John Claughton, former Chief Master of King Edward’s School, Birmingham offers some reflections on Megan Bowler’s recent report on the crisis in modern languages. Nestor, the king of sandy Pylos, is the grand old man of The Iliad. He has seen the passing of two generations of mankind and is…
This guest blog has been kindly contributed by John Plowright, a former History teacher in an independent school and the author of various History textbooks, who has advised hundreds of pupils on their admission to higher education, including Oxbridge. Oxbridge, despite the best endeavours to widen access by the two…
This blog was kindly contributed by Dr John Butcher, Associate Director at The Open University . Emerging from the Christmas break into a new decade, I have been struck by the amount of looking back that has filled our media. Consequently, I too have been reflecting, this time on a…
Over the Christmas and new year period, there were more stories about building a UK ARPA, based on the US DARPA, which stands for Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. Whether or not this is a good idea as a way of distributing research funding, and it may well be, has…
A little controversy At HEPI, we never set out to be controversial. But sometimes, inadvertently, we are. And never more so in the last year than with Iain Mansfield’s paper on grammar schools. When it came out, exactly a year ago on 10 January 2019, we were told the numbers…
This blog was kindly contributed by Vincenzo Raimo, Visiting Fellow at the University of Reading and Chief Relationship Officer at Unilodgers. There have been a number of really interesting blog posts recently challenging us all to think about what a university experience in the UK might encompass and how it…
This blog was kindly contributed by Kathy Daniels, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor International, Aston University. The government’s announcement of a new graduate route for international students has been met with approval by higher education institutions. However, what does this mean and what responsibilities does it place on the higher education sector?…
There are probably lots of issues related to higher education policymaking that we don’t talk enough about. But, for me, the prime one is life expectancy. It links to almost everything. Yet, aside from the consequences for staff pensions, we seemingly never talk about it. Even on pensions, we talk…
The end of a decade offers the chance to reflect on how higher education policy has changed in the past and where it will go in the future. Higher education has been through a turbulent time in recent years and there is no reason to assume the 2020s will be…
This blog was kindly contributed by Beka Avery, NCOP Pathways Project Manager. As a higher education outreach practitioner, I try to keep up with the latest research, data and academic insights our field; it is interesting and it is important. But day-to-day I am faced with the challenge and the…