of young people that was part of the reason why the Treasury and others accepted lots of brand new schools called ‘free schools’, just as it was the falling number of school leavers prior to 2020 which helped persuade the Treasury to remove student number caps for undergraduates in England. Gibb does acknowledge the impact of changes to the birth rate in boosting his agenda, but personally I would like to have read more than the single paragraph on page 155 about it.

    Churchill is said to have remarked, ‘history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it’. I kept thinking of this as I was reading the book, so it is perhaps too much to expect a deep dive into educational areas that the Conservatives failed to fix in their 14 years in charge. For me, these are: the educational underperformance of boys relative to girls, which does not merit any specific mentions; the current crisis in the supply of new teachers, which gets less than a page of dedicated text; and post-COVID truancy rates, which gets a paragraph and a couple of other fleeting mentions. But Nick Gibb is, and will rightly remain, one of the most important Ministers of recent decades – and to think he never even made it into the Cabinet.

    Source link

  • ON LAMPETER… – HEPI

    ON LAMPETER… – HEPI

    This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Dr. John Cater who recently retired after 32 years as Vice-Chancellor of Edge Hill University.  He now chairs the Unite Foundation.  He graduated in Geography from Lampeter in 1974.   

    September 1822. The (English) Bishop of St. David’s, Thomas Burgess, determines the creation of a higher education establishment in mid-Wales.

    December 1970. Hitch to Northampton. Train to Rugby. Train to New Street. Train to Shrewsbury. Two carriage Pacer to Dovey Junction. Split.  One carriage Pacer to Aberystwyth.  Two hours and thirty miles on Morgan’s coaches. Dark on departure. Dark on arrival.

    January 2025. The University of Trinity St. David announces that all undergraduate teaching at Lampeter will cease at the end of the 2024/25 academic year, with all such provision transferred to Carmarthen.

    Oxford, Cambridge…  and Lampeter

    The Scottish Ancients existed, of course, alongside Oxbridge, with Durham on the horizon, but the first higher education provider in the Principality and only the third outside the northern Celtic nation was founded in the small Cardiganshire market town of Lampeter.

    But St David’s small size and an initial focus on theological training gave the institution a degree of vulnerability, notwithstanding the introduction of Bachelor of Arts degrees as early as 1865, eventually leading to threats to its continued existence as the number of ordinals declined rapidly in the 1950s. A ‘sponsorship’ agreement with University College Cardiff secured the institution’s future through to the creation of the Federal University of Wales in 1971, the College suspending its degree-awarding powers to become a constituent member.  And the institution diversified, most notably moving from its solely Arts and Humanities portfolio into a broader range of disciplines, including the GeoSciences – the reason behind my circuitous ten-hour journey from the south Midlands to a remote corner of mid-Wales.

    It was a great place to be. Diminutive and distinct. An Oxbridge tutorial system. In the Department on a Friday? Run Geog. Soc.. Picked up an oval ball? First XV rugby. Bowl a bit of long-hop leg spin? First XI cricket.

    But in that scale and remoteness – and perhaps an inclination to stretch the portfolio too broadly – lie the seeds of the decision in January of this year.  In 2008, the Quality Assurance Agency expressed limited confidence in the University of Wales Lampeter’s procedures and processes, whilst a subsequent review by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) had ‘very real concerns’ about management capacity and leadership.  This led directly to discussions with Trinity College Carmarthen about a possible merger, and in 2010, Trinity St. David was born. 

    There is no doubt that merging an institution with a provider 23 miles away in a sub-region with no rail link and infrequent bus transport, then adding a third provider (the Swansea Institute) 51 miles distant, provides some unique challenges. Possibly only matched by the University of the Highlands and Islands, which has a very different federal model.

    But the key determinant of an institution’s financial viability is its ability to attract students and to operate in a fiscal climate that allows the full recovery of costs. This was always going to be a challenge; the fixed outgoings of three campuses and the necessary infrastructure, physical and human, increasingly exceed a tuition fee that is (even) lower in Wales than in England.  

    Outside the Cambrian News, the silence has been deafening. But the potential effects are devastating.  Perhaps less so for the overall health of the University; a branch plant is always vulnerable in a time of retrenchment, though one may have hoped that the attractions of remoteness, an immersive institution where you both lived and learned, would resonate in the market. For a town where half the population is a student, a present or past employee, or is directly or indirectly dependent on the University pound, the economic consequences, particularly through that long, wet Welsh winter, are immeasurable.

    What of the future? We talk of civic universities, but they can only fully play that integral role if they are in robust financial health. Last month, Ceredigion County Council announced their intention to create a post-sixteen education centre on the Lampeter site.  But, idealistic in principle may be fanciful in practice in a remote rural location over twenty miles from the nearest meaningful population centre.  And it comes with a perceptual threat to the Coleg Ceredigion sites in Aberystwyth and Carmarthen, a threat that will be strongly resisted in both those communities.

    From the outside looking in, fifty years having passed, the dream of the experience Lampeter offered – and, according to the 2025 National Student Survey, continues to offer – lives on.  But in the harsh reality of weak recruitment and financial stringency, that dream dies.

    Source link

  • Addressing educational poverty – HEPI

    Addressing educational poverty – HEPI

    • By Pam Tatlow, Policy Adviser to the Cathedrals Group of Universities

    The Government’s decision to extend free school meals to an estimated 500,000 primary school children is a win-win, both in addressing disadvantage and supporting learning and attainment. In fact, all primary-age school children in Scotland and London now receive free school meals, with an evaluation of the latter concluding that its impact was overwhelmingly positive and that for some children, school attendance and mental well-being had also been improved.

    It’s clear that free school meals are a worthwhile investment of Department of Education resources. It is also why Ministers should maximise take-up in England by linking auto-enrolment of Free Schools Meals with universal credit and pupil premium.

    But why should universities care about Free School Meals? The answer is quite simple, especially if, like the Cathedrals Group of Universities, you recruit students who progress to university later in life. In some universities, many students are parents and carers in their own right who will undoubtedly benefit from widening the eligibility for free school meals. It’s a policy that has inter-generational impact as well as positive impacts on the children of today.  

    Moreover, rising levels of inequality as documented by the OECD, the IMF, the World Bank and in the UK by Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford, constrain not only economic growth (an objective of Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer) but also educational attainment – a fact not lost on Professor Becky Francis, Chair of the government’s Curriculum and Assessment review who concluded in 2015 ‘that all the data supports the idea that the socioeconomic divide is the biggest issue in education’. While diverse in size, Cathedrals Group Universities continue to play a key role in educating the teachers of the future, but crucially are also united by a commitment to social justice – and this means a continuing interest in measures that address inequality.

    The June Spending Review was notable for its silence on other measures which might directly support educational attainment beyond the primary stage. There is still time for Ministers to recognise that supporting pupils and students during their studies is an investment in their futures that will pay dividends in terms of monetised and non-monetised benefits for individuals, communities and ultimately the Treasury itself.

    At the secondary phase, Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was a weekly payment to disadvantaged young people aged 16-19 in full-time education. Introduced in 1999, expanded nationwide in 2004, the EMA was abolished by the Coalition Government in England in October 2010, with the 2010/11 academic year marking the final year of the scheme. Replaced by a 16-19 Bursary Fund that continues today, the Fund has a significantly reduced budget and, other than for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people, is administered at the discretion of colleges and training providers, which decide their own schemes.

    The difference between this Fund and the EMA is stark. EMA provided direct payments to young people for which they could apply before opting for a specific post-16 education course or institution. As shown by its continuation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the EMA remains a popular policy with young people (who were not consulted about its abolition in England). Research by the Edge Foundation confirmed that the EMA had a positive impact on post-16 education participation and retention rates among young people from lower-income families and those with disabilities. Although the school leaving age has been increased to 18 for over a decade, there are often costs associated with post-16 study, such as specialist equipment and transport, for which young people get little support. What does exist in England is discretionary and dependent on a postcode lottery.

    Then there’s higher education, which by common agreement needs a new funding model in England and, in the view of the Cathedrals Group, more direct government investment. Investment in universities and investment to address the hardship of students are two sides of the same coin. If maintenance support for students is increased by inflation, it will be welcome but not enough. London Economics research for the Sutton Trust in 2024 confirmed that the abolition of maintenance grants (which did not have to be repaid) has resulted in students from the poorest families incurring the highest debts during their studies. Moreover, parental income thresholds, which determine when parents are expected to contribute to the living costs of their children at university, have remained frozen at £25,000 pa. The same research estimated that in real terms, household income thresholds should have increased to £32,535 and that students from poorer households could graduate with over £60,000 of debt, 38% higher than those from wealthier families.

    Universities know only too well about educational poverty. Notwithstanding the pressures on institutional funding, many have increased their hardship funds. In spite of their best efforts, including money advice, demand from students for financial support outstrips budgets. Hepi and Advance HE’s 2025 Student Experience Survey confirms that cost-of-living concerns have impacted on students’ studies but also the extent to which students now combine study and paid employment with the average total of study and workload hours for students who work standing at 44.3 hours a week – ‘higher than the average full-time job in the UK’.

    And to end where we began: in Finland, there are no free school meals because the provision of free meals is an integral part of the Finnish education system – the same system which is consistently ranked first among all OECD countries in education and in terms of the outcomes and well-being of its pupils and students. Only the Treasury can now help square the circle and address educational poverty of pupils, students and their families at every stage of their educational journey. Such a strategy would not only support the government’s stated ambition to tackle inequality but also Ministers’ aspiration to improve educational attainment – a win all round.

    Source link

  • Cross Disciplinarity – HEPI

    Cross Disciplinarity – HEPI

    To tackle the major challenges facing society, cross-disciplinary research may be necessary. However, conducting this type of research requires researchers to overcome functional silos. Various factors, such as differing incentives, cultures, terminologies, and jargon, can lead to opportunistic or counterproductive behavior. So, how can cross-disciplinary research be conducted effectively to advance knowledge and understanding? To answer this question, we will first explore the processes of theorizing. Next, we will discuss ways to break down cross-disciplinary barriers. Finally, we will offer practical guidelines for successfully conducting cross-disciplinary research.

    First, we argue that the theorising process developed by Brodie and Peters (2020) provides guidelines for undertaking cross-disciplinary research by integrating general theoretic perspectives and contextual research to develop midrange theory. Midrange theory bridges the theoretical domain of knowledge and the applied domain of knowledge (Figure 1). The paradigmatic perspective provides the outer ring for the recursive theorizing process between general theory, midrange theory, and applied research.

    Figure 1: Domains of knowledge and levels of theory

    By employing the aforementioned theorising process, senior management can demonstrate to researchers that there are various ways to develop and apply midrange theory. The primary general theoretical perspective can connect directly with midrange theory, but alternative general theoretical perspectives can also offer routes that lead to other midrange theories. These alternative pathways can eventually converge on a focal midrange theory that can be utilised in research (as shown in Figure 2).

    Figure 2. Interfaces for theorizing

    Second, we propose ways to break down barriers to cross-disciplinary research. Senior management should recognize that research teams do not necessarily have to consist of cross-disciplinary researchers. Instead, teams should be composed of experts from their own disciplines who possess enough familiarity with the research problem and a basic understanding of each other’s fields to enable effective communication. A team of mono-disciplinary experts with a strong mix of skills and effective communication abilities is more advantageous than a team of cross-disciplinary researchers who lack sufficient experience or expertise.

    Senior management should also recognise that research is typically mono-disciplinary. For instance, a cross-disciplinary grant application might struggle because the reviewers are often mono-disciplinary experts who may not grasp the cross-disciplinary elements or recognize the value of collaborative research. Therefore, senior management should encourage their researchers to take on riskier, but potentially rewarding, collaborations with peers from vastly different disciplines.

    Senior management’s efforts to support and reward cross-disciplinary research can sometimes be misguided, as cross-disciplinary work should not be pursued as an end in itself. Imposing a vaguely defined cross-disciplinary agenda on researchers can lead to wasted efforts or, at best, projects that are difficult to fund or publish. A more effective approach would be for senior management to encourage researchers to start with the research problem, determine which problem class it falls into, and assess whether the problem is significant or complex enough to justify cross-disciplinary work, especially when questions arise that require expertise from multiple fields. Most importantly, and often overlooked, senior management should avoid the temptation to reward cross-disciplinary research solely for its own sake. It is far more advantageous to create an environment where researchers excel in their own disciplines while being rewarded for occasionally taking on larger cross-disciplinary challenges.

    Third, the following practical guidelines can help break down barriers and create an environment that encourages cross-disciplinary research. For instance, researchers should be encouraged to present their work outside their own discipline, as this can enhance visibility, generate fresh insights, and open up opportunities for future collaboration. Senior management could promote participation in initiatives that address major societal challenges and incentivise researchers to engage with practitioners and the broader community. They should also prompt researchers to consider how their theoretical knowledge could be applied to real-world problems faced by policymakers, practitioners, and consumers.

    Senior management could encourage research groups to formulate clear and well-defined research questions that accurately identify the specific problem class and knowledge gap. This approach will help determine whether expertise from multiple scientific disciplines is necessary. Refining a knowledge gap into a focused research problem can attract potential collaborators and offer context and direction for the collaborative research.

    When two or more scientific disciplines are involved, it may be unclear who should provide guidance. Senior management could form a leadership team that can bring in additional members to offer expertise as needed.

    Source link

  • Cathedralic Higher Education – HEPI

    Cathedralic Higher Education – HEPI

    With the major challenges facing UK higher education at present, it is perhaps hardly surprising that many in the sector are concentrating on the short term. Survival rather than strategy is the order of the day. Higher education institutions (HEIs), though, are fundamentally long-term operations which educate students and undertake research intended to benefit society for many years to come.

    Indeed, they embody what has been labelled ‘cathedral thinking’, that is, a long-term activity which is ultimately for the good of future generations. There is a real risk, though, that the short-termism endemic in institutions and wider society will undermine this core attribute of HEIs.

    Here and now

    The UK higher education sector is, arguably, facing some of the biggest challenges it has for generations. Coping with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the worldwide recession following the 2007-08 financial crisis was hugely difficult, but they feel, in hindsight, somehow to be less problematic than where we are now.

    Everyone is focused on survival, on getting through the next month, the next term, the next academic year. Certainly there is much lobbying going on from Universities UK, Vice-Chancellors and sector groupings to seek to persuade the government to do the right things for the sector in the forthcoming 2025 spending review. But, as the THE reported in garnering sector views on the year ahead, there is a great deal of uncertainty. Nick Hillman, quoted in the article, notes that the nature of politics, which HEIs are currently grappling with, is ‘a dirty, mucky, short-term, quick-fix sort of business.’

    While Universities UK’s Vivienne Stern believes that many HEIs have already made or begun to make the difficult changes required to cope with the challenges ahead, the longer-term investments in infrastructure and facilities which are required to sustain and develop a world-class higher education offer remain somewhere in the future.

    At times of great challenge, it is difficult to look beyond the immediate problems, the in-your-face issues which just have to be addressed, or there might be no future. Higher Education institutions should be well-placed to take longer-term views of everything and not be distracted by temporary turbulence. Many have been around for centuries in one form or another and have found ways to survive even when times were really, really tough. And yet it does feel that in common with just about every other organisation, HEIs are focused very much on the short term.

    Planning the long game

    However, so much in an HEI has to be viewed as long-term. Decisions around the development of the estate, research priorities, student recruitment and fundraising all require plans and commitment to sustained investment over the years.

    Whilst strategic planning is often the subject of cynicism or even mockery in HEIs and strategies are easily critiqued as being very similar, they serve a really important purpose in drawing the institutional community’s attention to the need to consider the components of the long-term success of the enterprise. Strategic plans also provide a framework for decision-making and a set of markers to ensure that the long term is not forgotten in all of the current noise and turbulence. This feels more important now, given societal trends of focusing only on the immediate issues and the current challenges facing the sector.

    Cathedral thinking

    HEIs have all the ingredients to ensure they balance short-term needs and longer-term priorities. The nature of education and research dictates a different perspective. Private sector companies frequently beat themselves up about this kind of thing and try to find ways to move away from a model which demands a relentless focus on short term profitability at the expense of long-term success.

    The idea of cathedral thinking, of delivering for future generations rather than just the current shareholders, has gained some purchase recently as companies have sought to develop a sense of purpose beyond just profit and be clearer with their investors what the long-term plan is. They have also sought to clarify longer-term goals and measure progress towards them whilst developing a culture which is focused on the long term. Universities and colleges are here already.

    The worry is, though that they are being pushed in the other direction, towards the short term rather than the more distant future. Indeed, governing bodies are often dissatisfied with the kind of key performance indicators that institutions generate, which are inherently longer-term. Most of them change on an annual basis at best, and some of them, such as the Research Excellent Framework or Teaching Excellence Framework outcomes, are only reported over a much longer timescale.

    As an aside, one of the important examples of taking a long-term view is in the appointment of staff. Careful and considered appointments are fundamentally long-term decisions. Many years ago when I worked at the University of Warwick, the ethos in appointing new administrators was very much about the long term. This was articulated, quaintly as it now seems, as ‘do they have a registrar’s baton in their knapsack?’ but the long-term view was clear in relation to the potential of appointees.

    Universities and colleges should be really good at this. Not only is the fundamental service offered a long-term one, but everyone spends ages every few years developing strategic plans, which are just that, plans setting out the strategic, long-term ambitions for the university. These are usually the product of substantial dialogue across the institution and with governing bodies and external stakeholders.

    Planning and punching

    As Mike Tyson famously said when asked whether he was worried about the plan Evander Holyfield was said to have for their forthcoming fight: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ It’s not a hugely original comment, even in boxing, and echoes the old military adage that ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy.’ Finding a way both to respond to the immediate shock or issue and to consider the actions which will serve best for long term success is challenging. But it is essential if everything is not to be about just dealing with what is in your face (literally or metaphorically) right now and that your plans can be flexed to cope with the new reality.

    HEIs have to take a long-term view, but that is difficult when governments struggle to see beyond the next stage in the current election cycle. This is the dirty and mucky nature of politics described by Hillman. To ensure long-term certainty, universities and colleges ultimately have to take more into their own hands. This means a more vigorous defence of institutional autonomy while at the same time engaging with government priorities. It also means finding new ways to collaborate and to push back against the tide of excessive and burdensome regulation. Above all, though, it means taking the long-term view – cathedralic higher education.

    Source link

  • The Timpson university – HEPI

    The Timpson university – HEPI

    • By Richard Brabner, Executive chair of the UPP Foundation and Director of ESG at UPP.
    • Richard is a guest on today’s My Imaginary University podcast with Paul Greatrix, in which he cites James Timpson as one of the inspirations behind his imaginary university. To coincide with the podcast, Richard has penned a review of James Timpson’s book, The Happy Index: Lessons in Upside-Down Management.

    You’re not supposed to have heroes at 40, or at least not admit to as much in the august pages of the HEPI blog. But here’s my confession. I have two and they are both called James.

    The first – James (Jimmy) Anderson, England’s greatest living sportsperson – isn’t relevant for the blog (although surely he deserves recognition from our great universities in the North West?). Instead this blog is about the other James – James Timpson – until recently CEO of Timpson Group and now Lord Timpson, Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending.

    James Timpson is best known for the recruitment of former prisoners, with ex-offenders comprising around 10% of his company’s workforce at any one time. As his journey of employing ex-offenders developed, it led him to become a national figure – championing not just jobs for ex-offenders but prison reform. In 2016, he became the chairman of the Prison Reform Trust, founded the Employment Advisory Board network across the prison estate and, after the general election, became one of the Government’s most eye-catching appointments as the Minister of State responsible for all of this.

    It is his approach as a CEO, though, which offers an interesting perspective for higher education leaders. Not only is the business known for its recruitment policies but for many other progressive measures. He wouldn’t describe it as such, but James Timpson is a business leader known for putting social purpose into action.

    He would steer clear from using the term social value, or the increasingly common ‘purpose-led business’, because he finds corporate jargon maddening. This is one of the many lessons he shares in his book, which offers advice to leaders and would-be leaders on how to create a thriving organisation ‘that puts people first.’ The book – published before he became a Minister – is structured in eight chapters (or, as he calls them, lessons) with various interesting observations included in each. For this blog, however, I have pulled out three key themes which permeate through the book and are highly relevant to our sector.

    1. Happy colleagues = happy students

    University-employee relations are often fraught with tensions and have been riddled with industrial action in recent years – so could a key-cutting business offer a better way forward?  

    We’ve seen the transformative power of treating colleagues with kindness and respect, which then extends to how teams interact with customers. It’s a virtuous circle that can make our shops, and indeed all places of customer service, better for everyone involved.

    The quote above might come across a stating the bleeding obvious or even a little saccharine without the rest of the chapter it is written in, but it is important to put cynicism aside here, because throughout the book – and I would argue its number one focus – is to foster the right colleague experience.

    The idea of focussing on the colleague experience in an era of redundancies and ‘cost transformation’ may be too culturally difficult or simply inauthentic for our sector. But I would argue that the present circumstances make it even more important. At the heart of Timpson’s approach is a very human and empathetic one which respects colleagues’ individual circumstances rather than one which relies on policies and processes.

    Timpson has a Director of Happiness (again, please hold off on your cynicism) whose job revolves around providing support to colleagues confronting crises or challenges in their professional or personal lives. This person helps organise funerals, helps colleagues find somewhere to live and can even unlock financial support when necessary. Whether it is physical fitness, financial wellbeing or mental health, Timpson also offers a comprehensive package of welfare support for employees. Shouldn’t we do this too?

    Strong workplace benefits add to the positive colleague experience. This is not unusual for universities; academics and professional services tend to have great annual leave entitlements and exceptional pensions (compared to the private sector), but again, what comes through from reading The Happy Index is the human and empathetic element to their approach. They offer extra days off for milestones – a grandchild’s birthday or a school concert. They provide chauffeur-driven cars for an employee’s wedding, and they own 19 holiday homes dotted across the UK for Timpson’s colleagues to use for free.

    Much of this approach isn’t new or revolutionary, there are clear similarities with the 19th century quaker businesses, or Percival Perry’s policy of ‘high wages, reduced hours, and extensive corporate welfare’[1] for running Ford’s first factories in the UK. Yet, in an era of private equity financialisation, it is all too rare in the modern age. When Governments talk about universities learning from the private sector it is the likes of Timpson they should be referring to.

    2. Focus and simplicity

    Timpson’s human approach to the colleague experience is aided by simplicity – a value which cuts across the eight lessons in the book. When he writes about data, he says that leaders can become overly reliant on it and lose sight of what really matters. There are only four pieces of data James Timpson really cares about. Daily sales figures, customer service scores, cash flow – and what he describes as The Happy Index. This is a survey they regularly run and track with all colleagues, which asks one simple question: ‘On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you with the support you get from your team?’.

    If Timpson is right in his view that ‘the way colleagues feel reflects the way our customers will feel’, wouldn’t it be fascinating to see if this correlates to higher education? Perhaps universities could post this question each Friday via an app (not dissimilar to innovations like Teacher Tapp) to track colleague satisfaction and then correlate it with student experience data.

    Another relevant piece of advice is to avoid ‘entrepreneuritis’. Timpson says this is an area he struggles with as it is common for entrepreneurs to think they can venture into any business and make it thrive. Yet the pitfalls are as large as the opportunities. This reminded me of much of the evidence for the UPP Foundation Civic University Commission, where we found a huge amount of positive activity, but rarely was it strategic and connected to the needs of the city or region.

    The civic arena won’t be the only part of the university where our sector has to grapple with entrepreneuritis, but fortunately, Timpson offers some common-sense advice for how to test whether diversification is worth the investment, time and effort, based on three questions:

    Will it benefit the company, will the company fit into our culture, and is it going to be more work than it’s worth?

    All of these can be adapted for higher education.

    3. Giving back to get more

    The third theme brings us back to what Timpson is best known for. A ‘Timpson University’ would really lean into progressive recruitment for both academics and professional services colleagues, as well as adopt some of the most creative and impactful social value programmes in the private and public sectors. This shouldn’t be regarded as an act of charity. This is very much enlightened self-interest – James Timpson says that ‘returning citizens are often the most dedicated, honest and hardworking colleagues we can find’. A recruitment policy for colleagues which looks at supporting the most disadvantaged – ex-offenders, people who have suffered homelessness or who are care-experienced; alongside local recruitment (as some universities already do), which targets the poorest neighbourhoods in the region, could be transformational. The additional opportunity for a university, unlike a shoe repair shop, is the symbiotic relationship this approach could have with its widening participation strategy.

    Many universities have programmes to support disadvantaged people into employment, but I’m not sure any are as sophisticated or impressive as Timpson’s. There are clearly challenges, but the book is at its best when it details the journey the business has been through and some of the ways to successfully manage ex-offenders – unsurprisingly, the human approach and a culture which embraces kindness and the support and guidance of colleagues is critical.

    James Timpson’s book is a fascinating insight into running a successful business the right way. It really does show the art of the possible in terms of doing good while making a profit. But there are three weaknesses in a largely excellent read. Pulled together from a collection of Sunday Times articles, at times it can suffer from a lack of coherence. It is quite amusing, for example, to read about the importance of returning to the office on page 160 while finding out about the long-term potential of remote work on page 166. There’s also a little too much positive spin throughout the book. In the section about entrepreneuritis and diversifying income streams all of his examples ended up being successful. It would have been an even better read if he offered examples of real failure. I would have also liked to read more about his views on how the nature of business ownership impacts social value, something which should be explored in greater depth.  

    These are minor criticisms, however. The book offers excellent advice for leaders in any sector – even our universities – on the way to run a successful organisation in the 21st Century.

    [1] Kit Kowol: Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

    Source link

  • Make Universities Great Again – HEPI

    Make Universities Great Again – HEPI

    ***Join HEPI and Jisc at 2pm next Monday, 27 January for a webinar on ‘Competition or collaboration’ in the higher education sector: you can register here.***

    On the day that Donald Trump is inaugurated as US President for the second time, with JD Vance as his Vice-President, HEPI Director of Partnerships Lucy Haire reviews Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy – and asks what it can teach us about his attitudes to universities.

    It is not a new publication, but it has taken on new significance. JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was published in 2016, well before anyone had an inkling that the author would be the US Vice-President nine years later. I read this autobiography of Vance’s youth to try to better understand one of the most powerful men in the world. 

    Five things that saved JD Vance

    The basic story of the first thirty or so years of Vance’s life reflects a challenging upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, a community in economic decline. Born to a mother struggling with addiction, Vance grew up amid instability, surrounded by school dropouts, joblessness and crime.

    Vance attributes his escape from a stricken trajectory to five main themes.

    First, his steadfast grandparents,  especially ‘Mamaw’ who eventually raised him.

    Second, the US Marines, which instilled discipline.

    Third, his girlfriend and future wife, Usha, who refined his social skills.

    Fourth, his own grit and drive.

    Fifth, universities, of which JD Vance attended two. 

    He says of Ohio State University:

    Ohio State’s main campus in Columbus is about a hundred miles from Middletown… Columbus felt like an urban paradise. It was (and remains) one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, powered in large part by the bustling university that was now my home. OSU grads were starting businesses, historic buildings were being converted into new restaurants and bars, and even the worst neighbourhoods seemed to be undergoing revitalization.

    This passage could be taken straight from the pages of a US equivalent of UPP Foundation’s excellent Kerslake Collection on the economic and social benefits that universities have on their local communities. It chimes entirely with the sentiment in the UK’s Secretary of State for Education, Bridgit Phillipson’s recent letter to UK universities. 

    Vance explains how the majority of his education was paid for by the G.I. Bill, a US law that provides a range of benefits for veterans. Yet he still had to take on three jobs to pay for his living costs, a scenario which we know has become increasingly common in the UK. HEPI’s seminal report, the Student Minimum Income Standard, produced with the support of Technology1 in spring 2024, showed that student maintenance loans now fall well below what students actually need to live on. Students therefore have to look elsewhere for support. HEPI and AdvanceHE’s long-running annual Student Academic Experience Survey showed that for the first time in 2024, the majority of students in the UK now take on paid work to make ends meet.   

    Vance and his grandmother’s navigation of the financial aid forms highlighted their unfamiliarity with university bureaucratic processes, a case-study in inclusive admissions.

    I had puzzled through those financial aid forms with Mamaw … arguing about whether to list her as Mom or as my ‘parent/guardian’. We had worried that unless I somehow obtained and submitted the financial information of Bob Hamel (my legal father), I’d be guilty of fraud. The whole experience had made both of us painfully aware of how unfamiliar we were with the outside world.

    Furthermore, Vance discusses that, as a US Marine veteran, he was a mature student at Ohio State, so a few years older than most classmates. Some irritated him with their lack of real-world experience; one disparaged soldiers deployed to Iraq, where Vance had served. Vance decided that he wanted to accelerate his studies and arranged to fast-track his course so that he could graduate in just under two years. 

    This serves as a reminder about the challenges of ensuring that university classes are inclusive and accommodate diverse students. It also touches on the concept of fast-track degrees which remain quite rare in the UK. 

    Vance’s declared thinking about which law school to choose after Ohio provides still more food for thought for widening participation professionals. He didn’t consider Yale, Stanford or Harvard at first, the ‘mythical top three’, assuming he didn’t stand a chance of acceptance. But he changed his mind when he heard about a new law graduate hailing not from the ‘top three’ forced to wait tables for lack of other opportunities.

    Vance still would not try for Stanford as it required him to obtain a personal sign-off from the Dean at Ohio State which he dared not request. He got into Yale where he clearly acquired imposter syndrome and conflicting identities: was he an Ivy League student or Hillbilly kid? He was unnerved by the sense of entitlement among his mainly upper-middle-class peers, by some snobbery among the academics and by the extensive networks his fellow students could tap into when it mattered.

    He is nevertheless very appreciative of the whole experience, revelling in the stellar roster of famous visiting speakers, imposing architecture and the chance to edit the Yale Law Journal. He held his own academically, was taken under the wing of Professor Amy Chua and fell in love with one upper-middle-class student, Usha, his future wife. There are pages of his Yalie reflections on educational, economic and cultural upward mobility which foretell his move into politics.     

    I did not expect to find so many insights into the structure, funding and culture of the higher education system in this book. Some reviewers of Hillbilly Elegy say that it is not a completely true nor fair account of JD Vance’s experiences, that it over-emphasises the role of personal grit and determination in facilitating upward mobility, and that much of it is at odds with sentiments that Vance has expressed more recently. Nevertheless, if Vance is encouraging us to value higher education, recognize its crucial role for individuals and communities and to strive to get its systems and culture right for those with challenging backgrounds, then that is all to the good. Deep down, Vance knows that universities will help to Make America Great Again.

    For more information about the US university system, take a look at this recent HEPI report supported by the Richmond American University London.

    Source link