Last month, the National Student Survey (NSS) results for 2024 were published. Looking at the data, Mark Wild, our Learning and Teaching Policy Officer outlines the importance of this survey and what students think about Scottish higher education. NSS results for 2024 were published in July and speak to the quality of Scottish university education….
Tag: Teaching, learning and quality
Joint Articulation: what is it and what are the priorities?
Last week, the Commissioner for Fair Access, Professor John H. McKendrick published his first annual report on widening access to HE. In it, he champions an alliance between colleges and universities as a means to achieving the access targets. Colleges and universities have been working closely together on progression routes at both national and regional…
Response to Scottish Government’s Education Bill consultation
The Scottish Government’s consultation on the forthcoming Education Bill, which will legislate for a qualifications body (to replace SQA) and an inspection agency (to replace the existing function in Education Scotland) closed yesterday. The Education Bill will establish a new qualifications body for Scotland, which will have similar functions to SQA but will also have…
Response to Professor Hayward’s independent review of qualifications and assessments
We welcome the independent review of qualifications and assessment by Professor Hayward and have written to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills to express our view on this review. Our response focuses on: the inclusion and equality of the report and how we see the addressing of the poverty related attainment gap as a…
84% of Scottish graduates say going to university got them the job they wanted
Research from Universities Scotland highlights the value of going to university, including that: 84.5% of Scottish graduates credit their university with helping them gain employment 74% of Scottish graduates found a job reflective of their ambitions in under a year thanks to their degree 75% of business leaders believe going to university enables graduates to…
Increasing number of Scottish university students from deprived backgrounds requires a change in how deprivation is defined
Dr Kirsty Conlon, Head of Learning, Teaching and Widening Access has shared her thoughts in The Scotsman on the journey that Scottish universities will take to achieve the 2030 target of 20% of all students entering university will come from the nation’s 20% most deprived areas. She also outlines the challenges that will be faced…
Erasmus+ and the replacement schemes in place across the UK
We were given the opportunity to provide evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee on their inquiry into Erasmus+ and the replacement schemes in place across the UK. In our evidence we highlight: Scotland’s students, staff and universities would benefit significantly from the introduction of a two-way mobility scheme in Scotland, that would complement…
Submission to the Education, Children & Young People Committee Budget 2023 to 2024 session
Universities Scotland is extremely disappointed by the Scottish Government’s decision to withdraw £20 million of resource funding allocated to the higher education sector for financial year (FY) 2023/24 and to reverse aspects of the budget decision as supported by the Scottish Parliament in the Budget Bill (now Act) as passed on 21 February 2023.
£20m cut “extremely disappointing”
This afternoon (Tuesday 2 May), Principals of Scotland’s universities were informed by the Scottish Funding Council that the £20 million of additional resource funding allocated to the sector in December’s budget by the Scottish Government is now “not available for distribution and has been identified as a necessary saving”. Universities were told that Scottish Government…
AI in higher education – friend or foe?
The topic of Artifical Intelligence has been of huge interest in the early months of 2023. Our latest blog sees Abertay University Principal, Professor Liz Bacon, discuss the role AI could have in higher education reflecting on her decades of work in this area. With the disruption navigated by our universities during Covid-19 thankfully beginning to…