President's weekly update
10 December 2021
Revised COVID guidelines
This week the updated government guidance ,‘Plan B’, has been issued, prompted by concerns about the new COVID-19 Omicron variant. The UK government is clear on the critical importance of not disrupting education and the guidance for higher education is that campuses will remain open and in-person teaching will continue. The safety and wellbeing of our staff and students continues to be our main priority and the information we published today has been guided by the latest advice from the government and Public Health England.
Throughout the pandemic, we have adhered to the precautionary principle on safety as our first concern to keep staff and students safe and well. We are confident that in-person, teaching of students remains as safe as possible in controlled environments, but we believe that the risks associated with holding large scale events with mixed age groups is now too great, given the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant over recent days. Therefore, with great reluctance and huge disappointment, we have today announced the postponement of our Winter Graduation ceremonies until March/April 2022.
Feedback from students
Several senior colleagues and I, together with Students’ Union officers, had separate meetings with student reps from each of the three faculties. Those in FSE wanted to ask about further support for mental health and financial help and we told them about the Living Cost Support Fund for students. They also wanted to know about online versus in person exams and staffing for practicals. The reps in Humanities wanted to understand our plans for teaching in semester 2, but were supportive of blended learning and wanted us to be stricter on enforcing the wearing of masks. Those in BMH reported that students were asking about further in-person teaching, graduation ceremonies and earlier delays in issuing student ID cards.
Staff engagement
In online meetings with the School of Medical Sciences, students again asked about wellbeing support and opportunities for research. Staff expressed concerns about the levels of resource in some areas where staff have been seconded to major change programmes. They were interested in how we can better value our technicians who are invaluable for our teaching, research and other activities and in providing support for e-learning technology.
At a meeting with about 65 leaders across the University, we fed back on the Board of Governors’ accountability review, which was very positive. We gave a general update on COVID (though recognising that we still don’t yet know much about Omicron), teaching in semester 2 and likely delays in government announcements about their response to the Augar review of post-18 year old education and funding and levelling up. Adèle MacKinlay, Director of People and Organisational Development, spoke about industrial relations and the impact of the strike, though the details of this will not be clear for some time.
Several of our black female academic staff and I met as part of a UK initiative called 100 Black Women Professors, to hear about the challenges they have faced and talk about their experiences. They were all very positive and felt they had good support at the University but mentoring and advice was rather varied. I will meet with them again during their programme.
At an induction meeting of about 30 new members of our General Assembly, I gave a broad overview of the University with a focus on Our future, our vision and strategic plan. I answered questions on our engagement with the local voluntary and charity sector, our commitment to net zero and on the role of members of General Assembly as ‘critical friends’ and ‘ambassadors’.
We held a further open meeting on USS pension with Paul Hamilton, an independent pension expert and answered many questions. You can watch the event and submit questions to correspondence@manchester.ac.uk.
Work with external stakeholders
The Russell Group met with the Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi. He praised our efforts in getting students back to in-person teaching and on very low COVID infection rates amongst students across our campuses. Separately, we met senior officials from Treasury to discuss how the uplift in research and development funding will be deployed, how we can use public funding to drive private funding and ‘levelling up’.
The Times Education Commission discussed whether an interim report and recommendations based on our first year’s work should be made. We heard from schoolchildren about why they love Shakespeare and from James Dyson on why we need many more engineers as they are people who create things rather than just mend things.
Finally….
We had an event to say farewell and thank you to Karen Heaton who retires after nine years as our Director of HR. Karen is one of the longest standing members of SLT.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor