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The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Blog

The HEPI Blog aims to make brief, incisive contributions to the higher education policy landscape. It is circulated to our subscribers and published online. We welcome guest submissions, which should follow our Instructions for Blog Authors. Submissions should be sent to our Blog Editor, Josh Freeman, at [email protected].

  • What does Pearson’s second Global Learner Survey tell us?

    14 August 2020 by Gary Gates

    This guest blog has been provided by Dr Gary Gates, Senior Vice President of Pearson – UK Higher Education and Pearson VUE. Pearson is the world’s learning company providing content, assessment and digital online services to learners, educational institutions, employers, governments and other partners globally. This week Pearson released its second…

  • A teachable moment for Initial Teacher Education?

    13 August 2020 by Professor Rama Thirunamachandran

    This guest blog has been kindly contributed by Professor Rama Thirunamachandran, Chair of MillionPlus, The Association for Modern Universities, and the Vice-Chancellor of Canterbury Christ Church University. There is no area of our lives that has not in some way been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the education sector,…

  • The Great CAG Car Crash – What Went Wrong?

    12 August 2020 by Dennis Sherwood

    This blog is the latest in a series by Dennis Sherwood, who has been tracking the 2020 results round for HEPI. As a result of the public uproar following the ‘adjusting down’ of around 124,000 centre assessment grades (CAGs) – about one-quarter of all grades submitted – Scotland’s Education Secretary, John Swinney, has now binned ‘statistical standardisation”…

  • Why the answer to many questions this week will be 97%

    11 August 2020 by Nick Hillman

    How many people attend higher education has been a lively political issue for decades – the topic of many official white papers and green papers, ministerial and prime ministerial speeches as well as HEPI publications. In general, politicians in power have tended to support expansion – for example: in the…

  • A-Levels 2020: what students and parents need to know

    10 August 2020 by Rob Cuthbert

    This blog was kindly contributed by Rob Cuthbert, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England. You can find Rob on Twitter @RobCuthbert. As A-Level results day (Thursday, 13 August) looms, there is still widespread misunderstanding among students and parents about how grades have been determined.…

  • Hong Kong University students’ online learning experiences under the Covid-19 pandemic

    3 August 2020 by Weiyan Xiong, Jin Jiang, & Ka Ho Mok

    This blog was kindly contributed by a team of researchers at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. They are Weiyan Xiong, Assistant Professor (Research), Jin Jiang, Assistant Professor (Research), and Ka Ho Mok, Chair Professor of Comparative Policy. Online Learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, online…