Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

A Discussion was convened by videoconference with Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Lord Woolley of Woodford, HO, presiding and the Registrary’s deputy, the Senior Proctor and the Junior Pro‑Proctor as the attending officers.

Remarks were received as follows:
 

Annual Report of the Council for the academic year 2022–23, dated 28 November 2023

(Reporter, 6720, 2023–24, p. 131).

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Part III of this Report offers ‘an overview of changes to the University’s Statutes and Ordinances, senior leaders and the Council’s membership’. What is the place of ‘leadership’ and ‘seniority’ in a University whose governing body has a membership of 7,207 (at its recent promulgation)? In that list only the Chancellor gets a leading position, with everyone else simply in alphabetical order. None of the roles for the Chancellor defined in Statute A I (3–6) seems to coincide with the ones assumed by the Council for the new ‘Senior Leadership Team’.

Can it be acceptable for any selection of members of the University’s governing body to be deemed ‘senior’ and to form a ‘team’ to ‘lead’ the University without a Grace to amend the Statutes and Ordinances to permit it? Even for the creation of a type of Office known to the University for decades the formal constitutional requirements have to be gone through and the Regent House has the last word. A Report published on 25 October 2023 proposed a sixth Pro-Vice-Chancellor; that was largely objected to when it was Discussed; a Notice appeared in response to the Discussion in the Reporter of 6 December 2023, with a Grace published for approval; any Grace may be subject to a petition requiring a ballot. Candidates for membership of the ‘Senior Leadership Team’ face no such test.

This Report records ‘meetings’ including these ‘Senior Leaders’, but there are no formal published records of the dates and no published Minutes. Yet reports are expected between and among the ‘Senior Leaders’ and the ‘important stakeholders’ (which apparently do not include the Regent House). For example the Council comments that the Change and Programme Management Board (CPMB) must maintain ‘consistent communications, providing updates after each Board meeting to senior leaders and other important stakeholders’.

The Freedom of Information Act at section 36(2)(b) and (c) quite properly protects against disclosures which could prejudice free and frank discussion. If the Senior Leadership Team was a constitutionally recognised body that confidentiality could reasonably apply, but how can it be defended to protect the assorted conversations noted in this Report between and among individuals forming a ‘body’ which is not to be found in the Statutes and Ordinances?

The ‘wider’ Senior Leadership Team was included in a ‘residential Strategic Awayday’ in April. In that context, a Note explains, the Senior Leadership Team comprised a mixture of academic and administrative officers:

the Vice-Chancellor, the Pro-Vice-Chancellors, the Heads of the Schools, the Registrary, the Chief Financial Officer, the Executive Director of Development and Alumni Relations, and Director of Communications and External Affairs.

Is this evolving towards introducing the governance by ‘management’ against which the Regent House has always set its democratic face? Is it not important for it to be told if that is being allowed to happen without the necessary change to the constitution of the University?

The Council Minutes confirm that:

Throughout the year the Council received updates on the many matters on which members of the Senior Leadership Team engaged with the UK government, the Office for Students (OfS) and various national and international bodies to advocate for measures that will further the University’s mission.

That seems to have allowed a considerable number of assorted individuals to give rise to those press reports that ‘the University of Cambridge’ has an official view on some matter.

When will the Regent House be given the opportunity to Discuss the membership, powers, remit and accountability of this so-called Senior Leadership Team and to Grace recommendations to make it constitutional, should it really wish to do so?

Meanwhile, the protestations about the future of the Employer Justified Retirement Age made by more than two dozen speakers in Discussion on 24 January 20231 go largely unheeded beyond setting up a Review.2 The Council’s Report says that:

the timetable for the review has been streamlined and resources prioritised to enable the Review Group to reach its conclusion at the earliest opportunity without compromising the overall quality of its work and while ensuring that the University community has ample opportunity to engage in the review.

With the first of the promised EJRA Focus Groups held on 22 November that balance seemed unlikely to offer a chance of abolition of the EJRA in time to rescue this year’s September 67-year-olds from dismissal. The Council discussed the EJRA at its meeting on 27 November, without a full report from the Review.

However that seems to have led to the publication of an Indicative Timetable in the Reporter of 6 December 2023, seemingly not depending on the Review. This states that the Council intend to publish ‘headline proposals’ in March and a Report in early Easter Term 2024, calling ‘a ballot on its proposals’ with ‘implementation of the Report’s recommendations’ in October 2024, which would mean the forced retirement of another batch of 67-year-olds at the end of September.

Surely there are only three options for those ‘headline proposals’ and they could be set out in a Report at the beginning of next Term. One is to retain the EJRA as it is; another is to amend Special Ordinance C (ii) 12 to change forced retirement at ‘sixty-seven’ to another year (67, 68, 70, 75?); the third is to amend it, removing entirely the content of section 12.

 

Annual Report of the General Board to the Council for the academic year 2022–23, dated 28 November 2023

(Reporter, 6720, 2023–24, p. 141).

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the General Board tells us it ‘conducted a self-effectiveness review’ in Michaelmas Term 2022. ‘In many areas, members were broadly content with how the General Board operates’ but ‘areas’ were found where there was ‘potential to improve’ its ‘operation’ and on those it will ‘receive an update in 2023–24’. The Council has of course a requirement to carry out a self‑effectiveness review every three years or so,1 though the General Board’s Standing Orders mention no such requirement.2 But should either behave as though answerable only to themselves when considering their ‘effectiveness’?

The Report we are discussing notes that the Press and Assessment Board ‘commissioned’ a ‘self-effectiveness’ review of its own. That was not all its own work but conducted by Heidrich & Struggles, who specialise in ‘helping’ their clients ‘build the best leadership teams’.3 However without this assistance the General Board explains that it is working companionably with the University’s ‘leadership’, as when ‘in April 2023, the Council, the General Board and the University’s Senior Leadership Team’ held that ‘strategic meeting’.

The Education Committee of the General Board (GBEC) met on 28 June and considered the Marking and Assessment Boycott. It noted that ‘the University had reported a possible breach’ of its conditions of registration to the Office for Students ‘following the Regent House vote to reject proposed mitigations’, though that does not seem to have required reporting.4 However, the OfS ‘had recently asked for an update on the situation’ and ‘a detailed statement had been provided to the OfS’. May the Regent House know where that has got to? ‘Deregistration’ by the OfS would remove the rights of the University to access public grant funding and its students to seek loans from the Student Loans Company.

However, the Marking and Assessment Boycott raised constitutional questions not addressed in the General Board’s Report. ‘Between June and September 2023, the General Board held seven extraordinary meetings to consider matters related to’ it. The Board ‘approved’ a number of ‘requests’ for modifications to the examining requirements in the Statutes and Ordinances. That prompted a representation to the Vice-Chancellor that there had ‘been a contravention of the Statutes, Ordinances, or any Order’ under the provisions of Statute A IX 1, in that when it published its Notice dated 22 June in the Reporter of 28 June 2023, the General Board had acted in contravention of the Order created by the Grace of 15 March 2023.5

The Vice-Chancellor’s response dated 18 October treats a Grace as – among other things – a mere ‘view’ of the Regent House and rejects the representation. She explores the scope of the General Board’s powers to make Regulations even in despite of such a Grace. This is important because until the review of the Statutes in 2012 the General Board was able to create Ordinances without a Grace of the Regent House. It can now create on its own authority only Regulations (Statute A V 1 (d)) precisely because it was felt that it was unacceptable for it to be creating Ordinances without the approval of the Regent House. This seems to be the first time that change has been tested in defining the powers of the General Board over against those of the Regent House.

The Report seems to allow some uncertainty about the duty of the General Board to ask the Regent House for a decision even in the case of a change of Statute. It:

responded to a query from the University Council’s Business Committee addressing the possibility of a student resigning their University membership and renouncing their degree. The General Board agreed to review the Statute on continuing University membership to consider the option of removing University membership from a person but with the option of retaining any conferred degree(s).

Statute B I 2 stipulates that ‘detailed provision for resignation of membership and renunciation of degrees shall be made by Ordinance. Provision for reinstatement after resignation or renunciation may be made by Ordinance’. But now the General Board can no longer create Ordinances itself, and a change of Statute would of course require not only the consent of the Regent House but also that of the Privy Council.

The General Board’s Standing Orders speak confusingly of the General Board ‘considering any proposal for enacting or amending an Ordinance in pursuance of their powers under Statute C I 2’, quoting Statutes and Ordinances, p. 117 (now a ‘statement of intention’ allowing the Regent House a Grace but only to ‘express an opinion’, p. 121). Should that be corrected in the text?

Then there is the question of the incomplete published record of General Board meetings. This Report says that ‘between June and September 2023, the General Board held seven extraordinary meetings’. The General Board held one on 22 June to agree that Notice, but the Minutes of such ‘extraordinary’ meetings are not published with those of its regular ‘ordinary’ annual meetings. The General Board’s Standing Orders make no distinction between ordinary and ‘extraordinary’ and have nothing to say about publication requirements of the Minutes of the latter. Is this a matter for that promised ‘effectiveness’ update?

Another example of the importance of full transparency is the role of the General Board in connection with the future of the EJRA. It:

advised the Council on a response to Discussion remarks proposing the suspension of the Employer Justified Retirement Age (EJRA), pending a review of the outcome of the University’s EJRA and its Retirement Policy.

In June the General Board decided to postpone (for the umpteenth time) ‘reviews of the use of Established and Unestablished Posts’, an ‘updated report’ on which ‘had been circulated to the Board on 5 June’:

The report proposed to pause the review of the use of established and unestablished posts until the completion of the review of the Retirement Policy and Employer Justified Retirement Age, which might have an impact on the reviews of the use of established and unestablished posts.

It had been promised by Human Resources that the first would be attended to at last in 2023, but it has failed once more to tackle this important matter. The Minutes of the Human Resources Committee for 4 May (2452/23) show that it decided to defer the matter again for yet another year, because ‘certain strands of work were likely to influence the review, including the ongoing review of the Retirement Policy and Employer Justified Retirement Age’. This does not bode well for the completion of either review, if neither can be tackled without first dealing with the other.

A topic crossing the boundary between the respective responsibilities of the Council and the General Board in relation to the Regent House is the current suggestion of adding a ‘reading week’ to the length of terms:

Recognising that there were strong feelings on the matter across the University, the General Board recommended to the Council that the proposal for a pilot of a reading week be taken to the Regent House for decision.

It is fair to say that the Report confirms that Regent House approval was sought for a number of General Board proposals during this academic year, for example ‘the publication of a Report containing proposals to allow curators and associated academic staff at Grade 9 to apply for promotion to Grade 10’. That was ‘subsequently approved by the Regent House on 4 August 2023’.

There does, though, seem to be some expansion and rearrangement of the General Board’s already extensive responsibilities and its flock of committees and sub‑committees. ‘The Postgraduate Committee was formally placed under GBEC replacing the direct reporting line to the General Board.’ ‘GBEC discussed potential risks to assessment in Easter Term 2023 of recent developments in text-writing software (AI), and issued guidance to Faculties.’ There was also ‘work on the implications of changing technologies on teaching’, with ‘support from the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning and the Blended Learning Service’. GBEC also ‘approved revised guidance in respect of expectations for the recording of teaching’. Cambridge offers only Masters‑level degree apprenticeships leading to an M.St. in Architecture or Applied Criminology and Police Management and a Postgraduate Certificate in Research and Innovation Leadership. Other ‘Cambridge’ apprenticeships are externally provided.6 In connection with ‘the University’s Higher and Degree Apprenticeships delivered through the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)’ there had been a positive OFSTED report, but ICE awaits ‘a full inspection visit in due course’.

These detailed instances help to underline the sheer extent of the responsibilities of the General Board. The Board is manifestly very far from ineffective, but perhaps there is reason for it to look to constitutional matters in that ‘effectiveness’ Update.