Nothing particularly interesting

Just a wee detour - a small coffee-break from my current obsession with marking, moderating and doing endless piles of paperwork - to flag up Jo Johnson's speech in which he outlined his plans for the future of higher education . I don't think this necessarily contained many surprises - except a personal one for me, in that I am struggling to find anything that I particularly disagree with.  Perhaps I am just not informed enough, but from what I can see these are the highlights:

Cambridge University students: Spot the difference... A new government report has shown a small drop in the % gap between HE students from poor social backgrounds, and those from more privileged backgrounds. This has been reported by the Times Higher Ed. as exposing access problems for the poorest students - implying (although not going so far as to actually declare) that this constitutes a failure in government policies aimed at increasing widening participation in HE. This is a little bit unfair.  The gap, which was a difference of 19% in 2005/6 dropped to a meagre 18% in 2010/11 - which suggests an ever-so small increase in the inclusiveness of HE access.  Nothing to get too excited about though, particularly as the report shows a 1% reduction of widening participation in the UK's most selective HE institutions in that same period (from 25% to 24%).

Today I am on my way to a meeting with the Higher Education Academy about their Paul Hamlyn Foundation -funded ‘ Change Programme ’. This programme is a response to the ‘What Works?’ report, that highlighted the centrality of student engagement and belonging to student retention and achievement. The premise of the project, as far as I can make out, is to support and coordinate institutional research which could lead to interventions addressing the issues highlighted by the report.  These issues highlight the importance of increasing student 'belonging' to student success and retention.  They further highlight the need to identify effective strategies for increasing student engagement.  You can read a summary of the report findings here . My institution is the only Further Education College involved in the project, despite the sector being a major provider of Higher Education in the UK. As Eve Rapley (2012) has shown : HE in FE is a burgeoning sub-secto...