“The governor view” – How should universities be preparing for the Autumn term?

It should be business as usual on campus in September with a return to in-person teaching and an end to covid-19 precautions, according to the Westminster government. Not so, say the governments of Wales and Scotland which want to see continued restrictions such as the wearing of face coverings and limits on the size of teaching groups. The question of whether students in England will be required to be fully vaccinated before moving into halls of residence was still unanswered at the time of writing this article, with ministers suggesting a decision will not be made until September. Meanwhile, Scotland’s higher education minister has said there are no plans to make vaccination compulsory for students.

Amid the confusion, the Office for Students has warned that it will be monitoring teaching and fining English universities if standards fall through the lack of face to face contact.

University governors who spoke to Advance HE say their institutions are not planning to scrap the measures put in place to limit Covid infections. “We will continue to be cautious and retain masks on campus, elements of social distancing and one-way systems because it is not as if this problem has suddenly gone away. There are still young people getting Covid-19 and getting quite ill with it and we have a duty as employers to protect our students and staff,” said a governor at a Russell Group institution.

Governors from England, Wales and Scotland said they believe it is up to each university to find the right balance between in-person and digital teaching and learning that will maintain standards while also protecting students and staff. The decision on how to organise teaching and activities on campus should be a local one, based on factors such as the size and layout of buildings, the type of courses and the composition of the student body, they say.  They would like governments to concentrate on supportive measures, such as making sure young people are vaccinated, access to regular testing and suitable quarantine arrangements for international students.

The governor of a research-strong university in Wales said the institution has been able to work closely with the Welsh government to meet its guidelines.  “In September we are going to offer as much in-person teaching is possible and from what I hear that is what most students want,” he added.  “Some staff would prefer to work from home and some large group teaching can go online but unless they are extremely vulnerable then we will expect them to resume face-to-face teaching with sensible precautions,” he said.

In Scotland, the governor of a large, modern university said that changes to the campus and procedures in response to the pandemic had become “routine”.  "Once you get your head around it – for example, we have measured our campus to the nearest centimetre to be ready for all social distancing options – then taking precautionary measures in itself becomes business as usual,” she said. Working closely with students has been an important part of the response: “Because of that close working we upped our mental health support substantially. A lot of students were isolated and we worked with the Scottish association of mental health to bring in experts,” she added.

The governor of a Russell Group university said governors of other member institutions in the Group had said they believed they had built up sufficient precautions to protect staff and students and so they should be allowed to make decisions about the number of staff and students on campus. “We were really, really disappointed we could not bring people back in January. In the autumn term last year we had a remarkably small number of infections, the accuracy of testing was working really well and the student body was mostly behaving as one would wish. Our campus was really well prepared with ventilation and proper regimes for cleaning up spaces after lectures and seminars had taken place and timetabling an hour between the use of spaces. We knew we could do it as safely as could be expected but we were not allowed to and that was a real frustration,” he said.

The pandemic has forced the sector to embrace new technology and governors say they are enthusiastic about the opportunities opened up to provide more interactive, flexible teaching that can improve courses and also make higher education more accessible to a wider range of students.  “Blended learning is the future but it always was blended in many ways, it’s just the balance has changed,’ said a Russell Group university governor.  “The days of routinely shovelling hundreds of students into big spaces to be talked at are not entirely gone but are much diminished. We have always had some lecturers who are very reluctant to lecture capture and yet when covid hit they had not just recorded their lectures talking into a camera but putting over the material in different ways,” he added.

The governor of a small institution in Wales that has a high proportion of disabled students and those studying part-time while working says the increased amount of digital teaching has been popular. ‘We had a plan in place for online teaching and it was probably going to take about three years to implement but as soon as the pandemic hit we realised we had our way of doing it in the bag already so we fast-tracked it,” he said. “The staff and student feedback has been phenomenal; it is something we are going to carry on doing. Our approach to learning and teaching is going to be hybrid methods, a learning blend, depending on the type of course.”

The fact that student numbers look likely to increase in September is a cause for optimism as is the return of international students, but governors say they are concerned about the insistence by all three governments on centralised quarantine arrangements for students from high risk “red” countries.

Alone in a hotel room is not the way international students want to start their UK higher education experience says the governor of a Welsh university: “We have a high proportion of our own university-run accommodation and quite a lot of space so could put in security and support for international students to quarantine on campus but we haven’t had a positive response from either the Welsh or the English governments: they want it centralised.”  The university would be speaking to each student to work out the best option which could include starting the course digitally from their home countries, he added.

While governors have huge sympathy for students who have lost out on the higher education experience they expected, they do not believe a refund of fees would be appropriate. “Our academics have worked really hard to make sure the outcomes are the same and the quality of the degrees are equivalent of what they were before albeit delivered in different ways,” said the governor of a large university in England.  “If they have an argument for a rebate then it is an argument with the government because many people have been hurt by this in all sorts of ways and for the student body to be singled out to get their money back would be a political decision, and there is no sign of that,” he added.

Whatever the political position on fee refunds, it seems likely that governors will want to ensure that their institution is ready for ongoing uncertainty as the Autumn term approaches and that it can adapt to any changing situation and associated risks as these emerge. A key factor in moving to a state of readiness will be probing relationships with student and staff representative bodies and asking whether their needs are being recognised.