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President's weekly update

3 December 2020

Thanks to the amazing work of many colleagues, we have established four COVID-19 testing sites across the campus that will allow students to take two tests and then travel home safely. So far around 2,500 students have had tests and we are planning for many more over the next few days. We are also supporting local colleges to provide testing facilities for their students. Students are now able to travel home safely between 3 and 9 December, though some are likely to stay with us over Christmas and of course we will do our best to look after them.

The report on the inquiry into the erection of fences at the Fallowfield site will be published later today, and will be discussed at an additional meeting of Senate tomorrow and we  have already discussed this with affected parties.  The report has been welcomed and fully accepted by me and my senior colleagues and we will now take actions to address the recommendations.

Regrettably, we have seen further numerous, very large gatherings at some of our student residences. These are in breach of national regulations on COVID-19. In addition some of these pose real health and safety issues for students and staff, and have occurred despite repeated warnings, which is clearly unacceptable. Senior staff spent time on Saturday night at Fallowfield and witnessed some of these behaviours. After meetings over the weekend with elected representatives from our residences, Students’ Union officers and police and fire services, we have had no choice but to implement various disciplinary measures.  The vast majority of our students have exhibited exemplary behaviours and are very concerned about these incidents, as are local residents and emergency services. We are working with students on a behaviour pledge.

It was fantastic to see that we won THE Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community award for our social responsibility outcomes from our construction work focused on MECD. Julian Skyrme, Director of Social Responsibility, worked on this with many colleagues, but particularly with Paul Maccabee in Estates and Facilities, who sadly passed away a few months ago. The award has been dedicated to Paul in recognition of his amazing work for the University and our local communities.

I attended meetings with our two key ministers: Amanda Solloway on potential alternatives to EU funding if we are not able to achieve association, and Michelle Donelan on safe movement of students and teaching arrangements after Christmas. The latter has now been announced. Students must return on a staggered basis from early January over the following five weeks, with those on programmes with placements, practicals and practice based classes returning first. Universities must offer COVID-19 testing for all returning students.

We have just passed the census date for students recruited this academic year. Overall we have met or exceeded targets for home and international undergraduate and postgraduate taught students, though there are some variations across disciplines. Hence our financial position for this year is significantly better than feared, though with ongoing uncertainty. As a result of this we have now implemented the pay awards associated with promotions and regrading, backdated to 1 August. We have also repaid all the voluntary pay cuts taken by staff (with the exception of SLT).

I was pleased to see our Widening Participation annual report, which was published at the end of last week. Addressing patterns of under-representation in higher education is firmly embedded into how we run our institution and a key ambition for our teaching, learning and the student experience is that there are no barriers to studying and no boundaries to learning. Our WP team have worked hard during a difficult year to make sure we meet this ambition.

We have held two faculty Annual Performance Review discussions with the faculties of Biology, Medicine and Health and Humanities. In both we heard about the rapid responses to COVID-19 and the challenges they have faced in teaching and research. We also heard about their future plans to embed new ways of working into normal practice, to focus on priorities which include contributions to building equality across communities in Greater Manchester and more widely, and supporting the UK’s economic and social recovery from the pandemic.

National restrictions due to COVID-19 have ended but Greater Manchester remains in tier 3, with the highest restrictions. However infection rates have fallen dramatically across the region, so it is possible that we may move to tier 2 in the near future. This would be important to allow our students to access more facilities and to significantly increase our in-person teaching.

Please consider any staff, students, alumni or partners that you would want to submit for our annual ‘Making a Difference’ awards. This is open for nominations now.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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