Author: Shaun Williams, Executive Director Engagement and Advancement
- UEB congratulated and thanked all those involved in drafting our formal submission to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), including members of the TEF Working Group and colleagues at SUSU, who wrote a separate, independent submission. Both documents were formally submitted this week, in compliance with our Office for Students condition of registration. The process now is for the TEF panel to assess submissions over the next five months, with providers receiving provisional ratings and reasoning over the summer. Final outcomes and submissions will be published from September. Our submissions will be discussed at the next Senate meeting and then shared more widely within our community. UEB acknowledged the huge amount of hard work and thought that had been put into two excellent submissions.
- UEB considered a letter sent to all Higher Education Institutions by the Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP, Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education. There was a discussion about a number of issues raised in the letter, including T Level admissions, wider admissions considerations, medicine and dentistry intakes, and degree apprenticeships, which we continue to keep under review. There is a recognition that any new initiatives would need to be directly aligned to delivering our University Strategy, especially if there are considerable resourcing implications.
- As part of our Modernising the Governance strategic major project, UEB noted a further progress update on the project and revised Ordinances, following extensive negotiations and consultations with our campus trade unions, and which are now the subject of a member consultation. Further discussions are planned at Senate and Council, along with a wider communication to our community.
- There was an interim report back to UEB following the cyber incident exercise mentioned in last week’s UEB Blog, which took place last week to provide a very useful real-time scenario exercise for our crisis response team. As always with such exercises, much to be reassured about, and other issues to be considered further. The risk of a malicious incident is ever-growing, and universities are seen as tempting targets, which highlights both the need for rigorous cyber defences, and the need for constant vigilance by every member of our staff and student community.
- Finally, there was the regular review of the University Risk Register.