Thinking about Your Workload

Posted on January 10, 2020 by Athene Donald

The first time I was asked to serve on a research council (standing) committee, when a young(ish) researcher, I did not seek my head of department’s position. I informed him, since it happened we worked closely together, but it did not occur to me to ask permission, to check whether he thought it was compatible with my departmental job. I just assumed it was part of the job. The only quibble I had with his response was that he insisted I attend the first meeting when, as I was still feeding my seven-month old baby, I had not intended to go to avoid the logistic complexities of attending a meeting in Swindon. My maternity leave was only 16 weeks back then, and that was generous.

When, many years later, I was asked to chair such a committee – again a standing panel, not an ad hoc one – I likewise did not think to ask for anyone’s agreement. I thought it was part of an academic’s role and I just had to fit it in somehow. Indeed, every significant role I’ve taken on – ranging from being the university’s Gender Equality Champion to chairing the Royal Society’s Education Committee, roles which probably foolishly I took on more or less simultaneously and then added in serving on the ERC’s Science Committee, I just made my own decision and got on with it. As far as I understood the ‘rules’, as long as I delivered research suitable for the RAE/REF and did the teaching and examining that was asked of me, anything else was up to me. All the roles I’m talking about were, fairly obviously, academically relevant and (I believe) beneficial to the wider community.

In Cambridge that seems to have been accepted in the spirit intended. Certainly no head of department ever hauled me over the coals, rather the contrary. We have (and have had for quite a long time) a workload model in the Cavendish Laboratory which takes external activities such as these into account, albeit hours for some types of activities are ‘capped’. For many years – because I also served on University Council and many of its dependent committees and at other times was a deputy head of department – my workload always came out towards the high end of the departmental distribution, even if there were many departmental tasks I did not do. I never, for instance, served on the teaching committee, and my actual teaching load was below average. But it all came out in the wash, as it were.

However, the more I talk to colleagues in other universities, the more I know how lucky I was and how enlightened our workload model has been. I hear depressing stories of people who devote a lot of time to issues connected with inclusion, or with professional bodies, who get zero, or close to zero allowance from their departments. Indeed, in one case they were told that, since they spent far more time on one of these activities than the workload in their university would ‘allow’ or take into account, they would have to take the time out of their vacation allowance. I was truly shocked.

There are instances, I hear, where it would seem jealousy that someone has made a name for themselves through outreach and engagement, with the public or with policy-makers, comes into play. Then they (and the plural here is not to disguise their gender, but because there is more than one case like this I’ve come across) face constant sniping from colleagues who then try to load them with humdrum chores regardless of the benefit (indeed including REF impact cases) they might be bringing to their department. Pathetically, in those cases where these stories surface, it is clear how much those impact cases will really matter. And just how much financial benefit does that bring? It seems incredibly short-sighted to say to such a person: you really do have to teach this first year course that the students hate and anyone else in the department could do, with the subtext that the department is going to cut you down to size.

Alice Roberts, without relating the jealousy to workloads, spelled this sort of attitude out

During my academic career I’ve encountered quite considerable opposition and obstacles to engaging with the public. Firstly, it is difficult to squeeze something else into an already busy job. But then there’s also – still, I think – a feeling amongst a few academics that communicating about your own research and your field more generally is a distraction, an irrelevance, a frivolity.

And what was the outcome of such negative views? Alice moved to another university where she is doing very nicely, thank you, as Professor of Public Engagement in Science. Departments should not be surprised if someone like her, who has risen to public prominence because of the excellence of their work outside the straight and narrow of the department but is treated as if they are bringing nothing special to the department, either digs their heels in or turns their back.

These issues are not unrelated to a recent study which highlighted the psychologically unsafe academic environment that so many academics, young and old, find themselves in: unsafe because of the stresses, the toxic workplace culture, the hostile bosses, the outright bullying and harassment and the overloading. If you have a workload model that can tolerate an individual working 140% of a normal (however defined) week, or that chooses to ignore a large part of that person’s legitimate academic activities because they are outside the department, then there is a problem. There is a problem for the individual, the department and the entire community. Is it any surprise that mental health issues are now such a major part of academia?

I would want to stress any workload model – and a department really needs one if it is to apply for an Athena Swan award convincingly – has to take into account the full spread of tasks and roles that benefit the department and the wider community. Maybe REF environment statements should require this to be more fully spelled out; the old-fashioned ‘esteem’ of the RAE had its own problems but did allow for explicit recognition of some of these activities. It strikes me as totally unacceptable that an individual rising to prominence externally to the profit (possibly literally) of an institution, should not be credited appropriately for that work. If no one could accept chairing a major committee – research council or anything else – because they would still be expected to contribute just as much to the department as someone not shouldering this responsibility, then where would our academic world end up? If no one served on Whitehall committees or were prepared to front TV programmes, would our universities be in a better place? I doubt it.

Perhaps I should have personally been less cavalier about what roles I took on without discussion – I know for sure in one case the person fingered as my successor to chair one of the relevant committees would not agree till they had ‘sign off’ from their head; perhaps that was wise and appropriate – but institutions need to recognize they are part of an ecosystem. If individuals are not permitted to take on diverse tasks externally, or only ‘permitted’ as long as no departmental allowance in their internal workload occurs, the whole system will ultimately grind to a halt. To, need I say it, everyone’s detriment.

 

Posted in Communicating Science, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Shenanigans with the Railways

Posted on January 7, 2020 by Athene Donald

Rules about railway tickets have clearly always been mysterious, as this Punch cartoon of 1869 makes clear.

Punch 1869b

 “‘Station Master say, Mum, as cats is ‘dogs,’ and rabbits is ‘dogs,’ and so’s parrots; but this ere ‘tortis’ is an insect, so there ain’t no charge for it!”

In that case a station master (do such people even exist now?) made up some guidelines for the cost of taking a tortoise on a train. In my case most of the (lengthy) exchanges took place by email, but the ‘rules’ applied made about as much sense.

In early November I took a train to London to present a talk on diversity issues at Kings College. Or so I thought. All was going well for the first twenty minutes or so, when the packed train came to a stop somewhere the Cambridge side of Letchworth. We waited and waited. In due course we were told there was a power outage somewhere ahead and in due course the train was reversed all the way to Baldock. By this point I was already so late I knew I wasn’t going to make my conference ‘slot’ and, rather than hope that the train company (Great Northern) would work out some way of getting me to London eventually, I chose to take a train back to Cambridge: for reasons that weren’t clear to me trains were still coming through in that direction. I got back to Cambridge Station about three hours after I left. What a waste of energy. Ultimately, I gave my talk, by Skype, at some completely rearranged time during the afternoon. The organisers were incredibly understanding (these communications mainly by Twitter DM) although, despite the desirability in general of more talks being given by Skype to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint, I didn’t enjoy the experience. Perhaps, with more time for preparation and checking of the technology I’d have felt better.

So far so bad. As usual when a train journey goes awry, inevitably not an unfamiliar experience, I filled in the delay-repay forms online, stating I had arrived more than 120 minutes late and was entitled to a full refund. A few days later I got a reply. It was not helpful, and it certainly did not send me a refund. Instead, it said that

‘Our delay repay team have looked into this and passed your information to refunds as you have stated you did not use the ticket to travel. If this is the case, you would be entitled to a refund and not delay repay compensation. The refund would be the responsibility of the original retailer as they would hold the funds from the original sales transaction.’

and told me to contact Greater Anglia who run Cambridge Station. I immediately replied pointing out I had indeed travelled – to nearly Letchworth and back – but had not arrived at my London destination. Several days later I got a reply saying I had to fill in a paper copy of the application since I needed a refund. So, I did and, as required, sent in the original ticket attached to the form.

A while later I got a letter stating, in essence, that they suspected me of fraud because

‘we have found an identical claim on our system’.

Not that the word fraud was actually used, but that was the clear message. Burying my anger with the insinuation I again did as asked to do if I suspected this judgement was ‘in error’, and attempted to fill in the online form – again – only to hit a brick wall as now I didn’t have the ticket (sent with the hard copy form) with all its requisite numbers on and so couldn’t proceed to the bit where I could have explained what the error was (namely, they had my previous application on file but had refused to repay me on the back of that). So I emailed to the person (or rather anonymous email address) pointing out what had happened and why I couldn’t fill in the online form again. They then came back to me saying, oh yes they could see the ticket and because I’d bought it at Cambridge I had to apply to Greater Anglia. But of course I didn’t have the ticket, they did, so I couldn’t apply to Greater Anglia as I pointed out in my next email

Their next reply was, even more helpfully, to the effect they didn’t have the ticket (!) but I should apply to Greater Anglia. I was, as you can imagine, getting pretty cross by this point about six weeks in. My replies were getting more and more acerbic as I pointed out that yes, they had already admitted they had the ticket and here was their email saying so. This time they noticed that, gosh, they did have the ticket after all so they would ever so kindly forward it to Greater Anglia. But I only received that particular message 24 hours after an email from Greater Anglia (who by this time had transcribed the date of my attempted journey to a month later; luckily this did not seem to impact on the exchanges as I feared it would) who helpfully pointed out

‘We have been unable to approve your claim as the train that delayed your journey was not one of ours. The train was operated by Great Northern.’

And that they, Greater Anglia, would forward my claim to, you guessed it, Great Northern. As a consequence I could immediately reply to the latest Great Northern suggestion that Greater Anglia would sort me out with a refund, by emailing back a copy of the latter’s reply saying they had sent the ticket back already to Great Northern. I do hope you’re following this…..

By this point I was more than cross. My next (and thankfully last) message said

In reply to your message of today, please see this message I received yesterday from Greater Anglia. They clearly think the problem is yours to fix not theirs. Will you please, finally, send me the refund everyone seems to agree I’m owed. The cost of your company’s time in all this faffing around will be exceeding the cost of the fare you owe me.

Still quite mild really, but it has had the desired effect. I think this time the email must have been forwarded up their chain of command since, for the first time I got an email from someone who gave me their full name and did not append the job title of ‘Customer Relations Adviser’ to that name. Whatever, it worked.  They have admitted that

‘We have looked into your claim and we can see that you are entitled to 120 minutes or more compensation.’

Indeed, that’s what I said from day one. I am not sure that being thanked for my ‘patience and understanding throughout the process’ is either adequate or accurate. I am not feeling patient, nor do I understand what absurd processes they thought they were following, let alone why they thought they could push the charge onto another operating company. I fear their understanding of ‘rules’ is about as good as that Punch cartoon of 150 years ago. However, the ‘cheque is in the post’, or so they say. I haven’t seen it yet….

 

 

Posted in travel | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How Long does it take to Gain Expertise?

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Athene Donald

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s right-hand man, currently is said to be set on shaking up the Civil Service. The three elements that are rumoured to be on the agenda are:

  • Better training in data science, systems thinking and ‘super-forecasting;
  • Staff will spend longer in a given post than the current expectation of 18 months; and
  • Civil servants will be ‘reoriented to the public’;

I am quoting here from what has been put into the public domain and of course can’t judge how accurate the information is. The last point should perhaps be read in the context of ‘Yes Minister’ episodes. Quite honestly, I don’t know how to read it. In principle there is nothing wrong with hoping that civil servants are able to express their views in clear language that the public will ‘get’, but somehow I suspect that isn’t really the goal. However, it is a long time since I read George Orwell, so I will move on to consider the first two points.

The first one is a reflection of the extreme paucity of civil servants who enter via the ‘Fast Stream’ route with a STEM qualification. The figure quoted was 17%. Just like the lack of MPs who have a firm grasp of science, technology or innovation issues based on their qualifications and experience, it is a matter of concern so few civil servants are well-informed about much of what should be central to their role. Julian Huppert, the former Cambridge MP, proposed upon election in 2010 (as the only MP trained in scientific research at the time) that MPs should be provided with mandatory training in relevant scientific matters. It sounds as if Cummings is taking the same line with the administrators. I cannot think this is a bad idea, although I would add into his list statistics (though perhaps he includes that in the term data science), reading graphs and some basic science facts so that they don’t make endless gaffes or misinterpretations. This might not stop their political masters making sweeping statements based on pure ignorance and/or wishful thinking.  I am thinking here of the daftness, not to mention sheer impossibility of the ‘Star Wars’ shield that Ronald Reagan was so enthusiastic about (no doubt readers can think of other jaw-dropping examples). Reading Sharon Weinberger’s book Imagineers of War about (D)ARPA, as I said I would in my last post, I was struck by her description of the reaction to Reagan’s announcement of his plans:

‘DARPA’s director, Cooper, and other senior officials – including Secretary of Defense Weinberger – sat slack-jawed as they tried to digest the President’s address. The president had just made one of the most significant military technology decisions of the past few decades without consulting the key people in the Pentagon responsible for that technology.’

These days, with fact being even less in evidence in some political statements, civil servants, however well-informed personally, may find themselves in a similar position. Nevertheless, making sure they are technologically and numerically well-informed themselves does sound like a good thing to do.

However, it is the second bullet point I find most interesting. How long should one stay in a given post? I had not appreciated that 18 months was regarded as a suitable time scale for those in Whitehall, with the implicit message that if you’re not moving onward and upward into a different role by that benchmark, you’ve failed. It strikes me as deeply troubling, possibly even reflecting a concern that if you spend longer you might start to know what you’re talking about. It’s those damned experts again that Michael Gove had such a dislike for. Yet expertise and experience is exactly what is needed in so many situations, in government or outside.

My experience of different parts of what is now UKRI highlights this. These observations may not be current but certainly in the past EPSRC had a habit of swiftly moving employees on from one programme to another. Just when you’d got to know one of the team, so you felt able to ring them up to discuss a call for proposals or a financial question, they’d disappear to somewhere else. One of my colleagues once referred to a visit by EPSRC to the department as a ‘bunch of schoolchildren’ they looked so young and fresh-faced (and this remark was made by someone a good 15 years younger than me). Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean they were not experts let alone competent, but there was the worrying sense they simply did not have enough experience to be able to answer the questions they were about to be bombarded with.

This habit could be contrasted with BBSRC, where people tended to stay in a particular post much longer. They would have plenty of experience of sitting through committees and hearing discussions, have had many phone calls with irate or anxious PIs and applicants, and would know what rules could or could not be bent. I feel that level of experience tends to lead to better outcomes. Swift rotations between programmes stops anyone ‘going native’, but also may restrict their ability to make good decisions, or indeed any decisions at all without referring up.

My most recent interactions along these lines were with UKRI in the summer of 2018 just after they had come into formal existence, when I went to discuss funding for interdisciplinary (aka multidisciplinary) work in the new structures. It was, I’m afraid to say, a dispiriting experience precisely because those I talked to did not have prior knowledge of any of the research councils and their modus operandi. One was fresh out of Oxford and admitted to being on a 3-month rotation, the others were – I deduced – ex-BEIS and may well have been expert in science but not in what goes wrong for interdisciplinary research at standard research council responsive mode panels. They diligently took copious notes (I was reminded of the jury in the courtroom scene in Alice in Wonderland) but were in no position to comment on how the brave new world of UKRI might manage things better. Indeed, I am still waiting to hear more details of the review of peer review of multidisciplinary research promised in the UKRI Delivery Plan of summer 2019.

So, I am all in favour of civil servants (and UKRI employees) being able to stay in a post for more than 18 months without that being taken as a sign of failure. It is an interesting question how long is ‘optimum’ to stay in a given role. Too short, and you simply don’t know enough to be particularly effective, too long and there is the danger of becoming fossilised and of losing all enthusiasm for change or innovation. As a head of a Cambridge college, I am aware that this is a question asked of us by our constituents. I feel, after five years, I have some awareness of where there may be skeletons. There seem to be remarkably few in Churchill, as far as I’ve discovered; nevertheless at the outset I had to chair committees where everyone else knew more about history of a given topic, what worked and what did not and should never be attempted again, and that makes things decidedly tough. But by 10 years – my statutory limit in post; every college has different rules – maybe I will be bored, brusque and impatient and everyone will be counting down the days till I leave so they can do things differently. Of course it is possible they are doing that already, but I hope not.

So I am quite enthusiastic about what appears to being proposed. Whether Dominic Cummings should be allowed to shake up the civil service given his less-than-formalised role, is of course a totally different question.

Posted in Interdisciplinary Science, Science Funding | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Leaning In or Leaning Out: Who does What (and Why)?

Posted on December 22, 2019 by Athene Donald

Girly swot Brenda Hale, otherwise known as the outgoing President of the Supreme Court with an impressive taste in brooches (see figure),
brooch
was quoted recently as saying:

“I encountered many young men from public school backgrounds who felt entitled to good jobs. And I realised that actually, quite a few of them were no better than me and, in some cases, not as good as me. And that made me feel: OK, I don’t feel entitled, but I’m going to try.”

Male or female, or anywhere in between, there will be many readers who recognize those dear folk around us who ooze entitlement. It might be due to their schooling, their upbringing or – conceivably – even something in their genes, but it does not lend itself to being good company. Perhaps Sheryl Sandberg would tell us poor unentitled characters to lean in, to try a bit harder in the face of others’ arrogance. And that same message of ‘lean in’ directed at women could also be taken away from a recent study of styles of paper-writing. Women’s papers fare less well on average, apparently, and this could be related to the fact that some women, unconfident feeble creatures that we may be, don’t use words like novel or unique, let alone refer to our work as exciting. So women, it’s time to lean in….or should that be, time for men to lean out? I think we should think a lot harder, culturally across society, about whether we should be expecting (some) men to step back and not work so hard to be explicitly the top dog leaning in.

If I were to be skeptical and nasty, I could describe a summary of this recent paper as

‘women just need to lean in more and boast‘,

or alternatively

‘men hype more and aim for high impact factor journals.‘

Oh yes, did I say, a further result is that men (some, I’m not lambasting all of them! They probably know who they are, but they may well not read this blog) do better at getting their papers into high impact factor journals by virtue, so it would seem, of talking up their results? Because that appears to be the corollary of using lots of stand-out words in a manuscript, based on the evidence presented.

So, why does this sense of entitlement and this willingness to hype, really matter? It matters, as I wrote last summer with colleague Melinda Duer, because so much of our professional academic careers are determined by our publications’ record. If you don’t get the papers out, and as fast as possible without the multiple rewrites some women report being required, if you don’t get papers into high impact journals your progression may be stymied, unless, of course, your institution has signed up to DORA (and possibly even then, since there may be ignorant pockets of resistance).

What stops women praising themselves to the skies? Maybe another couple of recent papers give some clues into this. It could, according to one of these studies, be attributed either to confidence or to strategic incentives. However what Christine Exley and Judd Kessler found in the context of job applications, as described in a write-up of their paper in the Harvard Business Review, indicated neither of these were the root cause for holding back.

Women systematically provided less favorable assessments of their own past performance and potential future ability than equally performing men. And our various study versions revealed that this gender gap was not driven by confidence or by strategic incentives…

From this study, therefore, the jury is still out as to why women don’t talk themselves up to the same extent (on average). But another paper, specifically looking at the academic context of referees’ reports, shows just how much referees’ comments can impact on minorities, including women (and even more so for women of colour). This study illustrated their analysis with some truly appalling comments, including:

‘The first author is a woman; she should be in the kitchen, not writing papers.’

‘The author’s last name sounds Spanish. I didn’t read the paper because I’m sure it’s full of bad English.’

At this point I would like to ask what the editors thought they were doing by returning comments like these to the author. More to the point would have been for them to tear up the report and delete the referee from their database, making a point of telling them exactly why they were being blacklisted. Unprofessional – and plain nasty in some cases – refereeing should not be tolerated. However, the really sad thing was the authors’ finding as to the impact of such comments:

Specifically, women of color and non-binary people of color, white women and white non-binary people and men of color were mostly likely to select a 3 (moderate level of perceived negative impact on productivity), whereas white men were most likely to select a 1 (no perceived impact on their productivity…

[where the number refers to the severity of the impact].

The consequence is that women and other minorities (such as that Spanish-sounding author) are more heavily penalized by the unprofessional behaviour of referees. Next time they submit a paper they are hardly likely to be peppering the abstract with words like novel and unique. A vicious circle ensues. They might even quit the field completely.

We all have a part to play in trying to level this particular part of the academic playing field. This last study I cite highlights the need for editors to check referees’ comments for appropriateness and act accordingly. (I may say, during the time I was editor for EPJE twenty years ago, I never remember seeing any comments that I thought were beyond the pale on any front. Are things getting worse, I wonder?) As referees we all need to think carefully if we are offering constructive criticism or merely being offensive. That is something each of us should take responsibility for.

The recent Royal Society of Chemistry report has plenty of statistical evidence backing up the gender gap in publication outcomes. I summarized some of their findings last month, but to reiterate a few of the key ones:

  • Biases exist at each step of the publishing profile. Many of these biases appear minor in isolation, yet their combined effect puts women at a significant disadvantage.
  • Women are less likely than men to submit to journals with higher impact factors, and they are also more likely to have an article rejected without review.
  • Biases operate at editorial level too. The choice of reviewer and editorial agreement with a review are influenced by gender.

As Brenda Hale spells out, some people presume they are entitled, others find out all too often that entitlement does not apply to them, indeed that the system is set up actively to knock them back. In academia, as the evidence mounts regarding systemic bias, the whole community in their roles as, editors, referees, and members of appointment, funding or promotion panels, need actively to work to counter this. Otherwise, a generation on, we will still be wringing our hands about the lack of women at the top, the leaky pipeline and the gender pay gap.

 

 

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Post-Election Christmas Reading List

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Athene Donald

The general election is now done and dusted. The UK’s future is determined, for good or ill. Scientists (along with everyone else) now must work out how to interact with the new policies, new ideas and – if some of the Tories statements are to be taken at face value – substantial new money going into fresh initiatives. One of those touted in the run-up to the election, courtesy of Dominic Cummings, is the idea of a (D)ARPA like funding entity, sitting – as far as current rumours go – outside UKRI. I am sure I won’t be the only scientist up and down the country reading up about (D)ARPA over Christmas; my copy of Sharon Weinberger’s book Imagineers of War is on order (as referenced in David Willetts’ The Road to 2.4%), ready as a distraction from family and turkey.

That possible initiative is not the only thing the community may need to get to grips with. Time to think more concretely about what life post EU-funding means and the loss of both the ERC and structural funds. Reading the Smith/Reid report leaves many questions unanswered. Will yet another extra-UKRI agency be set up to oversee any new replacement funding? How efficient would having three, distinct public funders be (to be clear, I mean UKRI, ARPA-UK and replacement-EU), if that really is the plan. Would the same senior scientists be involved in oversight of three such bodies; would their back-offices reinvent wheels, even if the conditions of funding were not identical?

Post access to EU funds, the possibility of new structures to serve a fully global world, no longer with a special emphasis on collaborations with our nearest neighbours, opens up. How would that work in practice? Would an international strategy be more focussed on facilitating capacity-building in sub-Saharan Africa or ensuring we have good links with the Chinese economy, as it itself invests so much in its own science? Whatever direction and shape these new structures might take, it is absolutely clear that resolving issues around immigration and access to visas has to remain a central plank in our collaborative efforts.

But what about all these newly blue constituencies in the Midlands and North of England, what will ensure they stop being ‘left behind’? On this front, to echo Tony Blair’s past mantra, I would say education, education, education. But it has to be education for a purpose. As Richard Jones has pointed out in his essay Resurgence of the Regions: rebuilding innovation capacity across the whole UK, low skills in such areas result in part from the absence of local jobs at which to aim. Why bother to upskill or study hard at school if there are no jobs waiting for you? Regeneration of these areas in tandem with thinking much harder (and investing more) in education and skills is needed. So, to add to the Christmas reading list we should probably be dusting off our copies of the Augar Review, remembering that university isn’t going to be the goal of every 16-year-old in the country. Further Education colleges rightly need to be reconsidered. Ensuring that this part of the educational ecosystem is fit for purpose, including being properly funded, is going to be a vital part of turning around those parts of the country not currently well-served by innovative local companies and jobs a-plenty.

In this context, I would add to my Christmas reading list the US report from the Brookings Institution The Case for Growth Centres: How to spread innovation across the US to join my (re) reading of Richard’s essay discussing related issues. Getting a grip on the ‘place’ agenda is going to be critical in reducing inequality across the UK. Unsurprisingly, the distribution of cities with thriving economies is comparably uneven in the US. Left behind towns and cities, in the Rust Belt for instance, old manufacturing towns whose livelihoods have faltered as the production of steel or cars has faded and moved elsewhere, are just as significant a social issue in the US (and equally contributing to the rise of populism) as over here. The Brookings Institution solution is to propose that huge sums of money should be invested into a few of these centres, carefully done so that the benefits diffuse widely away from the actual centre. This need for diffusion – in tandem with a workforce sufficiently skilled to provide the necessary absorptive capacity of money and innovation – is crucial if invested money is to impact on all those who need it. One of the challenges for the somewhat overheated city of Cambridge, is that its impact does not reach to Wisbech or Newmarket, let alone to Cromer and Lowestoft. The Combined Authority of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is seriously impeded in its ability to transform the region by the huge discrepancies between the utterly different nature and economies of the cities of Cambridge and Peterborough and their surrounding fenland. There is simply no one-size-fits-all approach and therefore a lot of stasis, despite all the good intentions.

I come back to the importance of skills. The move to improve coding and IT skills in our schools, starting at a young age, is to be welcomed. It is vital that it isn’t simply middle-class kids who get given tablets at a young age and who thereby gain confidence in these areas. The robots may or may not be coming to take away all the lesser-skilled roles (actually not at all likely in areas like social care), but it is hard to imagine the workforce of the future being successful without computer-literacy of some sort, as well as literal literacy. Regrettably I don’t expect the new government to reinvent Sure Start, but the gap between the haves and the have-nots in education starts incredibly young.

If parents don’t have confidence in their own numeracy, literacy and IT skills, how can they facilitate their toddlers and young children not to be fearful of education. David Willetts, in his 2017 book A University Education, implied that pouring money into higher education was much better than, for instance, into the early years centres of Sure Start. I don’t buy his arguments (nor was I convinced by the evidence he adduced). I feel it begs the question of how an 18-year-old who has been consistently failed by the education system (possibly even permanently excluded) is going to want to be turned around and packed off to university, particularly if they are struggling with absolutely basic skills. And, if their whole family has been unemployed for years because of the local economy, what optimism can they have that it would be an investment of their time and money that will provide returns?

So, over Christmas, I will have plenty of reading to dig into. I need to improve my knowledge of the evidence base and comprehension of the political and economic landscape the general election has brought us and where we might be heading. I strongly believe it is not sufficient, as a well-heeled, middle class Oxbridge don, to bury my head in the sand and think ‘I’m all right Jack (or Boris)’.  There will be many in those newly blue constituencies who may briefly be feeling optimistic. We, collectively across the sector, need to do our bit to ensure their optimism is justified.

Posted in Science Funding, Science Policy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment