November 2018 highlights

Do Skills Advisory Panels even make sense?

Will SAPs really be able to match local skills supply to employers’ needs, or is this just magical thinking, asks Ewart Keep for FE Week, read more here.

Researchers as innovators

The Industrial Strategy has a startling statistic that only 50% of our companies do any innovation at all. A key driver of the Strategy is to improve innovation in our economy. Universities have a big role to play and particularly through the researchers that we train. Read the blog here.

Local boundaries in England: What is ‘place’?

In the last few years, a number of think-tanks have addressed the effects of Government policy on ‘place’. Concerns have centred around spatial variations in GDP across the UK, identifying public spending within a given area, and variations in productivity. Read more here.

TheCityUK National Conference 2018

Speech by the Secretary of State the Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP, including references to the Government's new devolution framework. Read the speech in full here.

How Universities Make Cities Great

Why are colleges so great? To use universities as a tool for economic development, it’s important to think about the many ways they contribute to local growth -- and some ways they don’t. Read more here.

YU on the front foot in thinking about future ‘growth’ funding

Read the guest blog from Kevin Richardson following the 14 November SPF workshop.

LEPs propose merger to secure “bigger share of the prize” for Yorkshire

The Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership and York, North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership has each approved the merger at board meetings held over the past week. The move would see York and North Yorkshire combine with West Yorkshire to form a single LEP, responsible for significant potential investment to boost economic growth and social inclusion. Read more here.

ONS data release: Business enterprise research and development, UK: 2017

• Expenditure on research and development (R&D) performed by UK businesses continued to grow, expanding by £1.1 billion to £23.7 billion in 2017, an increase of 4.9%.
• Software development was the product group that had the largest growth in expenditure on R&D performed by UK businesses, of £358 million (34.7%).
• London had the largest growth in regional business R&D expenditure, increasing by £448 million (19.1%) to £2.8 billion in 2017.
• UK government funding of civil R&D has overtaken that of defence for the first time, with funding of £978 million and £820 million respectively in 2017.
• In 2017, total UK business employment in R&D grew by 7.4% to 231,000 full-time equivalents.

Read in full here.

Westminster Social Policy Forum - Next steps for the Northern Powerhouse - investment, infrastructure and economic growth

Password protected transcript from 26th October 2018 event in Manchester is now available to download here. Drop us an email if you'd like to have sight of it.

Health for Wealth; Building a Healthier Northern Powerhouse for UK Productivity

This report was led by academics at Newcastle University, with contributions from colleagues in Manchester, Lancaster, York, Liverpool and Sheffield universities.

Average life expectancy in the north is two years lower and premature death rates are 20 per cent higher across all age groups. Meanwhile, the productivity gap between the Northern Powerhouse and the rest of England is £4 per person per hour, or £28 versus £32, estimates the report, with 30 per cent of this due to ill health. This equates to an annual overall productivity gap of £44bn, of which £13.2bn is attributed to health inequality, the researchers said.

Read the executive summary here and full report here.

PM speech to CBI: 19 November 2018

Prime Minister Theresa May delivered the keynote speech at this year's CBI Annual Conference - one of the milestone events in the business calendar. In her speech, she outlined the government's commitment to upgrading infrastructure; introduction of T-levels to give young people more choices and opportunities in their education; and the ambitious target of increasing the UK’s R&D spend to 2.4% of our national income. Read full speech here.

Homes for five new AI centres announced

The UK’s Artificial Intelligence revolution gets new backing, as the Business Secretary announces five new centres of excellence for digital pathology and imaging, including radiology, using AI medical advances.

• Patients are set to benefit from radical advances in medical technology using artificial intelligence to diagnose diseases at an earlier stage
• The centres will use AI, an area the government is backing in its modern Industrial Strategy, to find new ways to speed up diagnosis of diseases to improve outcomes for patients
• Based in Leeds, Oxford, Coventry, Glasgow and London – but each with partners across many parts of the UK – the centres will develop more intelligent analysis of medical imaging, leading to better clinical decisions for patients, and freeing more staff time for direct patient care in the NHS. Read the full press release here.

KEF consultation closer

Today, Research England publishes three documents to help institutions prepare for the consultation later this month on the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF).

1. One of those documents summarises the 106 responses to the December 2017 call for evidence, about what data is relevant to knowledge exchange and how it should be used appropriately.
2. Another document outlines which UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) research council data will be used to develop KEF, including the Higher Education Business & Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey, the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) process, and other HESA and UKRI data collections.
3. The third document is a report by Tomas Coates Ulrichsen of the University of Cambridge. It highlights the diversity of the sector and proposes initial clusters of institutions with “similar sets of knowledge and physical assets” which could be benchmarked against each other.

Read more about this here.

Office for Students: Degree Apprenticeships information and guidance

for apprentices

for employers

for providers

It's a harmful myth that UK science can't translate ideas into practice

Government innovation policy is based on the idea that the UK is poor at commercialising research. But it should reflect reality. Read more here.

Maximising universities’ civic contribution - A policy paper

by John Goddard, Ellen Hazelkorn with Stevie Upton and Tom Boland

How to read Sam Gyimah’s interview at Wonkfest18

Insights from the Wonk Festival last week and a special festival podcast with panel discusses leaks from the Augar review, the OfS view on university bailouts, and Sam Gyimah's student information apps. With Anne-Marie Canning, Director of Social Mobility and Student Success at King's College London, Paul Greatrix, Registrar at the University of Nottingham, and Mark Leach, Wonkhe's Editor in Chief. Enjoy!

Northern Powerhouse minister puts Hallam on the map

Sheffield Hallam University's brand new National Centre of Excellence for Degree Apprenticeships has been officially opened by Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry MP. Read more here.

ONS: Review of the treatment of student loans in the Public Sector Finances

We can expect the publication of Office For National Statistics guidance on the treatment of student loans on Monday 17th December. This potentially explosive revision - to the way income-contingent loans are represented in the national accounts will have an impact on the recommendations of Philip Augar's review panel, who need to make recommendations that see the national deficit continue to fall.

House of Commons Education Committee: Value for money in higher education

Higher education needs a sharper focus on graduate outcomes, the teaching of skills and improving access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds says the Education Committee in its report on Value for money in higher education. Read full report here.

Read the responses from the Russel Group, UCU and OFS.

UK lands Boeing's first European manufacturing facility in Sheffield

• New facility will showcase the UK’s world-leading aerospace manufacturing capabilities in making more than 100 advanced components for Boeing planes
• it will export £80 million of products a year while employing 25 apprentices
• Business Secretary Greg Clark attended the opening of the facility which was supported by a £2.7 million grant from the government through the modern Industrial Strategy

Greater Manchester's Local Industrial Strategy progress update published

Business Secretary Greg Clark and Greater Manchester’s Deputy Mayor for the Economy Richard Leese have published a progress statement on plans for delivering a Local Industrial Strategy for the Greater Manchester area.