We believe we have an effective system, with the Prevent duty built into our culture of wellbeing. The support of the students’ union has been fundamental, stimulating lots of positive engagement from students. But it will continue to take careful management, monitoring and further refinement to ensure this success continues. More...

The most immediate recruitment challenge for HEIs? No, not Brexit but IT roles, finds the Higher Education Workforce Survey 2017.
In the aftermath of the UK’s historic decision to leave the European Union, it might be expected that Brexit would dominate the results of an in-depth report on recruitment and retention in higher education. More...

The latest data released by HEFCE tells us that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students, and students of faith, exist in enough numbers that we can – for the first time – report reliable statistics at a national level.
The positive significance of this news is that an increasing number of students trust their institutions to tell them they exist and that they identify differently – with different life experiences, expectations and needs. More...

Are smaller employers who don’t pay the apprenticeship levy turning away – just as the new procurement for these apprenticeships is re-launched?
No sipping of Pina Coladas by the pool for those of us working on apprenticeships this August. Instead the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) launched a new procurement exercise on Friday for apprenticeships in non-levy employers, with a bid deadline of early September. More...

A recent report from Student Minds recommends training accommodation staff to support mental health difficulties, as part of a whole-university approach to student and staff wellbeing.
We also know that approximately 29 per cent of students experience clinical levels of psychological distress, associated with increased risk of anxiety, depression, substance use, and personality disorders. More...

The aim was to support effective implementation of Prevent and foster continuous improvement. Because we expect universities and colleges to carry out their Prevent duty in proportion to their own context, the workshops did not dictate ‘best practice’. Instead, they gave providers an opportunity to network with colleagues with similar responsibilities, to share effective practice, and identify areas where further support and/or guidance would be beneficial. More...

Towards the end of our recent REF consultation, I blogged about the difficult question of how ‘research-active’ status could be determined, or, as the Stern Review put it, “who has a significant responsibility for research”. More...

Our REF consultation had 44 questions. The one provoking the most polarised and contentious responses concerned the Stern proposal that outputs should not be portable. Stern proposed that when staff move from one institution to another the credit for outputs they have authored should not move with them. Previously outputs were characterised as ‘portable’. More...

Some local economies are increasingly left behind. Doing nothing about it is not an option.
The growing risks and the rising political concerns for places and people ‘left behind’ are very evident in government policy, especially in the Industrial Strategy Green Paper. More...

Almost a third of academic staff in English universities come from outside the UK. The highest number of foreign nationals in the sector now come from Italy following large increases over the last four years.
The latest data on staff employed at English universities shows that there were 168,000 academic staff employed in 2015-16.  This comes as a result of an increase of around 8.7 per cent since 2012-13. More...