{"id":5885,"date":"2020-05-05T11:24:01","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T10:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5885"},"modified":"2020-05-05T11:49:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T10:49:51","slug":"protect-and-support-public-service-provision-at-universities-to-rebuild-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/protect-and-support-public-service-provision-at-universities-to-rebuild-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Protect and support public service provision at universities to rebuild Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><strong>Vice-Chancellor Professor Rama Thirunamachandran explains how and why the government urgently needs to support universities with training key public service professionals. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The Covid-19 crisis has thrown a spotlight on our\nvital key public service workers. The nation coming together every Thursday to\nshow their support for these professionals is one of the positive and enduring\nmemories of this current situation. Those in professions, such as medicine,\nnursing, teaching, allied health, and social work will be increasingly vital as\nthe nation begins to heal in the months ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Canterbury Christ Church University started as a teacher training college in 1962 in response to\na national shortage of teachers. Today we continue to shape our courses and\nresearch around critical social issues both nationally and globally. However, universities, like many\nother industries, will be hit financially by this crisis, placing the vital\nprovision of, among others, medical, social work and teacher training at risk.\nWithout further action, training capacity may well not meet future needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong><em>Universities need the support they have shown to the dedication of recruiting and training public service professionals to be reciprocated from the government to help meet what is certain to be increased demand for these key public servants, as we work together to rebuild Britain.&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week Universites UK and MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities, outlined three proposals for the government\u2019s consideration to protect and support key public service provision at universities. The proposals explicitly builds on Universities UK\u2019s stabilisation plan submitted to the government three weeks ago, which called for investment to support university finances in the crisis and offered to work with the government to take forward \u201ctargeted support to protect and sustain courses that meet the national need for key workers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The proposals are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>supporting students and graduates to become key\nworkers in public services, by offering a maintenance grant of up to \u00a310,000\nfor all students in training, removing any recruitment caps, and providing fee-loan\nforgiveness for those remaining in the relevant professions for at least five\nyears<\/li><li>strengthening and enhancing key public service HE\ncapacity in universities by increasing the funding to the Office for Students\nto reflect the added costs while creating a new Public Services in Higher\nEducation Capital Fund to enable universities to invest in simulation\nequipment, additional staff costs and other infrastructure<\/li><li>retaining and developing key workers in public\nservices, by increasing general staffing budgets and creating a new\nprofessional development programme focused on enhancing skills of current key\nworkers in public services and the new NHS volunteer reserve.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These proposals could take a major stride towards\nmitigating against future capacity shortfalls and go a long way to honouring\nthe government\u2019s election pledge to boost the NHS and help levelling up across\nthe entire country, as, slowly but surely, Britain heals and a kind of\nnormality returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Professor Rama Thirunamachandran is Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Canterbury Christ Church University, and Chair of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millionplus.ac.uk\/\">MillionPlus<\/a> and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.universitiesuk.ac.uk\/\">Universities UK <\/a>Board member.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vice-Chancellor Professor Rama Thirunamachandran explains how and why the government urgently needs to support universities with training key public service professionals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":5898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2085],"tags":[3537,3529,2089,3525,3533,2033],"class_list":["post-5885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-nursing","tag-health-professionals","tag-medicine","tag-nursing","tag-public-service","tag-social-work","tag-teaching"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jeanette Earl","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2020\/05\/Public-services.jpg","postExcerpt":"Vice-Chancellor Professor Rama Thirunamachandran explains how and why the government urgently needs to support universities with training key public service professionals.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5885"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5906,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions\/5906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}