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As part of our CPD Autumn 2020 programme, we are hosting a series of online Race Equity workshops throughout November and December 2020 which are a call to action as they create a space to have conversations about race and changing cultures which NUS/UUK report identifies as one of the five key steps to closing the gap. Visit the Degree Awarding Gap website for more details.

in Events, Narrowing the Gaps, Staff Support.

Starting in November 2020 and working alongside our wider services and events, built on a legacy of expertise in race equality, our EDI Workshops, Diversifying Leadership programme and EDI Conference 2021 aim to offer practical advice, guidance, policy information, frameworks and toolkits to support positive change within institutions in areas such as race equality, challenging privilege, dignity and respect and, ultimately, addressing barriers to career development and progression experienced by minority ethnic staff.

in Events, Narrowing the Gaps, Staff Support, Training & Development.

The Academic Development & Diversity Team are delighted to launch its online Autumn Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme. All the events are free and open to both Academic and Professional Services staff. Key highlights of the CPD programme include: New Race Equity programme Part of our continuing work, introducing staff to key conversations about race...

in Events, Narrowing the Gaps, Online Support, Staff Support, Training & Development.

Here we present a collection of upcoming development sessions and access to online resources from across the University for National Inclusion Week.

in Events, National Inclusion Week.

Racial inequality is pervasive within specific places and institutions. This webinar with New Beings looks as individual racism vs systemic and structural racism and how different components of each interlink. The webinar is being held on Friday 11th September 2020 13:00 - 14:00 BST and is facilitated by Culture Shift whose real-time reporting solution empowers organisations to...

We are hosting a series of online workshops which are a call to action as they create a space to have conversations about race and changing cultures which NUS/UUK report identifies as one of the five key steps to closing the gap. Drawing on a range of sources including existing literature, sector practice and work...

in Uncategorized.

Previous DECI projects that were working towards understanding and narrowing the degree awarding gap in HE informed current departmental initiatives. As the main recommendation of gathered minoritised DECI student voice centred around the "lack of (cultural and racial) awareness around privilege and unconscious bias", an event on departmental level that would address such issues collaboratively...

in Uncategorized.

Guest blog post by Sehrish Tahir, Graduate Intern in Department of Education, Childhood and Inclusion Decolonising the University Symposium The 'Decolonising the University Symposium' was held on 31st May 2019 at Hallam View, Sheffield Hallam University. It was part of initiatives of the Narrowing-the-Gaps team towards addressing the degree awarding gap. The day was initiated...

in Uncategorized.

Liz Austen, Senior Lecturer Research, Evaluation and Student Engagement talks about a recent project capturing student voices through Digital Storytelling.

in Uncategorized.

A guest blog post from four Hallam students, aligning with ACHIEVE in relation to retention, belonging and enhancing digital capabilities!

in Uncategorized.

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As part of our CPD Autumn 2020 programme, we are hosting a series of online Race Equity workshops throughout November and December 2020 which are a call to action as they create a space to have conversations about race and changing cultures which NUS/UUK report identifies as one of the five key steps to closing the gap.

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Lee Birchall MCSD, interior design

Chartered Society of Designers the internationally recognised body for the design profession, providing support and guidance for designers at every stage of their career 'from learning to earning'™.

Designer Talks podcast Ep. 5 Vicki Lovegrove MCSD

Designer Talks asks designers how they do it, why they do it, what makes them tick and what design means to them, hosted by Lefteris Heretakis aCSDf.

01 Recognition

Membership of CSD signals to clients, employers and the design profession internationally that you have been recognised by the leading professional design body as practicing to the highest standards in your specialist design discipline.
Membership

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Lee Birchall MCSD, interior design Chartered Society of Designers the internationally recognised body for the design profession, providing support and guidance for designers at every stage of their career 'from learning to earning'™. Designer Talks podcast Ep.

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We prioritise individual practitioners and small-scale initiatives, including those that are artist-led. YVAN are funded by Arts Council England, through a partnership with The Art House, and are part of the national Contemporary Visual Arts Network.

COVID-19 FUNDING & RESOURCES

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Yorkshire & Humber Visual Arts Network (YVAN)

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We prioritise individual practitioners and small-scale initiatives, including those that are artist-led. YVAN are funded by Arts Council England, through a partnership with The Art House, and are part of the national Contemporary Visual Arts Network. COVID-19 FUNDING & RESOURCES

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With 2020 set to be a momentous year for the UK creative sector, APDIG and the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD) are delighted to host a parliamentary reception to explore current and future issues in the creative education environment. This event will discuss the impact of the General Election on art, media and design teaching, as well as the wider sustainability of the sector.

Held in the Houses of Parliament, the event will current issues for the sector, raising awareness amongst senior policy makers about the likely impact of Government policy on the sustainability of the education and skills ecosystem for creative education.

Through a series of provocations from a variety of perspectives, industry figures and academics will demonstrate the interconnectivity of schools and teacher education, further and higher education frameworks, research environments, and developments within the industrial strategy and creative industries strategy and the impact on current practice, talent pipelines for the creative economy and the vibrancy of Britain's creative capital.

A panel discussion will share perspectives from university, school and industry figures, as well as from invited Government figures. The finalised line-up will be confirmed in January 2020.

The discussion will be followed by an informal networking and drinks reception.

To attend, please RSVP via Eventbrite.

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All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group

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With 2020 set to be a momentous year for the UK creative sector, APDIG and the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD) are delighted to host a parliamentary reception to explore current and future issues in the creative education environment.

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Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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As a result of technological progress and demographic changes, more than six million people in the UK are currently employed in occupations that are likely to change radically or disappear entirely by 2030. Without immediate action, there's a risk these people will be trapped in insecure, low-value, low-pay employment - or worse, forced out of work altogether.

Nesta is involved in a range of research and practical ideas to tackle the challenges presented by the changing labour market: from data-driven careers advice and tools tailored to individual learning needs, to empowering workers with the skills they need for tomorrow and equipping today's children with more resilient skills for a changing jobs market.

Our vision is for a labour market system where information about skills and careers is open and empowering for workers; where technology is harnessed to reduce - not drive - inequalities in access to jobs; and where policies give everyone the power to overcome systemic barriers that stop them participating in good-quality, meaningful work. Our manifesto Precarious to Prepared shares recommendations on how we can bring this vision to life.

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As a result of technological progress and demographic changes, more than six million people in the UK are currently employed in occupations that are likely to change radically or disappear entirely by 2030. Without immediate action, there's a risk these people will be trapped in insecure, low-value, low-pay employment - or worse, forced out of work altogether.

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CHEAD is the representative body for the art and design higher education sector (HE A&D). Its mission is to contribute to the development of the A&D community, its standing and stature as well as its engagement with the outside world.

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CHEAD provides a voice for and on behalf of higher education art and design in the UK four nations advancing knowledge and understanding in the sector and promoting the sector's interests to others. We carry out research, scan the policy horizon, brief our members, facilitate networking opportunities for senior staff from within and outside HE as well as helping to shape higher education art and design policy on our members' behalf. We facilitate specialist internal networks supporting art and design research leaders, Subject Associations, and HE gallery leaders.

Art & design graduates each year

Value of research income in millions

Creative Resilience: Art Adapts

Is this a moment for creative education to re-frame the direction of travel and show a new way forward? Join us to hear how CHEAD members have responded to the COVID-19 challenge that shows how creative education can respond to this new landscape.

A CHEAD Leadership Programme seminar providing key lightening presentations on dealing with the institutional struggle and how to flip from operationally focussed to strategic and the opportunities for delegates to bring current issues in a confidential environment.

As part of its specialist professional networks, CHEAD supports a Research Alliance for research focussed colleagues in the CHEAD membership. The Alliance supports research leadership and develops activities and resources to support researchers in the sector.

It was my first visit to such an event - having only recently been made course leader. I found the experience very valuable, not only in terms of the discussions and presentations but also as a social / networking event. It's good to feel part of a community. The organisation and hospitality was incredibly well organised and welcomed

I have to say I thought the day was excellent - as per usual - each talk sparked many ideas of how we could make significant improvements in Portsmouth. I have decided that these need to be attended by more than one person from my School / Faculty going forward though, and then try and clear the day following to discuss and digest through follow up planning meetings! Thanks again for another excellent day and for all your hard work at CHEAD.

- University of Portsmouth

Group for Learning in Art & Design (GLAD) 23rd Annual Conference Friday 23 April 2021 Calling students, researchers, lecturers, leaders, technical staff & members of professional services teams Call for Proposals for Papers, Workshops & Lightning Talks...

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Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Policy. We would like to update members of the changes we have made to the Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI) policy resulting from the leadership actions of our EDI working group who have been advising our Board of Trustees on...

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CHEAD is issuing a call for applications for the role of CHEAD Research Alliance Strategy Group members for its Research Alliance. Two new Trustees and co-chairs of the Research Alliance, Professor Jake Kaner and Professor Sunil Manghani, were appointed in July 2020....

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Members' Gallery

Higher education art and design sits at the heart of the UK's world leading creative industries. Visit our gallery to view more work produced within CHEAD member institutions.

In addition, we run a network for staff from CHEAD member galleries. Find out more information about the network.

Our reputation is built on world-leading teaching, alongside world-leading research, disseminated in the form of publications, exhibitions, installations and interventions.

Leeds School of Arts, with a history that spans over 170 years is united by a common goal: to encourage individuality, to inspire creativity, and to create impact.

Group for Learning in Art & Design (GLAD) 23rd Annual Conference Friday 23 April 2021 Calling students, researchers, lecturers, leaders, technical staff & members of professional services teams Call for Proposals for Papers, Workshops & Lightning Talks...

read more

Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Policy. We would like to update members of the changes we have made to the Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI) policy resulting from the leadership actions of our EDI working group who have been advising our Board of Trustees on...

read more

CHEAD is issuing a call for applications for the role of CHEAD Research Alliance Strategy Group members for its Research Alliance. Two new Trustees and co-chairs of the Research Alliance, Professor Jake Kaner and Professor Sunil Manghani, were appointed in July 2020....

read more

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The Council for Higher Education in Art & Design

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CHEAD provides a voice for and on behalf of higher education art and design in the UK four nations advancing knowledge and understanding in the sector and promoting the sector's interests to others.

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We are the membership body that represents, champions and supports the UK’s creative industries.

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We are the membership body that represents, champions and supports the UK’s creative industries.

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We champion, connect, support and invest in creative people and businesses. We're a group of diverse and inclusive professionals who believe in the power of the creative industries to change lives, placing creativity at the heart of the UK's culture, economy and education system.

Our goal is simple: to cultivate a world where creativity is championed, valued, and fundamentally nurtured.

We unite the creative industries and generate opportunities for innovation to thrive by investing in people and their ideas. We are here for those who dare to imagine: imagine a fairer, more prosperous world, achieved through the power of creativity.

Where our roots lie

Where our roots lie

The story of Creative UK

Creative England and the Creative Industries Federation joined forces to coalesce our collective capabilities, using creativity to shape the UK's social, cultural, and economic future.

By merging the industry insights and advocacy work of the Federation, with the practical support and investment work of Creative England, we are now perfectly positioned to have visible impact and drive real change.

Our Logo

The story behind our emblem

Our primary logo mark consists of the amplification icon and our custom typeface in a full logo lock up. The primary colour application is black, but it can appear in block reverse and any of the main brand colours.

The icon represents our brand ethos is amplifying the creative industries. The mark is bold, recognisable and translatable, and can be used as a standalone icon as required to represent CUK in instances where the full word mark cannot be used.

Our Font

The new Creative UK typeface

With the importance of how Creative UK Group speaks directly to and for its members, a bespoke font was created to best capture the care and attention which the brand leads by. Shaped through a timeless and accessible grotesk style, subtle humanist qualities gave way for not only a more distinctive result, but one which put people at its core.

Our beautifully handcrafted typeface is an integral part of all of our marketing and communication. The font will be made available to anyone in the creative industries that wants to use it to champion our brand.

We join the dots;

The new Creative UK typeface Collaboration is in our DNA

We bring creative people together, from all disciplines, turning up the volume on their voices, providing a platform for their creative ideas and projects, ultimately empowering them to amplify themselves. We forge connections; building and growing as a group is our superpower.

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We champion, connect, support and invest in creative people and businesses. We're a group of diverse and inclusive professionals who believe in the power of the creative industries to change lives, placing creativity at the heart of the UK's culture, economy and education system.

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The future of education is interdisciplinary.

A new style of graduate who is more rounded and able to solve problems.

Global events show that the world is complex. Leaders in politics, business and academia need knowledge that spans beyond the siloed nature of our current higher education system. We're building a brand new university that will give students the knowledge and skills needed to address social and global problems in an increasingly interconnected world.

What do we mean when we say "extraordinary teaching"? We mean that we've brought together a diverse and outstanding group of academics, entrepreneurs and educationalists. We mean that our teaching methods are based in the best-proven pedagogical methods. And we mean that the entire LIS team is dedicated to providing our students with a transformational learning experience.

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A New Undergraduate Degree | London Interdisciplinary School

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The future of education is interdisciplinary. A new style of graduate who is more rounded and able to solve problems. Global events show that the world is complex. Leaders in politics, business and academia need knowledge that spans beyond the siloed nature of our current higher education system.

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HESA is the central source for the collection and dissemination of statistics about publicly funded UK higher education

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Graduate Outcomes is the biggest UK annual social survey and captures the perspectives and current status of recent graduates. Learn more about the survey here "

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The Future of Jobs report maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change. It aims to shed light on the pandemic-related disruptions in 2020, contextualized within a longer history of economic cycles and the expected outlook for technology adoption, jobs and skills in the next five years.

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After years of growing income inequality, concerns about technology-driven displacement of jobs, and rising societal discord globally, the combined health and economic shocks of 2020 have put economies into freefall, disrupted labour markets and fully revealed the inadequacies of our social contracts.

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“The challenge for art and design is that we’re equipment- and space-hungry – space is an expensive resource,”

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Art under threat: the growing crisis in higher education | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts

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Britain's reputation as a creative country is at risk, as threats mount to the education pathway that leads potential artists from school to university to professional life. Sam Phillips reports on the politic...

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Dr Philip Augar, Chair, Post-18 Education and Funding Review Panel

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Weighing in at a mighty 200 pages, the Augar review of post-18 education in England is remarkable for the scope of its recommendations and the depth of its reflections.

Having been given permission in the terms of reference to address the whole post-compulsory education system the review is quietly radical in its inclusion of both higher and further education in its definition of the mission of the post-compulsory education system to undertake research, scholarship and innovation, promote the ability of citizens to reach their full potential, contribute to civic wellbeing and meet the economic and skills needs of the country.

The proposed headline undergraduate fee cut and attack on so-called low-value higher education courses has been widely trailed, but unlike its predecessor the Browne Review, the report makes the effort to explore the purposes, strengths and weaknesses of the current system, particularly with regard to addressing skills gaps at levels four and five, and assessing the consequences of a fully marketised higher education system, such as the decline in part-time study and lifelong learning, before moving to specific proposals around the funding of higher education providers, further education colleges and students.

Though much in the report will provoke contentious debate, the panel cannot be faulted for its careful assessment of the available evidence, its balanced reporting of its engagement with stakeholders, and the provision of a basis for its recommendations. That said, there are a number of recommendations that are burdened with the universal caveat that "more research is needed", at least one of which will cause heads to be scratched at the Office for Students in the months to come.

Taking back control

A core principle of the report is that the market cannot alone deliver hoped-for policy outcomes; government policy must play a role. The key problems to be solved are the decline in overall participation in post-18 education since 2010/11, a lack of equity and flexibility in the post-18 system and the rise of "low-value" higher education - courses that do not deliver outcomes in line with the imagined aspirations of the students choosing to study them, or a return on investment for the taxpayer.

The panel accepts the existing (and contested) evidence on skills shortages and an oversupply of graduates, with the caveat that there are limitations to the available evidence on salary returns to specific degrees, and the social value of some professions is not always reflected in the salary.

To address the relative lack of students pursuing qualifications at levels four and five, the panel recommends that students be given access to a flexible lifelong learning entitlement equivalent to a that would enable them to build up credits module by module or year by year rather than signing up for a full level six qualification at the point of registration, and the removal of rules that restrict access to finance for the pursuit of equivalent and lower qualifications.

Higher education providers would be expected to issue interim level four/certificate and level five/diploma qualifications to all students, whether or not they intended to pursue a full degree. The Office for Students would be given regulatory oversight of all qualifications at levels four and five, and a national kitemark system would flag the qualifications that are most valuable to students.

The costs of delivering higher education

The panel concludes, not without some frustration at the limitations of the available data, that the purported cost of delivering traditionally lower-cost subjects has increased at a higher rate than the cost of delivering higher-cost subjects, suggesting that the current fee cap is having an inflationary effect on spending in the lower-cost subjects. It is also noted that English institutions appear to spend relatively more on non-teaching activities than comparator countries, some of which relates to wider student support and widening participation, some to central administration and up to ten per cent of the fee on margins to fund future sustainability, an amount the panel considers excessive.

On examining the returns to different subjects, the case is made that while subjects like business, the creative arts and social studies have value, the volume of students studying these subjects is in excess of the value created, while there is a relative lack of provision of courses in subjects like engineering and the physical sciences.

On the principle that no student should pay more than what their course might reasonably be judged to cost, the panel recommends the lowering of the undergraduate fee cap to £7,500, to be introduced in 2021/22, with the overall unit of resource per student frozen for the next three years. This would in practice mean the return of the teaching grant, which, if implemented, would provide additional income to universities in respect of their provision of higher-cost subjects.

On widening participation funding, the current system wherein a proportion of the student fee is expected to be spent on access, retention and success would be scrapped in favour of a Student Premium distributed to universities as a grant based on their intake of socially and economically disadvantaged students based on individual, not area-based, measures of disadvantage.

The panel stops short of recommending a minimum grade threshold for access to funding for level six/degree qualifications, but suggests that if insufficient change had been demonstrated within three years there would be a case to implement such a system, or to set student number caps on courses offering poor value for money. The report recommends the removal of funding entitlement for foundation years, suggesting that universities that offer these entry routes should be given two years to establish an Access to HE route in its place.

Student finance

Though demonstrating that the panel understands in detail the current system of student loans and graduate repayments, the basis for much of the recommendations for reform to the system is that people in general do not. Following the ruling of the Office of National Statistics last year that the "write-off" of un-repaid student debt should be reflected in the public accounts, the panel takes the view that measures should be found to reduce the overall cost to the taxpayer of the student finance system.

Incredibly, research undertaken by the Department for Education cited in the report finds that people would prefer higher monthly graduate repayments and a longer repayment period in return for lower fees and a lower rate of interest. As such it is recommended that no real rate of interest be charged during the period of study, that the repayment threshold be reduced to the median salary for non-graduates (so that graduates start to repay at the point they benefit from higher education), and that the repayment period be extended to forty years.

The panel also recommends that the sliding scale of interest based on salary be retained, and lifetime repayments be capped at 1.2 times the original loan amount, to avoid the anomaly wherein those who earn more at the early stage of their career end up paying back less than those who earn more later in their career, because of the effect of interest rates.

The panel views it as unfair that the current system requires those students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds to take on more debt to fund maintenance costs, and recommends the re-introduction of maintenance grants of at least £3,000 for eligible students. The panel also recommends that the expected contributions of parents for students in a higher family income bracket be made explicit. In line with the aspiration to create a level playing field, it is recommended that there be a single system of student maintenance loans and grants encompassing all qualifications at levels four to six.

A significant caveat to all this is that an assessment of the total cost of the proposed new system is deferred pending the development of a new methodology for the treatment of student loans in the national accounts.

Further education and apprenticeships

The panel argues that further education colleges need a new mission and vision, backed by meaningful funding. Protection of college title equivalent to that enjoyed by universities, a substantial increase in capital investment and the creation of a coherent national network of further education colleges delivering skills needs focused on levels three to five are the core recommendations.

It should be noted that the panel appears agnostic about which providers deliver which kinds of qualifications, but the role of further education in providing higher technical and vocational qualifications and in providing a pipeline to higher education in the form of adult education at levels two and three, is firmly recognised.

On apprenticeships, the panel queries the growth of degree-level and level seven apprenticeships, noting the relative expense of this route and that these create a lack of equivalence between students pursuing degrees. It is recommended that Ofsted assumes responsibility for assessing all levels of apprenticeship quality, and that funding for apprenticeships at level six and above normally only be available to those who do not already hold a degree-level qualification.
Join us on 2 July in London for a one day conference to analyse and digest the Augar review and begin to build the response.

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The Augar review: the essential overview for HE | Wonkhe

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Weighing in at a mighty 200 pages, the Augar review of post-18 education in England is remarkable for the scope of its recommendations and the depth of its reflections.

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Recent reports on graduate earnings and value for money in higher education have suggested that those studying art and design are losing out, and there is speculation that the Augar review could recommend lowering the tuition fees cap for such programmes. But HE art and design leaders warn that a range of important factors, from more accurate information on graduate earnings and opportunities to the value of art and design industries to the UK economy, are in danger of being ignored or missed.
While the UK's flourishing creative industries are admired around the world, art and design provision at university is facing major challenges. Degrees in arts and design are invariably found at the bottom of graduate jobs and earning tables and with policy makers focused on value for money, and the Augar review considering fees cuts, the apparent poor showing could have far-reaching consequences.

In the 2017 Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) statistical release, the median salary level for art and design graduates five years after leaving university was £20,000, putting it at the foot of the table, just below agriculture and related subjects and mass communications and documentation at around £22,000 a year.

A report recently published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, The impact of undergraduate degrees on early career earnings in the UK, even suggests that male creative arts graduates are likely to earn 14 per cent less than peers who did not go to university at all.

While the pay differential between arts and designs and other subject areas is not huge - graduates in 12 out of the 23 subject categories earned between £20,000 and £25,000, commentators believe that the main concern of ministers is whether salaries meet the loan repayment threshold of £21,000.

According to academics, the use of "unsophisticated" and "old-fashioned" salary data is doing art and design no favours. There are a range of freelance, flexible and portfolio careers in the creative arts, with their own career velocity, that are not picked up through HMRC and PAYE data.

"The ways in which official employment statistics are calculated are not appropriate to the creative industries," said Dr Shaun Hides, dean of the faculty of arts and humanities at Coventry University . "One of the things that LEO data will struggle to capture are industries that have a built-in expectation of an additional internship/apprenticeship phase where to build your employability portfolio you are going to be working in low pay graduate employment until you become established."

Although LEO now includes self-employment data, the IFS graduate earnings calculations in its latest report do not (the IFS said that despite this it was confident that the conclusions were robust).

There are other categories that LEO fails to capture. Many graduates working in the creative industries are registered as limited companies, for instance. They pay themselves a basic salary - which is what would be counted in LEO - topped up by dividends. In LEO terms, these people are low paid workers. As the BBC points out, tax status in the media industry is a complex area.

Equally, students who deliberately choose to work in non-graduate jobs that give them the time and energy to focus on their art are recorded within the category assumed to be made up of those who are desperate for a graduate level career.

Various league tables that use raw graduate salary data do not adjust for diversity of background and gender. There is no consideration, for example, of the lower median earnings of women, BME graduates and those from deprived backgrounds.

Neither does graduate salaries data take into account regional variations or the specificities of particular job markets/ careers or the importance of the creative arts industries to UK plc, which is estimated to be worth £90 billion a year.
Graduate earnings are far from the full story
Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University, agrees that graduate earnings are far from the full story: "Seeing the arts in this way is not only woefully narrow- minded, it is ruinously short-sighted, ignoring the changing needs of Britain in the 21st century, a time when the vital skills students learn during an arts education will be more important than ever."

The government-commissioned Independent Review of the Creative Industries by Sir Peter Bazalgette, published last year, was clear about the importance of the sector.

Creative industries provide twice as many UK jobs as financial services; music is one of the few net exporters in the UK; the video games industry is the envy of the world and UK companies own half the international trade in TV formats.

The Bazelgette report warned that this creative strength cannot be taken for granted as if it were an endless natural resource, and it needed to be nurtured through the education and skills systems or else the UK risked falling back as countries such as China move forward.

One of the biggest concerns is the "real and present danger" to the continued pipeline of students coming up from secondary schools and further education colleges, as outlined in the Higher Education Policy Institute report A crisis in the creative arts in the UK?

The omission of arts and design subject from the Ebacc, the GCSE school performance measure, means a narrowing of the curriculum at secondary level and a potential fall off at HE level over time.

"Whereas China and India are determined to push their creative industries, our educational strategy is going in exactly the opposite direction than it needs to be going and I don't yet see much recognition on the part of ministers," said Dr Hides.

Echoing Bazelgette, Professor John Last, Vice-Chancellor of Norwich University of the Arts and chair of the UK Arts and Design Institutions Association, argues that art and creativity is part of the UK's educational DNA.

"If you break that up, you are in danger of breaking up the very successful arts and cultural scene in the UK," he warned.

Creative arts and design are increasingly being acknowledged as an essential component of the fourth industrial revolution, with the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Creativity, flexibility, adaptability and enterprise - all central elements of arts and design degrees - are among those skills that are highly resistant to automation.

"They are opening Arts Schools in China, just at a time when there is a threat to the art school in England and that is something that policymakers here need to consider," said Professor Last.

Despite A&D's importance to the economy, the prevalence of the discourse around science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects tends to relegate it to the position of poor relation.

Professor Linda Drew, Vice-Chancellor of Ravensbourne University, describes the concentration on STEM as seemingly the sole driver of economic growth and graduate success as "unhelpful" and one which "ignores the overlap and collaboration between STEM and the worlds of creative arts, media and design."

Dr Hides agrees and says that in the world that is coming, the distinction between STEM and other subjects, or between science and the arts, is meaningless.

"Jaguar Land Rover talk to me about not just automotive and transport designers but product designers, fashion designers, and AR/VR immersive media designers," he said. "A crude focus on STEM is missing the point. Why do we buy the iPhone? Not because its circuits are better but because it is better designed. Its intuitive interface design is better, not the intrinsic technology. That is massively telling for the future economy."

One area that can be further developed here is the availability of degree and higher level apprenticeships. According to Sandra Booth, head of policy at the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD), while a fair number are available in film, media and broadcast technology, employers in other creative industries need to come on board.

But the debate about the importance of A&D is not just about the money, it is also about the wellbeing of a society that has a flourishing arts and cultural scene and the skills that it engenders in young people.

"Every child should have the opportunity to explore their passions whether they plan to pursue that as a career or not," said Booth. "Those skills of creativity are so important. We are losing our dexterity and haptic skills to the point where surgeons are struggling to sew patients up and we have a mental health crisis in this country. The pursuit of art and creativity could be the antidote."

Providing courses to teach and foster this creativity is not a cheap option. In the run up to the publication of the Augar review, the art and design sector is wary of talk of fee caps or fee differentiation.

It points out that very general categorisations of "the arts", which might include courses such as English and philosophy, are very different to the other end of the spectrum, where there are high cost degrees in film production, textiles and fashion, for instance. Running these courses takes expensive infrastructure and hi-tech kit.

"We are educating graduates to enter a set of industries that are highly digitised and highly modern," said Professor Last. "It is not a cheap ecosystem but it provides the kind of education we are proud to produce."

Currently, it is still an education that plenty of young people want to pursue.

UCAS application figures show that creative art and design is the fourth most popular category, behind medicine, biological sciences and businesses and administration. However, applications in the discipline were down by 4 per cent (June 2018 deadline), compared to a 2 per cent drop across all courses.

Nevertheless, Booth described recruitment as "still very buoyant". Small specialist institutions in particular, are thriving. Recruitment at Norwich University of the Arts last year was up 12 per cent on the previous year, for instance.

Anecdotally, these courses have high levels of engagement and motivation, driven by students' passion for the subject. Feeding in to this is the final year degree show - multi-media staged events and a celebration of output that is unlike anything offered by other disciplines and which fosters a powerful sense of community and endeavour.

As one of art and design's many high-profile supporters, broadcaster and author Andrew Marr, puts it: "To invest in art and design means putting public money into areas whose value cannot be captured on a spreadsheet, where concepts like productivity, value-for-money, inputs and outputs - which so reassure the political world - simply collapse. That means faith. It means risk.

"But, without it, hard times surely stretch out rather bleakly. Other countries understand this."
This HE Insight Paper was originally published on HEi-know on 10 December 2018

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higher education news augar review art and design value for money

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Augar review risks overlooking true value of art and design

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Recent reports on graduate earnings and value for money in higher education have suggested that those studying art and design are losing out, and there is speculation that the Augar review could recommend lowering the tuition fees cap for such programmes.

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01 _ Press on with Technology Enabled Learning
02 _ Lock in the current hastily cobbled together Covid hybrid; or,
03 _ Revert back to the comfortable, old ways.

Over the horizon progressives will want to start addressing four key challenges now, namely
_ how to sell any new offer to students and their parents,
_ decide the optimal teaching timetable diet,
_ repurpose redundant campus space, and
_ further develop new, exciting tech-based learning, affordably.
This strategic direction needs to be established and agreed soon.

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Higher education strategists must now pivot to consider what post-Covid teaching will look like. Will warp speed, flipped innovations actually stick; is yet more change necessary; or will the sector revert back to less popular lecture-based learning?

Afforded the ability to virtually participate in classes in their pyjamas, or avoiding stressful rush hour commuting, many students appear to have relished the new flexibility afforded by virtual classrooms.

But the lack of social connectedness with peers remains problematic for many, with in real life interactions stymied by mandatory mask wearing and tightly controlled physical meeting spaces. Although, perhaps counterintuitively, some instructors have found that virtual sessions enabled them to know their students better, despite all the limitations.

Senior university leaders will soon need to make a call on the shape of the next academic year, with only a limited handle on student (and staff) feedback on the popularity and effectiveness of pandemic inspired hybrid learning. And, critically, they will need to assess whether, if given a choice, new applicants will consider the hybrid, lower contact time model to be satisfactory.

Time is now running short for strategic planners to grapple with four important conundrums pertaining to the next academic year.

Should efficient but less popular lecture delivery be retained?

The visibility of weekly contact hours (ranging from a handful for some humanities subjects, to thirty hours in the lab-loving sciences) is often a contentious parental discussion point during campus open days, who question the value for money of the educational offering. The bank of mum and dad remains an influential stakeholder segment, even if they are not the eventual end consumers.

Lecture-based teaching can be a cost-effective way to pack out sparsely populated timetables. So, when lectures are again possible, will offered contact hours revert to the historic pattern or rather might live webinars and recordings be accepted as an equivalent by middle England's most discerning financial advisers?

Gen Z students have been voting with their feet in recent times (notably since £9k fees came in in England) and often prefer to catch up on assessment-critical lectures via recordings, largely skipping live lecture encounters when given the choice.

Campus bean counters will have already noted that webinars can offer highly flexible, scalable teaching capacity, without associated physical infrastructure costs. But an in-person campus timetable that is too light risks failing to justify the extra cost burden of living away and the higher fees this boarding school model usually commands. Some might say that the traditional university model is facing an existential fork in the road crisis.

Covid-19 driven timetable changes saw a reassuring consistency of response across the increasingly marketised higher education sector. Early signallers (even if the mass media misunderstood them) provided a path for the herd to follow.

Given the high risks of failure in a challenging economy, we should expect to see few universities take outlier positions here. The gravitational pull of tradition and the sector's conservatism would point to the return of instructors talking in big rooms with many empty seats, especially for research-led education brands. But this may be short sighted.

What is the optimal mix for blended contact time?

Thus far the higher education sector has fended off the fundamental business model challenge of "what am I paying for if it's only online learning?" by clinging on to live provision, asking instructors to redistribute their time to create both recorded self-study content and run small(er) seminars and virtual webinars. A common misperception is that online delivery is cheaper, and fees should reflect this. Clearly, live lecturer contact time in-person or virtually is an important cost variable.

Whilst the Oxbridge 1:2 instructor-to-student ratio for tutorials model is probably too rich for much of the sector, a shift towards more in-person, small group learning may provoke ire from the lecturer unions, particularly if their research intensive members are pushed towards the three term, 18 weekly contact hours norms, those typically seen in teaching-focused institutions.

However, creative thinkers should also consider nonlinear options here too, for example, all-night hackathons, weekend TED-like talk events, immersive residential study visits, and social learning projects. Activities that operate beyond the walls of regular timetabled classroom sessions and spill out into the wider university experience, utilising the often over busy coffee bars, library and other social spaces found dotted around campuses.

This probably calls for a substantive review of university estates development and space utilisation. More informal, social learning, facilitated by faculty using a blend of online and in-person interventions has the potential to offer a more Gen Z friendly, engaging and transformational experience.

What to do with redundant lecture spaces?

Bolt-on university campus architecture often showcases a low-cost, incrementalist strategy that has not yet adapted to the digital Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) era. Students flock to spaces with comfortable communal seating, perching near power sockets in search of sociable locations that enable them to work, rest, recharge and play in a pattern of their own making.

Newly vacant lecture theatres could be repurposed into 24/7 social learning centres, that can work as comfortable soft-furnished, smaller teaching spaces, but also offer out-of-hours informal social learning. Many traditional universities leave prime teaching space under-utilised or even empty for 20+ weeks in the year, despite a rhetoric of constrained space. Innovative blank page disruptors would look at evenings, weekends and long holiday periods as a missed opportunity. Could the pending cost squeeze result in two-year undergraduate degrees finally breaking through to the mainstream?

How to fund the next generation of immersive tech-based learning tools?

Addressing the elephant in the room. If lectures are truly dead as a parrot, how can the hastily cobbled together online provision be evolved to offer not only a slicker user experience through intuitive wayfaring, strong visual branding, and gamified behavioural nudges, but also with more sophisticated, immersive software applications, providing the sort of experience that digital natives have grown up with on their Play Stations, smartphones and tablets since near birth?

The sector has often historically relied on low cost and open source tech, combined with a collegial sharing philosophy. Serious commercial edtech providers have latterly pricked up their ears, sniffing long awaited investment opportunities. However, universities will have access to only modest funds (without squeezing hallowed research budget lines) available for technology investments and will need to develop innovative strategies to deliver strong bangs for their bucks. Surely there is a potent case for sectoral alliances supported by catalysts (such as Jisc) to be given a generous war chest to recover lost ground here?

The call to bring back large, impersonal lectures, and therefore inevitably the centuries old lecture plus seminar learning format, will be powerful, financially appealing and dangerous. University management planning committees must urgently consider whether to: 1. push on with technology enabled learning reform; 2. lock in the current hastily cobbled together Covid hybrid; or, 3. revert back to the comfortable, old ways.

Over the horizon progressives will want to start addressing four key challenges now, namely how to sell any new offer to students and their parents, decide the optimal teaching timetable diet, repurpose redundant campus space, and further develop new, exciting tech-based learning, affordably. This strategic direction needs to be established and agreed soon.

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Raising the learning and teaching bar post-Covid | Wonkhe

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Higher education strategists must now pivot to consider what post-Covid teaching will look like. Will warp speed, flipped innovations actually stick; is yet more change necessary; or will the sector revert back to less popular lecture-based learning?

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However, lectures will be available to students online and "it may be possible to host smaller teaching groups in person" if they meet social distancing requirements, the university said.

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Cambridge University: All lectures to be online-only until summer of 2021

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However, lectures will be available to students online and "it may be possible to host smaller teaching groups in person" if they meet social distancing requirements, the university said.

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Zoom round table discussion 02:

What do you consider to be the most disruptive non-CV-19 influences that HEIs teaching creative subjects should be aware of?

How might we mitigate the effects of these?

What are the key future challenges facing A&D arts education?

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Zoom round table discussion 01:

What do you consider to be the  long-term threats that CV-19 has brought to the creative sector?

How can Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in particular those teaching creative subjects, learn from and plan for these threats?

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The RSA has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years. Our proven change process, rigorous research, innovative ideas platforms and diverse global community of over 30,000 problem-solvers, deliver solutions for lasting change.

We invite you to be part of this change. Join our community. Together, we'll unite people and ideas to resolve the challenges of our time.

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We are the RSA. The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce. We're committed to a future that works for everyone. A future where we can all participate in its creation. The RSA has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years.

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Non-continuation is an important issue for many this autumn.

With a review of the National Student Survey underway and a recession harming graduate outcomes, non-continuation is posited as an important metric by which to judge course value being consistently advocated by the Westminster government. There are major potential financial implications of non-continuation for universities and the wider sector. And of course, there are significant human, financial and opportunity costs for an individual student that drops out.

Following several discussions with students' unions, we wanted to develop a short, sharp national survey on the issue - which we ran in collaboration with Trendence UK and 30 students' unions throughout October. We wanted to know whether students are considering dropping out, who is most at risk, the reasons why they're thinking about it and what they think universities and students' unions could do to help.

Over 7,000 students took part from 121 institutions. The results do reveal that a significant proportion are considering dropping out - 12.6 per cent, rising to roughly one in five students from non-selective state schools and disabled students.

But perhaps more important are the findings on wellbeing and mental health. Over half of our sample report feeling lonely on a daily or weekly basis. Just 8.2 per cent report strong feelings of happiness, down from 14% before the pandemic and 32 per cent for young people pre-pandemic. And it is feeling part of a community and loneliness that are both strongly related to considering dropping out.

Today we're focusing in on mental health, loneliness and non-continuation - and we'll consider other aspects of the findings later.

Non continuation and loneliness

To follow up on our last piece of work on student loneliness in May 2019, we first wanted to know how lonely students were feeling - and there has been a concerning increase:

We know from our other research that belonging is crucial to academic success and staying the course, and our own research showed that students feeling part of a community (NSS question 21) is closely related to feelings of belonging, mental health perception and to outcomes confidence. So we asked the question again here, and again we saw a decline:

On the main issue of non-continuation, we wanted to know whether students were considering leaving their course, and if so how often. We used the term "dropping out" on advice from SU officers we consulted, who advised this is a commonly understood term:

To identify who was most "at risk" of leaving their course, we divided respondents into those who said "every day" or "every week", which we have called here "at risk", and respondents who said "less than weekly" or "never", and we have called that group here "not at risk".

We interrogated a series of diversity characteristics and identified groups more at risk than others:

These match more general understandings on access and participation and priorities for student success work - although the international figure, and non-significant differences between ethnic groups were interesting. But perhaps the most significant relationships that we found were between non-continuation risk and other questions that surrounded happiness and loneliness:

In the qualitative feedback, we asked why students responded the way they did - and we looked particularly closely at comments from students that said they were considering dropping out "every day" to see if we could identify themes. It is hard to overstate how often isolation and loneliness came up:

To the extent to which comments reflect other issues, low confidence in being able to obtain academic outcomes is common, as well as a strong sense from many students that they are missing out on what university should be or what it usually offers:

The student experience?

We also wanted to know about initial feelings of satisfaction with the academic experience. We might have reasonably expected early academic experience impressions to manifest in an increase in "neither agree nor disagree" - and one in five do respond in this way - but one in four actively disagrees:

We then cross referenced (initial) satisfaction with those "at risk" of non continuation and found a clear relationship between the two:

When we asked why students had responded in the way that they had, a notable proportion of negative responses focused on not being able to access the learning; the way in which academic staff interact with students individually with support or answers to questions; several comments focus on facilities, or the mix between theory and practical activity: and many were dissatisfied with organisation and management issues like timetabling.

But most striking were the number of comments on what we might call the social aspects of learning - so many reflected dissatisfaction with the level of interaction with others being facilitated or even possible if the teaching was experienced asynchronously.

It is true that large number of dissatisfaction comments related to online learning - preferring face to face and being disappointed at the amount of face to face on offer. But a closer look suggests students that say they are dissatisfied with online teaching are not usually unhappy with it per se; they are unhappy at not being able to access it or unhappy that it fails to provide social interaction. And in a large number of cases there appear to be significant differences in approach to and quality of online teaching modules/classes for individual students - a consistency problem.

Meanwhile those happy with online teaching praise the individual support they get from academic staff or interaction with peers. Even where students do express being unhappy with online teaching, they often contextualise that as problematic because they have moved unnecessarily to the local area to experience it, rather than the online teaching itself being of poor quality. The findings remind us how important the social aspects of learning are - and how difficult they have been to experience for many students so far this term.

We asked students to identify what providers or their students' unions should do to tackle loneliness and support students who feel lonely at university during Covid-19. Those searching for a holy grail of innovation here may be disappointed - students were focused on simple ideas centred around human connection.

A large number of responses wanted more online activities to be proactively organised, often focussed around student identities, interests or courses. A huge proportion wanted to see safe activities put on in a face to face format. And some wanted proactive outreach - although we should not understate the emphasis in the comments on being allowed to and given support and space to interact with others safely.

What next?

There is little in the results that comes as a major surprise. In many ways, the pandemic and its impacts serve to accentuate and exaggerate previous research on student loneliness and its relationship to student confidence, achievement and mental health.

The progress of the pandemic at the time of writing will likely continue to pose a challenge to those seeking to take part in or organise face to face activity - be that academic, non academic or social. However that doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't attempt to learn from the feedback with particular reference to provision next term. There is much much more to be done to ensure that students' experience is as social as they expect and need it to be to succeed.

We are particularly grateful to the students' unions that made the work happen with us - big thanks to the SUs at Middlesex University, Queen Mary, University of London, Kingston University, University of Southampton, University of Sunderland, City University of London, University of Leicester, Bath Spa University, University of Bedfordshire, UEA, Bangor University, University of Manchester, UCLAN, Coventry University, Leeds Beckett University, University of Worcester, King's College London, UCL, UEL, Canterbury Christ Church, UCB, St Marys University, Twickenham, Oxford Brookes University, Solent University, Southampton, University of Plymouth, University of Sheffield, University of Nottingham, and University of the Arts London.

Trendence is a leading student-focused market research firm in the UK and Ireland.
Download the main results of the Don't Drop Out survey.

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The costs of Covid restrictions on students are social | Wonkhe

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Non-continuation is an important issue for many this autumn. With a review of the National Student Survey underway and a recession harming graduate outcomes, non-continuation is posited as an important metric by which to judge course value being consistently advocated by the Westminster government.

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Wonkhe is the home of higher education policy, bringing the sector together through expert analysis. A community of diverse voices, we provide platforms