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Ofqual holding back information

Ofqual has responded to an FOI request from TEFS this week. They held a staggering twenty-nine board meetings since March. Despite promising the Parliamentary Education Committee over a month ago they would publish the minutes “shortly” after their meeting on 16th September, they are still not able to do so. They cite “exemption for information that is intended to be published in the future” for minutes that are in the “process of being approved for publication” . More concerning is they are also citing exemption under the “Public Interest Test”. This means they might not be published, and Ofqual will open themselves up to legal challenges. If both the Department for Education and Ofqual are prevented from being more open, then public interest will lie shattered on the floor and lessons will not be learned. Ofqual finally responded to the TEFS Freedom of Information (FOI) request to publish the minutes of its board meetings on Tuesday. It should have been replied to by 17th Sept...

Higher Education and the ‘intelligent plumbers’ theory

A common tactic when found out is to divert attention elsewhere. The release of student data from 2018/19 by the Department for Education (DfE) yesterday, ‘Widening participation in higher education: 2020’ and ‘Statistics: further education and skills’ tells the same sorry tale of a wide gap in access to universities between the most and least advantaged students. To divert attention from these stark facts in advance, the government used a diversionary tactic by attacking the effectiveness of universities and thus pointing the blame for poor social mobility someplace else. Advocating improvements in further education, something cut back by the same regime for years, hides the real intention. It seems that class divisions will be further exacerbated and any concession to universities fuelling improved social mobility has been abandoned. But the flawed theory is that at least the elite rulers will get access to intelligent plumbers . Three years ago, I heard a leading ‘You...

Research and Teaching: The price of researchers not teaching

Has the emphasis on research and REF damaged the teaching and support for students by front-line academic staff? "Your teaching is trivial, anyone can do it”. After 35 years of academic life as a scientist teaching Microbiology and Biochemistry in a Russell Group university, this is exactly what a ‘senior’ manager told me as I negotiated my ‘smooth’ career exit when I decided to retire early. I left at the end of 2016 after spending a year working part-time whilst winding down my research group. I offered to continue with some teaching over that time simply to help out colleagues. But that was the response to my offer and my teaching ended more abruptly than expected in the summer of 2015. How had things come to this? The remark was probably a careless throw away comment but it was made by someone more ‘senior’ to me who had comparatively little experience of teaching undergraduate students. It betrayed an attitude that had been gaining ground for some time. I ...

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