May 2019 highlights

Post-18 review of education and funding: independent panel report

PM's press release

See the review report in full and related documents here

Call for Digital Innovation Hubs

As part of the delivery of the UK’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, the Government has committed £37.5m to make the UK home to data-driven research, scientific advances and innovation in healthcare to improve patient outcomes

The call for Digital Innovation Hubs is now live and you can find the details in the Prospectus on the Medical Research Council website.

There will be Q&A webinars on 16 May and 18 June, visit the webinar page for more information.

Building on the UK's scientific strength for the next decade and beyond

Campaign for Science and Engineering has published a new report, 'Building on Scientific Strength; The Next Decade of R&D Investment', on how the Government can stimulate a rise in the UK’s research intensity. Read in full here.

ONS: Country and regional public sector finances: financial year ending 2018

Public sector revenue, expenditure and net fiscal balance on a country and regional basis.

Funding competition UK Research and Innovation strength in places fund: wave 2 EoI

Consortia of UK businesses and research organisations can apply for ‘seed corn’ funding of up to £50,000 to develop full applications for wave 2 of the UKRI Strength in Places Fund.

• Competition opens: Monday 3 June 2019
• Competition closes: Wednesday 9 October 2019 12:00pm

To fix Britain’s productivity problem, we need to talk about place

Sheffield shows the importance of “place as integrator” - writes Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of Centre for Cities in his latest think piece for the the New Statesman.

OfS Challenge Competition: Industrial Strategy and skills

The Office for Students has awarded £5.6 million to projects based in universities and colleges across England to boost opportunities for graduates who seek work close to home.

This portfolio of support for local graduates involves 15 projects across England. Through a range of initiatives, including curriculum interventions and internships, the projects will support the transition to highly skilled employment and improve outcomes for graduates who seek employment in their home region. Read about the initiatives from Bradford and Hull who have been awarded funding.

A Resurgence of the Regions: rebuilding innovation capacity across the whole UK

blog by Richard Jones, read full report here.

Knowledge exchange or research impact – what is the difference between REF and KEF?

The UK research system has historically been innovative in its approach to measuring and assessing the impacts of academic research. However, the recent development of the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), has elicited scepticism as to how this framework will significantly differ from the impact element of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). In this post Hamish McAlpine and Steven Hill outline the aims and objectives of the KEF and argue that it provides an important means of understanding the wider totality of research impacts taking place in UK universities.

West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy

The West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy sets out long-term priorities to increase productivity in the region.

Are Britain’s Regional Divides Large or Small? A Response to Chris Giles

Productivity Insight Network blog by Philip McCann, University of Sheffield

Smart places – how universities are shaping a new wave of smart cities

YU Associate James Ransom @jc_ransom led the research for this new British Council council report.

The report is about how universities can help solve the challenges faced by cities and towns. In doing so, it puts people first and technology second. It is written for university leaders, city leaders and officials looking to form stronger partnerships with their universities. Examples are given of universities working with city hall in eight cities across Europe: Bucharest (Romania), Darmstadt (Germany), Dublin (Ireland), Lille (France), Milan (Italy), Nottingham (UK), Warsaw (Poland) and Zaragoza (Spain). Each city has different needs and opportunities, and each has a different history of partnership working between universities and city hall.

What do MPs think about universities?

What do MPs think universities should be prioritising? Simon Cereda of ComRes introduces the findings of a new poll launched at yesterday’s Rules of Engagement event.

Augar update?

The BBC is reporting that the Augar review of post-18 education and funding could be published in the next two weeks, as part of a set of announcements designed to shore up Prime Minister Theresa May’s “legacy”. BBC Education and family correspondent Sean Coughlan’s report suggests that the findings of the review, which has been delayed by the Brexit process, are set to be announced straight after the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of this month - in the window between the European elections and the visit of Donald Trump.

Update from Mark Sandford - Senior Research Analyst at the House of Commons Library

Since this time last year, metro-mayors have continued to develop their roles whilst Government policy development remains becalmed, principally (though not only) due to Brexit.

At central level, we are still waiting for the ‘devolution framework’ first promised in 2017: the most recent indication is that this won’t appear until after the UK leaves the EU. (I have it on good authority that it does exist and is largely complete!) The same also likely applies to the consultation on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund – the replacement for Structural Funds. The Government did manage to publish the 2017-18 annual report on devolution in March 2019, though it included little new information.

Recent publications include:

• Localis’s report Hitting Reset: A case for local leadership
• A special edition of Local Economy on combined authorities, including a piece from me: ”Money talks: the finances of combined authorities”.
• Ruth Lupton, Ceri Hughes, Sian Peake-Jones and Kerris Cooper, City-region devolution in England, LSE, November 2018
• Kieran Walshe et al., Devolving health and social care: lessons from Greater Manchester, Manchester Business School, 2018
• Chiara Cavalgia, Sandra McNally, Henry Overman, Devolving skills: the case of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers, March 2019

Some recent developments are picked up in the recent update to my Commons Library paper Devolution to local government in England, including:

• Budget 2018 provided one additional year of funding to MCAs under the Transforming Cities Fund;
• The Adult Education budget was finally devolved as of 1 Apr 2019. Several documents have been published recently, including a guide to AEB devolution , a memorandum of understanding, funding allocations, and statutory guidance;
• The North of Tyne deal and mayoral election (see p12 of the Commons Library briefing for the full result details);
• MHCLG rejected the ‘One Yorkshire’ proposal in January; Sheffield City Region decided to pursue their original deal in March, as long as its constituent authorities could decide to jump ship to a One Yorkshire deal by the time of the next Sheffield mayoral election in 2022; Government (apparently) acquiesced in this;
• The July 2018 consultation Strengthened Local Enterprise Partnerships proposed additional assurance provisions for LEPs, announced that they would lead on managing the Shared Prosperity Fund, and required them to abolish any boundary overlaps by April 2019. There has been no consultation response, but the NAO’s report Local Enterprise Partnerships: an update on progress , in May 2019, indicated that boundary changes had been agreed everywhere but Birmingham and Lincolnshire. For the most part (though not exclusively) areas have defaulted to county boundaries;
• A new, more comprehensive National Local Growth Assurance Framework was published in January 2019. This provides in one place the full suite of reporting / assurance requirements on metro-mayors. Tl;dr: there are a lot of them, highlighting yet again questions of how much discretion is really available within English devolution.

HITTING RESET A CASE FOR LOCAL LEADERSHIP

Hitting Reset lays out a roadmap to a decentralised UK, where democratically-elected local leaders have the power to govern, and the capacity of councils to bring together private and public actors to achieve local development is maximised. Bringing together cutting-edge academic work, international case studies and an extensive interview series, we make the case for local leadership. This has never been more crucial as today: if trust in politics is to be restored, citizens must be able to see the impact of democracy (or ‘take back control’) in their communities and local economies.

Eureka! An international research strategy

Universities and science minister Chris Skidmore yesterday launched the government’s international research and innovation strategy in the second of four speeches on achieving the government’s target of 2.4 per cent of GDP on research and development by 2027. Speaking at the intergovernmental network EUREKA global innovation summit, the minister committed to seeking continued participation in European research technology infrastructure and funding programmes post-Brexit and described universities as “the magnetic field that attracts people, business and investment into the UK.”

Listen to WonkHE's related podcast: 'Research, anti-semitism, social mobility, car parking'

House of Commons Hansard: Shared Prosperity Fund

Transcript from 14 May 2019 Volume 660

Chris Skidmore speech on 'Going global' in higher education

The Universities Minister delivered a speech at the British Council's 'Going Global' conference, outlining his vision for UK higher education

‘Save the date’ for UK2070 Commission’s National Symposium

UKRI launches second wave of Strength in Places Fund

In Wave 1, 23 bids have been awarded seedcorn funding to develop full stage bids that will be submitted to a closed call in September 2019. Details of the 23 awards receiving seed corn funding in Wave 1.

Regional Studies, Regional Science Volume 6, Issue 1

Universities are increasingly expected to provide contributions to regional innovation and economic development processes. Despite much work on how universities can contribute to regional growth processes, there is much less consideration about why universities might choose to engage in regional development. Even though they may receive public funding, universities have no specific duty to engage, and together with recent pressures to internationalize, university regional engagement activities face tensions from these delocalization pressures. This special issue explores four ways in which universities negotiate these tensions in ensuring that their globally focused knowledge creation activities supports local innovation:

Contextualizing the role of universities to regional development: introduction to the special issue

Andy Haldane 7 May speech at the University of Sheffield: Is All Economics Local?

Concordat for the advancement of Knowledge Exchange in Higher Education in England

A joint Universities UK/Research England working group has developed a Knowledge Exchange (KE) Concordat for universities in England.

The Concordat proposes eight high-level principles underlying KE activities, and sets out the aims and enablers to help universities make informed decisions and develop their own informed strategies around KE. The document also contains the implementation plan following the consultation period and a list of the working group members. The Concordat aims to:

• help universities and their staff and students enhance clarity of mission
• support their development
• give partners an accurate representation of the approaches and strengths of individual universities
• provide clear indicators of their approaches to developing and improving performance
• give governing bodies and government broad confidence in the activity that is taking place in universities

Responses to the consultation questions (which can be found in the consultation document) and any additional comments can be sent via the online survey by 1st July 2019. The final version of the Concordat will be created by autumn 2019.

Chris Skidmore speech on Reaching 2.4%: Securing the research talent of tomorrow

The first in a series of four speeches on how the Science Minister believes the UK can best achieve its ambition to invest 2.4% of GDP in R&D by 2027.