News

In a new report for the Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk), Mary Curnock Cook, the former Chief Executive of UCAS, says the Government must address six big gaps in technical education policy to raise skills and productivity.

Mary Curnock Cook, the author of Misunderstanding Technical and Professional Education: Six Category Mistakes (HEPI Policy Note 1), said:

‘The success of the British economy, particularly after Brexit, will depend in large part on the quality of technical and professional education. In the past, this has generally been ignored, underpowered and underfunded.

‘Before the recent general election, skills policy was – rightly – placed at the heart of a new industrial strategy. Technical education is now being reorganised into 15 routes matching the main industrial sectors and new technical qualifications, called T-Levels, are being introduced.

‘I’d love to see this new attempt succeed because students and employers would welcome it. But there are some fundamental design flaws that need to be ironed out up front.’

Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said:

‘The Conservative manifesto promised to make British technical education “as prestigious as our world- leading higher education system”. That challenge has proved a particularly big conundrum for British policymakers, bedevilling past administrations.

‘Recent changes provide hope that we can raise our game, but they will not succeed without further improvements. In particular, if the new T-Levels are to be respected by students and employers, they need to be clarified, tweaked and explained.’

Notes for Editors

HEPI Policy Note 1, Misunderstanding Technical and Professional Education: Six Category Mistakes, considers six areas:

Parity of esteem: The new T-Levels are supposed to give technical education the same status as academic education. But they have a different purpose and structure to A-Levels. So they will […]

It was a busy weekend for higher education announcements. First, the Green Party announced a plan to pay off all outstanding student debt on graduates’ behalf. The details were sketchy but there is over £75 billion worth of outstanding debt in England alone. So it is a big policy whichever way you look at it.

The Green Party’s own calculations focus on the annual cost of servicing the debt on graduates’ behalf. They cost the policy at about £14 billion between now and 2022 but claim the long-term cost is ‘more difficult and uncertain to estimate.’

In electoral terms, the danger with such eye-catching announcements is that, while they may appeal to students, they may repel other voters. Non-students may raise questions about a party’s wider economic competence when they choose to spend so much on an area of policy that actually appears to be working rather well. Other voters may also wonder if they will have to pick up the tab.

The second announcement came this morning from the Labour Party. Just a few days ago, they published a manifesto that included the abolition of tuition fees and the reintroduction of maintenance grants. This was their biggest single spending commitment, and is costed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies at £8 billion a year. Now, Labour have apparently offered something even more generous or unaffordable (depending upon your view).

Their latest promise is to abolish fees from this autumn rather than 2018 as originally planned. The Tory Party have been accused of tweaking a manifesto commitment of their own today (on social care), but it is hard to find another similarly-sized spending commitment being made after a manifesto has been published in any past election. For most of the past seven years, the Labour Party has said […]

A new HEPI paper on the past, present and future of teacher training written by Dr John Cater, the Vice Chancellor of Edge Hill University, will be launched at a HEPI conference at King’s College London on Thursday, 27 April 2017. Among the various recommendations is a call to consider replacing bursaries for trainee teachers with a new system of forgivable fees.

John Cater, the author of HEPI Report (95) Whither Teacher Education and Training?, said:
There are worrying signs that the profession is failing to attract enough entrants and failing to retain existing teachers in sufficient numbers and with appropriate specialisms to deliver the revised curriculum to a rapidly increasing school-age population.

This is no longer the time for hackneyed debates about the merits of different types of provision of Initial Teacher Training, which should be judged solely on the quality of provision and the success in recruiting and retaining future teachers.

But it is the time for all stakeholders to work together to ensure that an emerging issue does not manifest itself into a crisis which affects the life chances of a generation.’
Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said:
Policymakers love to meddle in teacher training. In recent times, they have tried to shift the training out of universities and into schools. But the numbers speak for themselves: in every year between 2013 and 2016, teacher recruitment missed its targets. Large sums have been splurged on bursaries for trainee teachers to stem the flow, but without much effect.

We need to stop ignoring the facts. Trainee teachers typically do not want to be at the same chalkface all of the time. Learning how to teach in a university environment – and not just at a single […]

On Thursday, 30th March, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) publishes a new report by Richard Garner, the UK’s longest-serving education correspondent, entitled Return on investment? How universities communicate with the outside world (Occasional Paper 16).

Drawing on over 35 years’ experience at the Independent, the Mirror and the Times Educational Supplement, the author:

recounts initiatives that worked;
reveals how universities can receive more positive coverage; and
shows how the media have changed.

Richard Garner, the author of the report, said:
Higher education is getting more space in the media and there are more outlets of different types. But there is less understanding and knowledge of universities by those who write about them. This is the biggest challenge facing those who are paid to promote the image of the sector but, given the quality of British higher education, it is far from impossible.

While universities do not always help themselves in how they approach the media, I would advise journalists to listen to them. The essence of media relations with the higher education sector is dialogue, not press releases.
Commenting on the report, Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI said:
Media coverage of higher education has exploded while the number of education journalists has shrunk. Bigger university communication teams have taken up the slack, but they could be more responsive to how the media now operate.

Half-cooked stories that don’t resonate with journalists are counter-productive and waste time and money. Yet it is possible to get a fair hearing for our fantastic universities, even on trickier topics, when the stories are interesting, the lessons are clear and the academics are accessible. Above all, not all interesting news has to be bad news.
The report provides a conservative estimate of at least 600 people working in university public relations departments across […]

Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said:

‘Today has proved yet again that Jo Johnson is on course to transform our higher education system. We have needed a new legal framework ever since £9,000 fees came in, but this hasn’t stopped some strong opposition against his plans. After the referendum and then again when the legislation reached the House of Lords, a cacophony of voices called for him to withdraw the Bill.

‘Today’s weighty amendments strengthen, clarify and improve the Bill in all sorts of ways. The House of Lords have done their job. But it would be wrong to see the latest changes as a u-turn because the Government’s main objectives, such as a new Office for Students and the Teaching Excellence Framework, were never really in doubt and are now even more secure.

‘Despite the progress being made, the process of reform does need to continue. The new incentives for offering two-year degrees may need to be matched by more new support for part-time study. We still need to legislate for a better regime for recouping student loans from those who move abroad. The red carpet that the Government should be rolling out for International students remains tightly rolled up.’