The renowned mathematician and codebreaker, Peter Hilton, once said: “Adaptability to change is itself a hallmark of successful education.” Adaptability was central to Hilton’s efforts in deciphering German codes in 1942, and it’s just as important today. The pace of innovation and scale of disruption all around us is accelerating.…
At a time when the UK is having to define and redefine its leadership and influence on the world stage, HEPI’s Soft-Power Index serves as a timely and challenging reminder that quality of leadership matters, and that it matters not just on a national scale, but globally. There are two questions to ask…
The Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk) has published the results of its seventh annual Soft-Power Index. The Index measures the number of serving world leaders (monarchs, presidents and prime ministers) educated at a higher level in countries other than their own. Both the US and the UK are far ahead of every other…
The twentieth anniversary of HEPI merits reflection on the positioning of the UK in the context of changes internationally in higher education. What is particularly striking to me is that throughout the twentieth century and earlier, the UK played a critical role in helping to shape the global and European…
Twelfth-century Northampton was one of the intellectual powerhouses of England. Fuelled by the wealth of the town and a long-standing tradition of teaching, it was by the 1180s well on its way to becoming the first serious university in the country.1 It was so attractive that scholars fleeing problems in…
Introduction The material in this chapter is drawn principally from a research project that I conducted with William Locke and Giulio Marini for the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) on the changing nature of the workforce in UK higher education between 2017 and 2020.1,2 In this research, we sought…
1. Congratulations. You’ve done it. Your schooling has been disrupted in unprecedented ways and you’ve been on the rough end of many disruptive shifts: most obviously, COVID and strikes but also a big crisis in teacher recruitment and retention. Yet you’ve come out the other end and are on the cusp…
At the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee on the 19 April 2023, Sir Paul Nurse, giving evidence about his Review of the Research Landscape, said ‘It has been more or less the same for half a century. I am suggesting – you heard the words – revolution…
Key Stage 5 results day is both an exciting time in schools, and a large logistical undertaking. At Ark, we have 13 sixth forms across London, Birmingham, and Hastings, and more than 1000 Year 13 students, so while the day is full of wonderful stories about student success, it is…
Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom, as the medieval English philosopher Roger Bacon is reported to have said. Bacon’s achievements were such that he was known as ‘Doctor Mirabilis’, and he is widely credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method. Languages, scientific…