20 January 2023: Event report - Friday News Round

After a warm welcome from Andrew Jones, the Director of Linking London, and Jakub Kowalewski, Partnership Officer, we started off with a short quiz on recent events in the education sector.

We then updated attendees on the latest Linking London activities and resources including our London apprenticeship vacancy mapping, and a learner guide for T Levels in Health, Healthcare Science and Science. We also highlighted the Linking London brokerage service and the HE in London site. Our resources are available on the Partner Area here.

Following from this, we offered some news headlines, including the PM’s suggestion to make maths compulsory to age 18, the letter to Robin Walker – signed among others by the Russell Group – recommending investigation into the Office for Students, the “integration” of traineeships, and Robert Halfon’s decision not to reform the apprenticeship levy.

We then provided a qualifications update covering the uncertain future of BTECs, and the request from Halfon to include entry requirements for T level applicants on university websites. As Linking London’s mapping found 63% out of 129 undergraduate courses listed didn’t have any specific T level information online at the beginning of this academic year.

Next, we looked at IAG-related developments including UCAS’s decision to reform the format of personal statements and references. We also covered the highlights of the recent data publications from HESA, House of Commons Library, and UCAS.

We concluded the meeting with the likely and the less likely future policy developments to look out for.

Feedback from attendees at our News Round events has been really positive:

“Great digest of what is happening in the world of education.” University colleague

“Extremely useful! Will be attending the next one!” University colleague

“Very informative.” College colleague

The next meeting will take place on 24 February 2023.

Slides and recording

To view the slides and the recording from the day please click here. This link will take you to the SharePoint Partner Area. You must be a Linking London member to access this website, if you do not have access or have any issues logging in, please email info@linkinglondon.ac.uk.