An Anthropological Experiment in Birmingham

I’m not sure that spending my last day as Master of Churchill College at the Conservative Party Conference would have been quite what I expected, but so it was. I was in Birmingham – just as I was in Liverpool last week for the Labour Party Conference – to support the Royal Society’s work around Science 2040. This is their project taking a forward look at what the science system ‘could and should’ look like by 2040. I’m delighted to be associated with it, both as a steering committee member and leading an ongoing piece of work about how career pathways need to develop. An interim report on the project will be published in the spring of next year, but already one strand has been published regarding what science does for the economy. With growth much in the Government’s eyes and words, spelling out the important, if often hard to quantify, contribution science makes to the economy is crucial.

This piece of work has been led by Richard Jones, my friend and erstwhile Cambridge colleague, now Vice President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement at the University of Manchester as well as Professor of Materials Science there. He gave an eloquent introduction to this strand at the reception in Birmingham, stressing how much Birmingham itself, over the last two centuries and more, has contributed to the science and innovation base of the country and how that had significant impact for the economy. Birmingham is of course associated with the Lunar Society of Erasmus Darwin (a polymath and one of my heroes), Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt and more.  It may have been a dining club, named after the fact that they met at full moon when it was safest to travel home late in the evening, but it was far more than that. Their friendship and inventions were a sparkling example of how science and innovation go hand in hand and can change the world. The contributions to the economy and our well-being in general are as important now as they were as in the Lunar Society’s time in the last years of the eighteenth centurey. (I’d recommend Jenny Uglow’s book about this group to you if they are unfamiliar to you.)

Attending party conferences is, as someone described it to me, an anthropological experiment. They are certainly unlike any academic conference I ever attended in many respects, if not in all. One similarity I noticed (and in this I was not alone) was that the percentage of women present was low, far lower than at the Labour Party conference. Furthermore, the dress code was very different, even if it was an unwritten rule. Men, overwhelmingly, were in blue suits with white shirts; tie choice was free, but ties themselves did not seem to be optional. In Liverpool the range of clothing for men was distinctly more varied, although I was surprised to see how many women were in dresses (the latter unlike academia, the former much more so). It was sheer chance, but just to confirm stereotypes I passed a couple of what I assume were recent graduates allowed out on the circuit, with one saying to the other ‘since you’re an old Etonian….’.

However, anthropology and more science apart, I mainly attended sessions on skills and apprentices, of which there were many (in Liverpool, the skills talks seemed doomed to be simultaneous, so I actually got to fewer of them there). Asking a question at one event about the apprenticeship levy, when no one had actually mentioned the role and vital importance of the providers as opposed to discussing the employer’s point of view, I was somewhat surprised to have Robert Halfon (one of the speakers) challenge me in response about why Cambridge University was not providing degree apprenticeships – which was not particularly relevant to my question about FE Colleges, but I supposed it meant he didn’t have to answer that. Even more surprising to me was when I walked into the room of a later session, on which he was also a panel member, and he shouted at me across the room, something along the lines of ‘Cambridge is here again; are you stalking me?’. To which my reply was ‘isn’t Cambridge allowed to be interested in apprentices?’. Perhaps my red jacket was equivalent to a red rag to a bull, but I felt he was out of order.

Halfon may have a bee in his bonnet about degree apprentices, but David Willetts (now of course a member of the House of Lords) was having none of it. In a third event on apprentices and skills, Lord Willetts made it absolutely plain he could see no logic in this particular hang-up, explicitly naming both Robert Halfon and Gillian Keegan in this context as having focussed far too much on this. He emphasised that in his view we should be ensuring the apprenticeship levy was spent on the under 25’s to get them into the workplace (Levels 3-5), and not providing Levels 6 and 7 for those already with jobs. All the evidence shows an increasing trend of firms sending those already with significant qualifications on to degree apprentices at the expense of school leavers. David Hughes, CEO of the Association of Colleges and on the same panel, wholeheartedly agreed with Willetts regarding this point.

In the Science 2040 strand of work I’m leading on careers’ pathways, these are some of the issues we’ll be exploring. I feel it is very important that the Royal Society explicitly recognizes that the elite scientific system of its Fellows often rests crucially on the shoulders of others whose qualifications are much more modest, and I was delighted that its five-year strategic plan explicitly recognizes this.

So, as of today and now I’m back in a very wet Cambridge, I am fully retired. It is a very strange sensation. I will miss the day-to-day business of a job and specifically of my colleagues at Churchill College (although I now become a Fellow Emerita). But it gives me the opportunity to explore new avenues – and perhaps write more.

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