Monday 30th April 2012 - Eight years on the Executive

I have just reached a particular milestone.  I have just completed eight years as a PVC.  It was on 1 May 2004 that I first attended a meeting of the Senior Management Group (as it then was) and took over most of the functions of the PVC Learning and Teaching. I had been scheduled to take up the role on 1 August, but my predecessor (Phil Jones, now VC at Hallam) had just been appointed to the Deputy VC role at Durham and the then Vice-Chancellor (Bob Boucher) did not feel it was a good idea to retain him on the executive group, or in major decision-making roles.  I was therefore thrust into office three months early.  Phil took me out to lunch to talk through diary commitments, and the Vice-Chancellor took a few minutes to give me the flavour of how he ran SMG - and that was it.  I received no further training for the role, and it wasn't until a year later when I went on a week's course run by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education that I really got the feel of the potential for taking a leader role and how one might go about it.

This reflection is of relevance because later this week I will be going along to share my views on leadership and leadership challenges with a group of senior colleagues from across the university, from professional services as well as from academic departments, who are taking part in the Sheffield Leader 4 scheme - specifically designed to start the development of the skills to take up head of department or other leadership roles in the future.  From work with previous cohorts on this programme, I recognise that they will be better placed for the sort of new role I took on in May 2004 than I was at the time.

Over the last day or two I have mentioned my anniversary to a number of people.  Their reactions have varied: 'you must have been very naughty to get such a life sentence', 'is it really that long ago: it seems like only yesterday,' 'when are you stopping?'  Many of these comments have been tinged with a certain surprise that anyone should want to do the job so long. (It may also. of course, be that various people want to hint that I've been doing it too long and OUGHT to go!)  The job is seen as burdensome and trying.  Despite this blog I've been writing for over two years now I guess many people still don't fully comprehend all the activities involved in the role - but more especially all the exciting, moving, humbling and satisfying experiences it brings.  I have done things, met people, been to places over the last 8 years that I would never have dreamed of before I became a PVC. 

And there are occasions when I feel that some of the things I have tried to push forward have actually made a beneficial difference.  And in many ways that's what the payoff for taking on a leadership role should be, at least in my opinion.

Friday 27th April 2012 - Postgraduates and the new fees regime

One of the mysteries of the new fees regime, which won't be clarified until after the first students graduate from it in 2015, is what will happen to postgraduate education.  Will students who know that they have a significant financial contribution to make to their undergraduate education throughout their forthcoming working lives be prepared to take on extra debt (assuming they can get a loan from somewhere) to undertake postgraduate study?  We just don't know the answer to this.  The possible availability of loans is questionable.  At present career development loans are available from a number of banks, but I have heard that they are reviewing the scheme and may withdraw from it.  That would leave two immediate possibilities - to work and save money before undertaking a postgraduate qualification; or to borrow money from family members. The latter would, of course, act against widening participation since many graduates from poorer backgrounds would not be able to draw on the 'Bank of Mum and Dad'.  The former would lead to a change in the nature of the postgraduate population - with an increase in older students returning to study, and with a possible increase in demands for part-time modes of delivery so that study can be matched with work. 

The government is starting to wake up to possible difficulties over postgraduate education in the future.  The funding council has reversed, temporarily for the moment, some of its cuts to the provision of fee support for postgraduates. There is a new rhetoric developing around 'we need to think about postgraduates.'  The issue is in two parts - the first concerns fees and the second concerns maintenance.  Within the university world we tend to think more about fees. But in reality it is the cost of maintaining oneself as a postgraduate student that is much more important to the individual since that represents a higher proportion of the total expenses for the year.  That could change. If all universities pushed their postgraduate fees up to match those charged for undergraduates then the fee would rise to around half of the total cost of the year.

But where might maintenance support come from in the future? The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) seems keenly interested in a scheme being put forward by Tim Leunig at the policy think-tank Centre Forum (and also a lecturer at the LSE) whereby a flat-rate maintenance loan would be made available with repayments starting on completion of the course and on a scale that is different from the generous terms of the undergraduate maintenance arrangements.  Whether the finance is forwarded by the Treasury or by banks, there is a need for a guarantee of repayment.  (It is worth remembering that the calculations on undergraduate support suggest that between 30 and 40% of fee and maintenance loan sums will not be repaid.)  The latest suggestion seems to be that universities might act as the guarantors for their own students.  If a student cannot repay the loan (for instance because of unemployment) then the university would be asked to do so.

This would be a recipe for an extremely cautious approach to the support of postgraduate education.  Universities might only wish to support students taking a small range of courses where the immediate graduate premium (the increase in salary) is significant and where entering employment is the norm.  In addition they might only be willing to support the most 'conventional' of students and thus leave on one side applications from those whose entry into the postgraduate labour market may be more complex - for example for reasons of disability or of family responsibilities.

So there are many questions about the future of postgraduate education.  Today I have been in discussions about setting up a significant project to consider a number of key angles of the issue.

Thursday 19th April 2012 - Graduates into school-teaching

At one time it seemed straightforward to go from a first degree into a secondary school teaching career.  Sometime during their final year, students applied for a place on a CertEd (later PGCE) course at their own or another university.  After graduation they went on to that, and then they became teachers.

It has become much more complicated recently, and it seems about to become even more dsifficult to comprehend.  We have for some years had 'Teach First' which produces a different balance between the school placement and the acacdemic learning.  Financial incentives to try to get the best graduates into teaching in subjects such as Science and Maths also changed the previous equality in treatment of students entering different disciplinary areas of the profession.  At the same time the funding to universities for teacher training started to be eroded.  Some years ago the Institute of Education in London threatened to pull out of initial teacher training because the finances didn't stack up, and Sheffield joined in the campaign that was then partly successful in raising the resourcing level. From 2012 onwards, of course, students taking a PGCE will be subject to the £9k fee because - for reasons I have never understood - the PGCE is regarded as equivalent to an undergraduate-level qualification and public funding for it is being cut, to be replaced by student fee.  A number of universities have stopped PGCE training in certain subjects, so the choice of institutions to train at is often very limited.  When I was Head of Economics I observed that there was little encouragement to train to teach the subject in schools for anyone graduating from Sheffield, the LSE or Oxford when the only two GCSE providers in Economics were in very poorly-ranked post-92 universities.

There now seems to be a belief in certain circles that studying how to become a teacher in a university context (plus placements) has little value. Instead all the training should be done on the job.  Imagine the same argument being applied to surgery, general practice, or architecture.  I for one would much rather be treated by a doctor who has been trained through a combination of education in anatomy and physiology alongside supervised obesrvation and practice, rather than one who had simply been sent along to learn by watching and doing.

But today I was involved in a meeting about 'School Direct', a new way of training new teachers.  They will be recruited to a school - indeed to a school which intends to employ them in the longer term.  They will not come to the university, or be mentored from the university.  They will be supervised entirely within the school. They will not meet educational researchers, or learn about the new developments in thinking about the delivery of their discipline.  And yet there is still a nod in the direction of universities in the scheme because although these individuals will not obtain any qualification whatsoever from their training period (no PGCE, no CertEd, no MA), universities are being asked to register them.  They will be on our books in some way but for a non-qualification, with no content provided by the university, no assessment undertaken by us, and no degree award at the end.  The university will have virtually no contact with these 'students': instead it will in some way supervise the way in which the performance of these trainees is being assessed in the schools in which they are working. 

What a contrast with various mainland European systems that I know - where to become a specialist secondary school teacher a student moves onto a specific degree track for 2 or even 3 years for the integration of subject knowledge with the development of expertise in pedagogy.