In my last role as a PVC Education, I instituted a series of meetings with the departments across the university. In the interests of sharing good practice, I asked one Head of School if they could share the reasons for their notable successes. ‘I consider it my responsibility as Head of School to protect my staff and programmes from the misguided interference of the university centre’ came the response. While the disarming openness with which this view was articulated was unusual, the sentiment behind it probably was not. There has always been a tension between what we might call central and local leadership, with local or divisional leadership sometimes believing that central leadership is disconnected, ill-informed, lacking an understanding or appreciation of what things are really like at the ‘chalk-face’, but nevertheless determined to push through their latest initiative, project or strategy.
The creation of a collective leadership ethos throughout the university that fosters trust and a sense of shared purpose requires an understanding of where the tensions lie in the relationship between different areas. The level of autonomy afforded to individual units and the appropriate level of central oversight and accountability needs negotiation and a shared understanding of consequences. While TEF continues to be institution- rather than subject-based, its approach requires evidence of university-level actions to identify and address below threshold outcomes for different student groups across different disciplines. These outcomes impact not just the TEF and university reputation, but have significant, potentially existential, consequences for the institution; below threshold outcomes in specific subjects are a potential breach of B3 conditions of regulations, and we have already seen OfS investigations into institutions based on outcomes in specific subject areas.
This inevitably drives central university leadership to be less laissez-faire about discipline-level performance and outcomes. The well-being of the institution feels increasingly tied to the outcomes of the least-successful department. While local leadership should appreciate the need for this institutional supervision, central leadership must not interpret the TEF/conditions of registration case for central oversight as an argument for the kind of central imposition of ways and means that is oblivious to the different needs and contexts of different disciplines and that ignores the subject-informed experience and expertise of local leaders. TEF recognises the need to ensure provision follows the mix of course and students, and central leaderships should understand that pedagogies and methods ought to be different in different disciplines. We should be careful of ensuring a well-intentioned effort to ‘spread best practice’ does not become the much feared ‘one size fits all’ approach.
