Once the “buffer” role held by the old funding council disappears, the question of who coordinates sector efforts on things like climate change becomes an important ongoing question.
In the last few days before the pandemic, then Office for Students (OfS) Chair Michael Barber got so annoyed with a comment in Wonkhe Mondays that said that the regulator “doesn’t officially care” whether providers are improving their environmental sustainability, that he put pen to paper in a rebuttal blog.
“This is simply not true”, he said, announcing that OfS was to launch a package to encourage further action from providers – including consulting on the collection and publication of data on carbon emissions, the publication of an Insight Brief on the issue, and gathering and publishing information about students’ attitudes to climate change – as well as leading by example by developing a sustainability plan which was to set out plans to reduce OfS’ own carbon emissions.
