President's weekly update
11 February 2021
About 200 staff attended the open meeting with me and senior colleagues. After my update we discussed how much we can plan for returning to more in-person teaching and for the 2021/22 student intake
This is the time when staff are planning timetabling so assessing any likely restrictions in the autumn is important but difficult, and we need to retain flexibility in our planning. We also discussed staff absences due to home schooling and caring responsibilities with pressures on academic and professional services staff, equality, diversity and inclusion and the potential publication of the number of disciplinary cases. Such cases are always confidential and often take a long time to resolve, but we
It is good to see that COVID-19 infection rates, hospital admissions and deaths are declining in Greater Manchester, while vaccinations are rising quickly and generally on target. Hence we are hopeful that we will be able, subject to government advice, to gradually relax some limitations in the not too distant future, but we are not yet at that point. There is a new testing programme affecting some postcodes near our University. This does not affect the safety arrangements for studying or working on campus.
Regrettably, you will have seen that a small number of our students in our halls of residence were issued with fixed penalty fines by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) following the identification of a significant gathering involving students from different residences by GMP. It is disappointing that common rooms locked to adhere to national COVID-19 restrictions have been broken into, causing damage. We recognise that the vast majority of our students are adhering to COVID-19 restrictions in spite of the real difficulties these impose.
We have invested significant amounts into student support and wellbeing this year; an additional £1.9m so far, on top of the £4.5m previously budgeted. (These figures exclude spend in the Faculties). This includes £402k awarded to us from the Office for Students and money kindly donated by alumni and supporters. Much of this additional investment, has been allocated to our Living Cost Support Fund, which we’ve been promoting to students this week. Other money has been used to introduce new 24/7 mental health support. We have also spent £450k employing 11 new staff, including wellbeing advisors and an additional mental health nurse.
As part of our University’s equality, diversity and inclusion action plan for staff and students we have launched a new set of specific measures based on the valuable lessons we have learnt over the past few months from global and local events. We are committed to working with staff and students to create a community where everyone feels welcome, listened to, safe and valued and this plan, alongside our Race Matters report and action plan, is an important step towards achieving that.
I spoke at another event to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the year of the ox that was organised by the Manchester Chinese Students and Scholars Association. The Chinese Consul General, the Lord Mayor of Greater Manchester and the elected Mayor also spoke to nearly 600 attendees. This was followed by music and dance from our Chinese students.
At our Board Nominations Committee we considered organisations that could review our governance structures and activities. The review will take place over the next few months and will consider all aspects of our governance.
At the Russell Group Board meeting we discussed the USS pension scheme, national security issues that are relevant to universities, international funding including for our membership of Horizon and details of the Turing scheme for students to study overseas, the government’s announcement of a number of consultations, and student recruitment through UCAS.
I have been reading a number of the environment statements for our submission to the Research Excellence Framework. These are now looking very strong and
Dr Tim Bradshaw, Chief Executive of the Russell Group, and I met with Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, to discuss the Government’s recent announcements on several consultations, the importance of partnerships with FE Colleges, the National Student Survey of satisfaction and asked about the potential return of students to universities - which is as yet unknown.
I was delighted to see that our Alliance Manchester Business School's flagship MBA was ranked 30th in the Financial Times full-time Global MBA ranking 2021 published on Monday. It rose 15 places in the ranking and it is now 30th in the world, 4th in the UK and 10th in Europe. It maintained its position as 5th in the ranking for Corporate Social Responsibility.
The efforts of our staff in supporting our students during the pandemic in so many different ways are truly remarkable. It is wonderful and so welcome to see very positive unit evaluation scores on many of our programmes for Semester 1.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor