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Meetings

SUMMARY OF COUNCIL MEETING ON 3 DECMBER 2001

Purpose

1. The Council met:

2. The Council also

Attendees

3. The meeting was chaired by Professor David King. The independent members present were: 

Mr Javaid Aziz, Mr Euan Baird, Professor Kumar Battacharyya, Professor Vicki Bruce, Professor Dame Julia Higgins, Dr Rob Margetts, Sir Paul Nurse, Dr David Potter, Ms Emma Rothschild, Professor Peter Schuddeboom, Professor David VandeLinde and Mr John Weston. 

4. Mr Peter Clark and Mr John Jones (DfES) accompanied Mrs Hodge, and Mr Piers Bisson (HMT) and Dr Nick Munn (DTI) accompanied Sir Gareth Roberts. 

5. Also in attendance were Dr John Taylor (Director General of Research Councils), Mrs Judy Britton, and Mr Steve Elton (OST). 


Discussions and Outcomes

(i) CST's Imagination and Understanding report.

6. Members warmly welcomed Mrs Hodge and her letter of 30 November 2001, setting out her Department's response to this report. They were particularly pleased to note that work had already started on the review of the arts and humanities research funding and the intention to publish a consultation paper in the New Year about the education of students between the ages of 14 and 19 years old.

7. In discussion with her, members stressed the following points.

  1. The review of arts and humanities research funding and the option of reconstituting the Arts and Humanities Research Board as a UK wide Research Council was widely supported within the research community.

  2. In terms of education policy, the key challenges were to improve the levels of attainment of 14-16 year olds and to increase participation rates in post-16 education, particularly within ethnic minority and other socio-economic groups. Only some 74% of 16 year olds in UK continued their studies at present, compared with the OECD average of some 90%.

  3. Over specialisation, too early was still a very real weakness in the UK' education system. Despite being much debated in the UK over many decades at least, the pivotal issues concerning diversity, breadth and balance of studies had not been resolved.

  4. Increasingly, employers were looking for well-rounded, well-educated people who were capable of learning, rather than specialists because subject knowledge as such becomes quickly outdated. This latter consideration applied in particular to the fields of science and engineering.

  5. There were no easy or single answers to these issues about the nature and content of the founding platform of education which young people should receive for socio-economic purposes, including life long learning. For instance, higher education institutions, had autonomy over undergraduate programmes. The Government could however take additional steps, for instance through policy statements, ministerial speeches and funding arrangements, to encourage and support institutions to broaden their entry requirements and undergraduate programmes, thereby influencing students to broaden their upper secondary, post 16 studies.

  6. There were already signs of growing student demand for broader, more balanced undergraduate education, as shown, for instance, by those from private schools that were opting to study in the USA. Another positive sign in this direction was the value that institutions already placed on students with the International and European Baccalaureate qualifications.

  7. To achieve these goals, strong, influential leadership from the Government was essential.

(ii) Review of Scientists and Engineers


8. Members welcomed Sir Gareth Roberts and the contents of his recently published interim report, summarising the responses made so far and the issues on which he was now focussing. 

9. Sir Gareth said that from his study visits overseas, it was clear that the UK was not alone in facing the deep seated, long standing issues that he had been asked to address by the Chancellor and his DTI and DfES colleagues. In the light of these visits and the considerable amount of factual and anecdotal evidence from the many respondents, he was now looking to develop a coherent set of recommendations. Generally, employers were concerned less about volume and more about the quality, maturity and accomplishments of top end graduates and postgraduates. He was therefore considering in particular the issues concerning PhD quality and post doctoral researchers. He was also considering the question of how the comparative attractiveness of science and engineering undergraduate studies could be improved. Increasingly, it seemed that students were turning away from subjects that required rigour and rote learning above the norm. 

10. In discussion with Sir Gareth, members made the following points:

  1. Many young people were turned off science and engineering studies post 16 by such language as "supply line" and "feed stock". The pivotal question was how to convince them that choosing such studies was a good decision, and not irreversible if things went wrong subsequently. 

  2. Increasingly, young people were looking to keep their options open for as long as possible when taking decisions about their post 16 and undergraduate studies. Many of them perceived many fields of science and engineering as too inflexible and specialised for these purposes. Similarly, employers were increasingly looking for well-rounded, malleable and trainable graduate recruits, who were not too specialised.

  3. Students were choosing to study certain science-based subjects such as medicine because of the career opportunities, high esteem and salaries associated with them, but not others, particularly in the engineering and technology fields, even though they had similarly attractive attributes. Work by the Engineering Council in the mid 1990s for instance, had shown that accountants were greatly outnumbered by scientists and engineers on the boards of FTSE 250 companies. Science and engineering graduates also held top positions in the City. 

  4. Yet such hard evidence about the merits of science and engineering studies and careers were not getting through to young people. A new approach was necessary, using modern, young role models, icons and ambassadors, reinforced by stronger, more appealing messages about the real merits and attractions of science and engineering.

  5. School science and engineering should be made more relevant and engaging to pupils, from their early school days onwards. Teachers, their continuing professional development, their pay and conditions, including golden hellos and handcuffs, were crucially important considerations. Because shortages of specialist teachers in such subjects as physics, chemistry and maths were likely to worsen, greater effort and provision was necessary to support and develop non-specialists to teach them. 

  6. The option of introducing differential salary structure to recruit and retain scientists and engineers into teaching, merited consideration in light of the fact that the cream of each graduate cohort were now looking for and able to secure globally competitive salaries 

  7. The four year, Engineering Doctorates, with the first two years mostly taught and with co-financing from companies, had proved very successful model from all viewpoints These programmes were attracting far more good quality applicants than available funds could cover at present. There was a very real need to get many more companies involved in these programmes.

  8. PhD students should be treated as students. They should be encouraged and supported to take up the many opportunities available for broadening their educational experience and improving their interpersonal, transferable skills. Principal Investigators (PIs) possibly needed to be more frank about their abilities and prospects. The idea of introducing a real hurdle, with an honourable exit route at an interim point of a PhD programme, merited consideration, as did that of introducing a " PhD with distinction" type award for the most talented students, producing outstanding work for their vivas. 

  9. As for post doctoral researchers, suitable progression pathways during the early stages of their careers, possibly in centres of excellence covering the fully spectrum of basic through to applied research, were necessary for their further development. Germany's Fraunhofer Institutes and the US military industrial R&D laboratory infrastructure provided a wider range of positions and career progression opportunities. In the UK, post-doctoral research posts were becoming increasingly concentrated within the science base due the downsizing and closure of public and private sector laboratories.


(iii) Reviews of the Research Councils, Foresight, Energy Policy and the Department of Trade (DTI).

11. Members were pleased to note that final report of the Quinquennial Review of the six grant funding Research Councils would be published shortly and would be broadly in line with their advice during the first and second stages. 

12. In relation to that advice, CST's March 2002 Technology Matters report and the on-going review of DTI, they were also noted that:

  1. A new Science, Technology and Innovation Group was being established to provide a sharper focus on technology transfer within the Department for maximising the Government's significant investment.
  2. This group will be headed by a person with strong scientific and technological credentials and who will work closely with the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Director General of the Research Councils.
  3. The accommodation of the trans-departmental role and remit of the Office of Science & Technology within the Department's new top-level structure.


CST Secretariat
December 2001