Tag: Policy

Digital Publishing, General

An end to literary discrimination? Changes to the VAT rate for e-books announced

Gold Leaf

Earlier this week, a historic decision was made that could pave the way for more changes worldwide on the equality of print and digital publishing.
The Economic and Financial Affairs Council decided on Tuesday at a meeting in Luxembourg to allow EU Member States to align the VAT rates they set for e‑publications with those for printed publications.

The EU commission had suggested a reform back in December 2016; the European Parliament voted in favour of this change in June 2017. Tuesday’s decision is now the final step to ensure that the unequal treatment of the two product formats becomes a thing of the past.

The Publishers Associations of the UK, France, Italy, Sweden and Germany all welcomed the VAT statement; so did the European Publishers Council (EPC). Rudy Vanschoonbeek, President of the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), said in his statement: “This forward-looking decision marks the end of the unjustified fiscal discrimination between publications in different formats, acknowledging the cultural, social and economic value of books, journals and educational materials in all formats and the technological progress that has taken place in the sector.”
Michiel Kolman, President of the International Publishers Association (IPA) is hoping that “other regions follow these great examples of reducing barriers to books.”

The German government has already issued a statement as part of their current coalition agreement in favour of this innovation, so it is to be expected that the changes will be implemented in Germany soon. The current political situation in the UK might not trigger an immediate response for the implementation of such a change, though the Publishers’ Association had written to the Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, ahead of the Luxembourg meeting to lobby for changes to the way digital publications are taxed.
Steven Lotinga, CEO of the Publishers Association, has called for the British government to act now: “We are leaving the EU but today’s decision from the ECOFIN committee removes a major obstacle for the UK Chancellor, who should now do away with this tax at the earliest opportunity – namely the Budget on October 29. If the UK does not act quickly it risks the UK digital policy falling behind its European competitors.”

Let’s hope we will see some movement on this soon!

Conferences, TEF, Uncategorized

Academic Book Trade Conference 2018

Gold Leaf

For the second year running, the Academic Book Trade Conference (ABT) was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon; also for the second year running the BA chose two gloriously sunny days. The conference took place on Thursday and Friday, 10th and 11th of May.

This year’s conference theme was The TEF, Brexit and More: what’s happened, what’s happening, what to do next. As in previous years, Gold Leaf’s Linda Bennett put the programme together, and what an exciting programme it was! Without having briefed any of the speakers on this specific aspect, “telling a story” was a recurring motif raised in various ways by the different speakers.

The chair of the Academic Booksellers Group, Lynne O’Neill, was first to pick up on this theme.  She quoted Romeo and Juliet to illustrate the symbiotic, sometimes turbulent relationship enjoyed between booksellers and publishers: “Two households both alike in dignity …”  She referred to the huge changes that have taken place in the academic landscape over the past year, especially the setting up of the Office for Students [OfS]. Richard Fisher, the conference chairman, added that HEFCE officially came to an end in April, to be replaced by the OfS and UKRI [UK Research and Innovation].

The next speaker – William Bowes, Director of Policy and General Counsel at the Publisher’s Association – spoke about the UK and the its importance in publishing, nationally but also internationally. He said that, although there has never been a better time to be involved in publishing, “for an industry whose sole purpose is to tell stories, we’ve not been very good at telling our own”. He concluded that Brexit offered publishers the opportunity to start telling their story better: an opportunity they all need to take advantage of.

Meryl Halls, recently appointed MD of the Booksellers Association, announced the launch of the Academic Publishers Shopfloor Project, which encourages publishers to spend time working in academic bookshops – “even doing the hoovering” – to experience what being a bookseller entails.  A similar initiative was managed very successfully by the BA in High Street bookshops last year.

The keynote talk was given by Dr Clare Goudy, Director of the Education Planning Office of the Vice-Provost at University College London. Dr Goudy gave the audience a very honest view of how UCL had approached the TEF and how “telling a story” had made them receive a TEF Silver award, whilst the metrics alone initially had put them into the Bronze category. An important part of telling this story had been the Library – the Library Services had played a pivotal part in this narrative of academic research and teaching achievement. However, taking the same approach at subject level for the upcoming subject-level TEF will be a challenge in many ways.

Louis Coiffait, Associate Editor at WonkHE, gave a captivating talk entitled “The Shipping Forecast: What’s really going on in HE?”. He elaborated on a number of interrelated stories, including the mystifying and complicated issue (which he expertly unpicked) of how many individual government and related bodies influence funding and decision-making at universities; and stakeholder pressures with regard to who pays / who should pay, not least from students’ parents. His final message for universities was to stay focussed on the passengers and to embrace the challenges new types of study and students bring.

The talks were followed by a panel session, in which Helen Adey, Resource and Acquisition Supply Team Manager at Nottingham Trent University, Dr Peter Jones, Principal Lecturer in Social Sciences at Greenwich University and Dr Clare Goudy discussed the needs of students today. The panellists agreed that students now need all kinds of help besides provision of resources – for example, information about how to give presentations, how to read critically and time management.  They want resources presented in such a way that they can understand exactly what is expected of them.  From the Library’s perspective, electronic resources can be made more available to more people and are often more affordable: but, given the choice, many students still prefer print.

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Introducing the report “How are Students and Lecturers Using Educational Resources Today?”, which was commissioned by Sage Publishing – print copies were given free to all of the delegates, kindly supplied by Ingram – Kiren Shoman, Editorial Director of Sage and Annika Bennett of Gold Leaf provided insights into the mixed picture of resources requirements in UK HE today.  81.4% of the librarians and 69.4% of the academics who participated in the research said that the resources used have changed; reasons for this included the increasing prominence of “flipped learning” and technologically-enhanced learning.  However, their views on which resources were being used were markedly different. Another important finding was that there are often discrepancies between the resources people actually use and the ones they say they use.  A second report will explore this further, but in the meantime, more details on the current report will be published soon in a separate blog post.

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Mark Hunt and Laura Annis, of Ingram and VitalSource, presented the findings of a recent survey, one of which was that 89% of the participating students said that e-textbooks and related course materials had had a positive impact on their learning experience.

At the awards ceremony which followed the conference dinner, OUP won Publisher of the Year (and has now won this title 9 years running) and Greig Watt of Blackwell’s Aberdeen won the Bookseller of the Year Award.  The after-dinner speaker was Ziyad Marar, whose recent book, “Judged”, is about the value of being misunderstood.

The second day of the conference was opened by Greig Watt (Blackwell’s) and Emma Farrow (John Smith’s), who gave two different accounts on booksellers’ best practice and how they can flourish in both traditional and non-traditional surroundings. This was followed by two workshops run back-to-back, one a student panel, the other devoted by Helen Adey to demonstrating to publishers the sorts of decisions librarians have to make when managing resources funds.  The conference was wrapped up with a Q & A between Richard Fisher and Louis Coiffait. Sadly, Richard Fisher has decided to conclude his chairmanship after this, his third year – he has been one of the most distinguished chairmen the conference has ever had.

(c) photos: Sharon Benton

TEF

TEF (and KEF?) – the latest developments and what it means for publishers

Gold Leaf

tef logo

Since the announcement of TEF results in June, the publishing industry has been relatively quiet on this subject (partly because of summer holidays). However, the Higher Education sector has been very busy during this period.

First of all, the TEF’s official name has changed from “Teaching Excellence Framework” to “Teaching Excellence and Student Outcome Framework”, though the acronym is to remain ‘TEF’. A “lessons learned from year 2” document was published in September, and the year 3 framework was announced earlier this month. In addition to these developments, a pilot on subject level TEF has been set up, to run during the current academic year; 30-40 institutions are involved. However, none of the results from this exercise (or names of participating institutions) will be published.

The changes identified via the “lessons learned” document are to be implemented immediately in the TEF year 3 round.  The most striking of these is certainly the decision to cut the significance of the NSS results by 50%. It could have a direct impact on the many prestigious institutions which this year were disappointed to receive Silver or Bronze, largely owing to bad NSS results. It may be possible for some of these institutions to re-apply and be rewarded with a better outcome in 2018. Another factor that might contribute to better results (and has been campaigned for by the Russell Group and others) is the introduction of benchmarking, which will help institutions where metric data did not give a true picture of life on campus, especially at institutions with high levels of part-time students, such as the Open University.

To offset the reduction in contribution of the NSS results, there will be three new main additions to the data collected for year 3: the inclusion of grade inflation metrics (the details of this to be confirmed); numbers of student contact hours (as a weighted metric); and the inclusion of Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data (more about this in a future post). All these changes signal a move away from trying to measure student satisfaction and towards the capture of more concrete outcome data.

…and then there’s KEF: at the HEFCE conference 2 weeks ago, Jo Johnson (Minister for Universities and Science) announced the introduction of a third framework, to sit along the REF and the TEF. The Knowledge Exchange Framework is being introduced to measure knowledge transfer and commercial outcomes, and will be yet another metric that universities will have to get their heads round.

What does all this mean for publishers and the book trade?

As was discussed at the ABT conference last May, there is a strong imperative for publishers and booksellers to lobby for more influence in contributing to the TEF  – especially now that the focus has moved away from NSS results: the newly introduced metrics have less direct relevance to the information sector. However, the impact of content, data and information provision on the quality of teaching cannot be denied, and it is only right to assert that the voices of those in our industry should be heard when such a key initiative is in progress. The Office for Students (OfS) – the new regulatory body for Higher Education, which will start taking charge in 2018 – is proposing from 2019 to make the TEF compulsory for all Higher Education Institutions that have more than 500 students. This is one more reason why publishers and booksellers should not underestimate the importance of the TEF for UK universities, but be willing to explore all possible opportunities to take an active role.

 

TEF

A quick overview of TEF results

Gold Leaf

 

TEF results thumb

Earlier this week, ‘providers’ (i.e. participating universities and colleges) were informed by HEFCE of their Year 2 TEF results, and at midnight today all the results were made public on the HEFCE website. Alongside the final results all metrics data and written submissions have been made public, too (although universities have the right to appeal if they object to the category in which they were placed until 27th January 2017, and some are expected to do so).

So, have there been any surprises? Yes and no. It was expected that newer, more teaching-led universities like Aston and Loughborough would lead (and both of them did indeed receive a Gold status), and that traditional “red brick” universities would come out lower in the ranks. This has partially been the case.

Of the Russell Group universities, for example, the results have been a bit of a mixed bag. The majority of these 24 institutions obtained Silver status, with six of them being awarded Gold (University of Birmingham, the University of Exeter, Imperial College London, the University of Leeds, Newcastle University, and the University of Nottingham). However, three were merely given Bronze  – the University of Liverpool, the University of Southampton and – most notably – the London School of Economics. It has been revealed that most Russell Group universities ranked in the lower end of Silver, whilst the six Gold institutions only narrowly made it across the benchmark.

Which brings us to the next point: the metrics. It has widely been said that existing metrics are unsuitable for measuring teaching excellence; the publication of the results now demonstrates the important role the written submissions, which are heavily focused on qualitative data, have played. Without undertaking a detailed analysis it is difficult to say exactly why, but anecdotal evidence shows that the universities with ‘weaker’ metrics managed to obtain higher scores by submitting persuasive ‘soft’ information. For example, Durham University had a similar dataset to Nottingham, but ‘only’ received Silver status, compared to Nottingham’s Gold; in fact, Nottingham’s scores on student satisfaction were quite a bit below the set benchmark for Gold.

Clear winners of the TEF exercise are the colleges of Creative and Performing Arts. Most of them received Gold status, despite many not scoring very high on the employment and employability metrics (the latter is obviously owing to the nature of courses they teach).

What does all this mean for the publishing industry? At present, it’s difficult to gauge, but it’s worth noting that this new TEF status has been awarded for three years. Re-submissions will be accepted, but none of the Gold institutions is expected to take the risk of losing its standing. However, there have been claims that Gold might be both a blessing and a curse – some universities have already announced budget cuts for projects designed to improve student satisfaction: after all, they did receive Gold, so clearly no further improvements are needed?!?

To determine the full extent of opportunities and impacts for the publishing industry, a full analysis of the metrics and – most importantly – the written submissions will need to be carried out. Gold Leaf will do more work on this over the summer.

A quick look at just half a dozen of the submissions shows that the Library seems to feature quite prominently in the more successful ones; and while provision of learning resources tends not to play a direct role, some universities found it worthwhile to highlight their participation in EBA or PDA purchasing schemes, and / or the direct relationship with publishers they enjoy.

This could be a good starting point for a more detailed analysis of submissions.  We’ll keep you posted!

 

A list of the TEF results for the institutions that participated in the report “Resource Provision in Higher Education: Implications of the TEF and related initiatives” can be found below.

If you have any questions or wish to purchase a copy of the full report, please send us an email.
Gold Leaf also offers entirely customised seminars to individual companies featuring a 4-hour seminar on the TEF in your offices.
We would be delighted to support the industry in taking the study forward by working with individual publishers or booksellers or with syndicated groups on the future developments of the TEF, its metrics and the implications on learning resources.
We look forward to hearing from you.

 

University of Aberdeen Opted out
University of Bedfordshire Silver
BPP University Bronze
University of Cambridge Gold
Cardiff University Silver
University of Edinburgh Opted out
University of Gloucestershire Silver
University of Greenwich Silver
University of Huddersfield Gold
Imperial College London Gold
King’s College London Silver
Kingston University Bronze
University of Lincoln Gold
University of Nottingham Gold
Nottingham Trent University Gold
The Open University Opted out
Oxford Brookes University Silver
University of Reading Silver
University of Salford Bronze
Sheffield Hallam University Silver
University of St Andrews Gold
University of Surrey Gold
University of Sussex Silver
University College London Silver
University of Westminster Bronze
University of Worcester Silver
Writtle University College Bronze
University of York Silver

 

Conferences, TEF

Conference: The Incredible Machine – What next for TEF?

Gold Leaf

The TEF results were due to be released this week, coming only second to the General Election as the most anticipated day this year in the UK Higher Education sector. The day after the election, the Department of Education announced a postponement of the publication of TEF results; a new date has yet to be confirmed.

Interestingly, the other dataset eagerly awaited, the first instance of Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) – statistics on graduate salaries up to 5 years after graduation – were released on Tuesday as planned.

In anticipation of the TEF result, around 140 delegates came together on Election Day to discuss the current status and the future of the TEF. The event “The Incredible Machine – What next for TEF?” had been organised by the HE Policy blog WonkHE and was attended by “leaders, managers and staff working across policy, planning, strategy, communications, marketing, public affairs, quality, registry, student experience and in students’ unions” (so went the announcement of the event), but also by HE consultants, software companies… and some publishers.

From the academic publishing sector’s point of view, it was notable how little the provision of learning resources were mentioned, and how an awareness of the importance of these on teaching outcomes seems to be lacking amongst the self-declared “TEF wonks”.

Publishers did not get a voice (or even an ear) during the conference – which was perhaps to be expected – but even university libraries seemed to play a subordinate role in the TEF discourse. Not a single librarian attended the conference, and libraries were mentioned exactly twice. In a full day of discussions about the quality of teaching, this was pretty surprising.

However, the conference itself was highly interesting. During the opening address, given by Mark Leach and Ant Bagshaw of WonkHE, the audience was asked about its attitude to the TEF, and it was obvious that the majority of those present were very sceptical about whether the TEF aims were actually being met.

Different panel sessions led the proceedings throughout the day, discussing the current situation, the metrics, and the future of the TEF. The audience was very engaged and there was plenty of time allocated for questions, comments and discussions.  Full use was made of this, and many interesting aspects were raised.

Jayne Mitchell (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Bishop Grosseteste University), who was also a TEF assessor, Alastair Robertson (Director of Teaching & Learning Enhancement, Abertay University Dundee) and Michael Wykes (Director of Policy, Planning and Business Intelligence, University of Exeter) sat on the first panel; each gave an overview of how they had approached the TEF application process at their universities. It was fascinating to hear, as the universities they represented were very different (both by type and by geography) and therefore their attitudes opinions and the approaches they adopted towards fulfilling the TEF differed significantly. Sector wide, there has been a huge variation on how the submissions were put together, where the focus was laid and which data or qualitative information each contained. It certainly will be fascinating to  examine how varied the submissions are collectively when all have been published.

The second panel of the day focused on metrics, data and league tables. Joy Elliott-Bowman (Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Independent Higher Education), Matt Hiely-Rayner (Director of Intelligent Metrix and Head of Planning, Kingston University) and Jackie Njoroge (Director of Strategy, University of Salford) talked about the independent HE sector and the implications of data for it, about if and how the TEF data can influence the Guardian University Guide rankings (answer: it will not!) and about the benchmarking of TEF metrics. This would have been an appropriate session in which to introduce discussion of learning resources, but, as already mentioned, these played a much smaller role than I had hoped for.

After this panel session, Sue Rigby, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Lincoln, who is also involved in the HEFCE Learning Gain initiative, spoke about Learning Gain and the use of metrics. Her focus was on the metric, and not on the “how to”, so Learning Resources were once again not mentioned. Sue came to the conclusion that “Learning Gain is not going to provide a better proxy; it is an opportunity to think hard and better about learning”.

In the last panel of the day, Mark Jones (Chief Operating Officer, Higher Education Academy), Simon Marginson (Professor of International Higher Education, UCL Institute of Education) and again Sue Rigby talked about the future of the TEF, looking at projected future developments and the future of teaching quality enhancement. It was agreed that the TEF didn’t actually measure teaching quality and that the HE sector needed more involvement in the development of the metrics.   Following the discussions at the ABT Conference, which demonstrated that the academic bookselling and publishing industry has already recognised this, it was probably the most important conclusion of the day. Maybe it could be a point of connection for the BA and PA to start their lobbying.

The discussion then moved on to performance measurement in teaching, in which individual lecturers are being measured (in this instance, the approach shows a more direct transfer from REF to TEF) and the international impact the TEF may have. Prof. Marginson said that the REF had a big impact internationally, but he doesn’t think the TEF will. (This is a moot point, given that the TEF itself is a symptom of the sea-change that is taking place in how teaching and learning are carried out, in both the UK and many other countries, rather than itself generating that change.
In this discussion, the library was mentioned a couple of times, but the quality and impact of learning resources and their provision was not in the speakers’ (nor the audience’s) minds, which was surprising and somewhat dismal to see.

This was a day with many informative discussions and lots of relevant background information for the publishing sector.  It emphasised once again the importance of lobbying by the Book Trade Industry if it doesn’t want its considerable contribution to teaching and learning be side-lined in the future developments of the TEF.

A full write-up of the conference can be found on the WonkHE website: http://wonkhe.com/blogs/live-the-incredible-machine-what-next-for-tef/

TEF

The Teaching Excellence Framework – what’s next?

Gold Leaf

The ABT Conference closed last week, and every delegate received a copy of our report. You may or may not have had a chance yet to read it, but we’d like to talk a bit more now about what’s next.

First of all, since the report went to the printing press on May Day, the release date of the TEF result was announced. Participating “providers” (i.e. HEIs that handed in a submission) will be informed – under embargo – about their results on June 12th, and all results and submissions will be made public on June 14th. Do keep checking our Blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts (@goldleaf2001) for on-time updates on this!

The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 has now passed into legislation and was published a fortnight ago; the full text can be accessed on the government website here.

The Act incorporated that a major and independent review will be carried out by 2019, which might change any of the aspects that are to be introduced in future, including linking TEF levels to tuition fees, subject-level TEF or a TEF for taught post-graduates.

The discussion about subject-level TEF and the metrics and bureaucracy to underpin this is moving forward; institutions are thinking about how to address it in future and much discussion is taking place. The universities aren’t content to await the results, they are grasping the action now to take their TEF offers into the future.

One example is the University of Manchester, which announced last week that it was to make a total of 171 staff redundant – 140 of them in teaching – and replace them with fewer and younger (and cheaper) lecturers, in order to “invest in [their] strategic priorities”, of which the TEF is known to be at the top of the list.