The results of this year’s school exams will be announced in a few weeks’ time. But as recently reported in the TES, Times and Telegraph, different examiners can legitimately give the same script different marks. As a consequence, of the more than 6 million grades to be awarded this August,…
Today’s guest blog, from Dr Greg Walker, CEO of MillionPlus, is a full and thoughtful critique of the Augar review, and we urge people to read it carefully. As someone with experience with independent reviews of higher education, I understand the energy and effort that panel members and officials put…
A guest blog kindly contributed by Paul Woodgates, at PA Consulting It’s hard to remember a time when universities faced so many unknowns. Will the Augar Report recommendations ever become reality? How much money will the sector have? What will Brexit mean? Will the economy nosedive? What kind of government…
A spotlight is currently being shone on university governors, with changes in regulations leading to increased expectations on the role that they play. These changes raise questions about whether the right skills are being represented. University boards also continue to lack diversity in their membership. It is for these reasons…
The Higher Education Policy Institute has published a new report on whether university governors should be paid. Payment for university governors? A discussion paper (HEPI Report 118) by Alison Wheaton looks at practice in other sectors, including the NHS, housing associations and companies, as well as practice abroad. She argues…
At a recent HEPI roundtable on the future for global research the focus of discussion was the major recent study by Elsevier, produced in partnership with Ipsos Mori, which set out three future research scenarios – Brave open world, Tech titans, and Eastern ascendance – and explored how they could…
My response to last week’s National Student Survey results focused on question 26, which is generally ignored by everyone but is actually the question which always seems to score the lowest results of all. It is about the utility of student unions. It is, admittedly, an odd question that implies…
This is a guest blog from Dr Richard Budd, from the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation (CHERE) at Lancaster University. The National Student Survey (NSS) has supposedly tracked the quality of undergraduate provision across the UK since 2005. It is apposite that universities are encouraged to pay attention…
MillionPlus has been at the forefront of organisations calling for the Level 4 and 5 education space in England to be revived as an outcome of the Augar process and it is pleasing to see this agenda picked up in the report. These important qualifications, such as Foundation degrees or…
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Wonkhe’s conference on Augar, in the final session of the day, alongside Rachel Wolf, on the politics of the report. Here are my remarks. On the day the Augar report appeared, I said on the radio that it felt like…