https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.102.9

The Society continues its work on recognising teaching excellence

This is a key time for the work of The Physiological Society on improving the reward and recognition of teaching excellence in HE as the issue rises up the political agenda. It was pleasing to see mentions of teaching excellence in the Green Paper released by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills concerning their planned changes to higher education. We hope the government has truly recognised that, in order to improve teaching, there has to be a clear-cut career path and sufficient incentive for the teachers as well as the institution.

A recent workshop held by The Society covered practice and policy concerning teaching excellence. We were pleased to welcome Nicolette Divecha, Assistant Director at BIS, who took us through the content of the Green Paper and explained the government’s direction. She assured everyone that BIS really is listening to comments and will try to implement the Teaching Excellence Framework in the most effective way possible. The Green Paper consultation period has now closed and we are awaiting an announcement on plans going forward.

Clarification of the Spending Review

Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, recently gave evidence to the Science and Technology Select Committee on the fine details of last year’s Comprehensive Spending Review and its implications for the science sector. He assured the Committee that nothing had been “tucked-in” to the science budget, so it does not have to stretch to cover more. The Global Challenges Fund has been incorporated into the science resource budget, providing around £1.5bn over five years. This money accounts for the increase of the resource budget with inflation; without it science would be enduring another flat-cash settlement. Mr Javid explained that this new money will fund research to benefit overseas development, and will count towards the government target of spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas development aid. Allocation of money from this fund will still respect the Haldane Principle of political independence in funding decisions, but must also meet official ODA criteria. The details of the application approval procedure have not yet been finalised.

Other aspects of the Spending Review which Mr Javid covered include innovation funding, where new innovation loans will release around £500m while grants (previously comprising all Innovate UK funding) will reach around £165m. This change was instituted following analysis of effective innovation support overseas, with France and Finland being specifically mentioned.

Changes to the structure of sectoral oversight were also discussed. The nature of Paul Nurse’s mooted ministerial oversight committee for Research UK has not been determined, but Mr Javid described it as an ‘interesting recommendation’ and ‘still to decide”. Similarly, changes to HEFCE were not yet worked out, but it was questioned whether there is currently enough focus on the ‘consumers’ of higher education.

Research Excellence Framework review

Coming hot on the heels of the HE Green Paper, a review has been announced into the nature and outcomes of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This is being led by Lord Stern, current President of the British Academy, who is supported by a high-level steering group. Representation from the life sciences comes from Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: an immunologist and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Professor Sir John Tooke: a medical scientist and Past President of the Academy of Medical Sciences. The review seeks to reduce the REF’s administrative burden, bring in new incentives for excellence, and improve the efficiency of the funds distributed.