The Robbins ‘Higher Education’ report emerged sixty years ago this week (24th October 1963). In the days that followed, its potential impact became apparent and a new age of education in the UK was dawning. A massive expansion of higher…
This week brought a further announcement from the Department for Education that more BTECs were to be unfunded. It marks the continuation of a policy to replace all Applied General Qualifications or AGQs that overlap with the new T-levels. In…
Most students are embedded in their new term and hope they can do well. Those entering university first year will be affected by the new student loan and funding regime. It will be very expensive for many of them in…
When the glitter finally settles after this year’s Labour Party Conference, the enormity of what lies ahead will start to sink in. The UK finances will not provide much in the way of leeway as a “Labour government will not…
Now that the dust has settled on the Conservative Party Conference, we are all trying to take in the full implications of what was announced. On universities and equal opportunity, I was prepared for disappointment. Sure enough, the conference did…
The final report (pdf) on the Office for Students (OfS) of the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee reads like an end-of-term school report. Sent out earlier last month, the OfS appeared as an errant pupil who is disruptive…
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The inscription on the Statue of Liberty might have some resonance for UK universities about to enter another academic year. Too many students will have to endure…
The problems that arose concerning Reinforced Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (RAAC) last week are alarming as more schools and many more buildings may be implicated. Alarming though this is, it is also a serious symptom of a fundamental malaise in how…
The words in the image resonate from twenty years ago. They are by the prolific and controversial talent, Marshall Mathers. Seamus Heaney, the 1995 Nobel prize for literature recipient praised his work with, “He has created a sense of what…
The GSCE results emerge tomorrow to a very nervous cohort of sixteen-year-old students. They have endured a difficult time with their education interrupted by lockdowns and sometimes patchy online learning. The examinations earlier this summer came as a big shock…
