Box of delight

This blog was contributed by Jenny Shaw, Higher External Education Engagement Director at Unite Students.

So much of student life is shaped by the experience of being in student accommodation. Living in a student community, making new friends, meeting people from different backgrounds, managing day-to-day life independently are all learning experiences in their own right. Moreover, the sense of belonging, support and safety within that community of peers provides a foundation that can increase the ability to study well and thrive at university.

As we engage in discourse that acknowledges the past and looks to the future, Black History Month offers a timely reminder of the interventions needed across higher education to tackle the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student attainment gap. In the HEPI report The white elephant in the room, the authors recommend that higher education institutions participate in the Race Equality Charter, do groundwork to facilitate conversations about race and avoid vague actions that are unlikely to effect change. These are excellent ideas for reducing racial inequalities in higher education, but another gap between Black and White graduates persists after they leave the institutions – an outcomes gap. As the first release of HESA’s Graduate Outcomes Survey has shown, fifteen months after graduating from university UK-domiciled graduates from BAME backgrounds are 8% less likely to be in full-time graduate employment than their White peers (54% versus 62%) and BAME graduates were also more likely to be unemployed than White graduates.

History teaching in schools has long been seen as central to creating a sense of national identity, and in defining the scope of citizenship.

Who and what gets included in the vision of ‘British history’ has been hotly contested, particularly by black and minority ethnic communities, who have campaigned for over five decades for the inclusion of black histories on the curriculum. The establishment of supplementary schools and of Black History Month – which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2017 – have shown both the significance of a more inclusive version of British history in our increasingly ethnically, racially and religiously diverse society, and the tenacity of BME activists in seeking alternative ways of telling these (hi)stories.

It’s very easy for the government to brag about not having student number controls when we are in a demographic dip – but I think we all knew that this was a temporary situation. As the number of 18 year olds climbs back up after next year we’ll need more places to satisfy demand – and those places cost money.

If you’re reading this after the ONS decision on the treatment of income-contingent student loans is released, you’ll know just how deep a hole the treasury is expected to be in. DfE has been doing sense-testing with vice chancellors ahead of the Augar report, and we should hardly be surprised that the latest kite to be flown that’s been leaked to the Sunday Times is all about trying to limit costs.

A new report investigating the pay differences between ethnic minority staff and their white counterparts has been published by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).

Inspired by the interest shown in gender pay gap reporting and the prospect of ethnicity pay gap reporting, the key findings include clear evidence that pay ‘penalties’ for ethnic minorities are significant, with black men and black women earning the least on average relative to white men. The research finds that the pay penalty experienced by ethnic minority women in the sector is much more likely to be due to factors associated with their ethnicity than their gender.

Ten charts that show how mental illness affects people in the UK.

New University of Liverpool research – published today in The Lancet Public Health — shows that children who move into poverty are more likely to suffer from social, emotional and behavioural problems than children who remain out of poverty.

The UK Government has recently questioned whether the relative measure of income poverty used in this research (a household income that is less than 60% of the national average) is a good indicator of children’s life chances. The Government has argued that it is better to increase the number of parents who are employed, than use the social security system to prevent children moving into poverty.

Despite the growing number of young people attending university, comparatively few disadvantaged students are accepted into Britain’s most prestigious institutions. Many of the most selective universities have missed recent targets to improve access, as the least privileged students remain more than eight times less likely to gain places than their peers from the most prosperous backgrounds.

This blog was kindly contributed by Kirstie-Anne Woodman, a recent International Relations graduate from the University of Birmingham. Kirstie-Anne is currently interning at a diversity and inclusion consultancy agency, Worth of Mouth Services.You can find Kirstie-Anne on LinkedIn.

It took me a long time to find a dissertation topic which invigorated me and I felt a true passion for. Then, by chance, I came across Nicola Rollock’s ‘Staying Power’ paper, a report on the career experiences of Black female professors in the UK. While reading, it hit me, I had never had, or even seen a Black professor at my university – let alone a Black female professor. This led me to think of all of my university experiences which had differed to those of my peers due to my Blackness. I read reports regarding the Black attainment gap, the Black drop-out rate and the need to decolonise curriculums. For the first time, feelings of otherness that I had felt throughout my entire university journey, were explained and quantified in academic terms. And so I wrote ‘Black Academic, White Space: The Insidious Legacy of Institutional Racism at Top-tier UK Universities’.

“For our society to cohere, to find a successful identity in the 21st Century with a vision to carry us all forward, we need to shake off some of the shibboleths of the past. Otherwise our vision will be unbalanced by a false sense of what Britain has been, by omission of the contributions of far too many of our citizens.” Navasha Wray, Greens of Colour Education Officer, discusses the importance of decolonizing the curriculum and re-examining Britain’s colonial past.

When the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was launched into the Bristol harbour last week, it propelled a discussion of how Britain regards its imperial and colonial past right into the mainstream and out of the corridors of academia.

About time too, say many BAME writers, artists and academics. They have been calling for an overhaul of the way in which the British imperial legacy has been taught and presented in British schools. Britain’s role in promoting slavery and as a colonial power has been glossed over, if not airbrushed out of the history taught in schools. Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have opened up a welcome space for us all to debate and reconsider the era of colonialism and how we want to address it.

A short series of precisely targeted writing exercises can significantly improve the academic attainment of school students from low-income families, according to a new study by a joint research team from LSE and the University of Sussex.

The study found that values affirmation writing exercises, where individuals are asked to write about a value that is personally important to them, offer a low-cost and effective way of reducing the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools.

““Before the invention of the camera,” explains the Watercolour World, “people used watercolors to document the world. Over the centuries, painters—both professional and amateur—created hundreds of thousands of images recording life as they witnessed it. Every one of these paintings has a story to tell.”

Closing the academic gender pay gap will take 40 years at the current pace, according to research published by the University and College Union.