Dear colleagues

At the time of writing we still do not know the Government’s plans for re-opening of various sectors, including Higher Education and workplaces. By the time you read this, things may be clearer! In the meantime, a number of alternative planning scenarios are being developed by the Business Continuity and Recovery Programme (BCRP) and Education Executive, in consultation with teams across the Education Group. These include primary and contingency plans for the rest of term 2, all of term 3, graduations, Confirmation & Clearing, and even the start of next academic year in September 2021. Jackie Clarke, BCRP Director, has joined the Education Group Senior Management Team to help keep us all joined-up.

We are also starting to think about what a “return to work” will look like in the longer term. In the most recent Staff Survey, over three-quarters of Professional Services respondents stated they would prefer a mixture of working from home and campus. We need to work out the practicalities of what this may look like, whilst maintaining productivity and our sense of collegiality.

However, right here and right now, across Education Group we are continue to work hard on delivering tangible and immediate priorities. This starts with the admissions, WP and recruitment lifecycle and continuing through to student community-building, careers and employer engagement, quality assurance, programme development and delivery. Our Doctoral College held successful Welcome events for PGRs students starting this term; Immigration and Compliance have been busy interpreting and implementing the new student immigration legislation (find out more); and Student Complaints and Academic Casework have perhaps unsurprisingly been kept very busy. We are well underway with a round of Teaching Excellence meetings with departments, whilst our newest Education Group division, Academic Technology , continue to provide the advice and tools to keep our blended learning model on the road for all of our academic departments.

All this good work is for nothing without having the data integrity underpinning our key processes and ensuring students have trust in our systems. Andrew Higgins provides an insight into the significant and valuable amount of work undertaken by colleagues across Student Administrative Services here.

We remain committed to supporting all aspects of the University and Education strategies – not least internationalisation. But how can you do that when travel has been out on hold? Find out about our innovative TeamWork virtual internships programme. And for the thousands of students from across the world studying on campus and at distance with us, the World at Warwick team established a successful Global Connections Community.

Best wishes,

Chris