Tuesday, 23 January 2007. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Lord Wilson of Tillyorn was presiding, with the Senior Proctor, the Junior Proctor, two Pro-Proctors, the Registrary, and 72 other persons present.
The following Reports were discussed:
Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 11 and 4 December 2006, on the Councils of the Schools and related matters (p. 230).
Professor A. D. CLIFF:
The Schools have been a formal part of the University's administrative structure for many years. The historic role of School Councils has been primarily to advise the General Board upon priorities for resource allocation. But, from 2004, this role changed fundamentally with the introduction of the Resource Allocation Model (RAM) which devolved responsibility for budgetary planning and resource allocation from the centre to the Schools. This was reinforced in 2005 when School Councils became responsible for the production of five-year rolling academic plans which reflect the teaching and research aspirations of each School's constituent institutions. The shift of responsibility to those who deliver the University's teaching and research has been widely welcomed and is consistent with the strongly bottom-up character of academic work in Cambridge. But the shift has had profound consequences for the roles of School Councils and their Chairs.
This Joint Report of the Council and the General Board therefore proposes a number of changes to the governance arrangements for School Councils and Chairs which reflect the changed expectations of them. The Report has been produced after widespread consultation with Schools, Departments, and Faculties over the last eighteen months, and the proposals now enjoy a strong consensus of support.
In making their proposals, the Council and the General Board have spent considerable time discussing not only the changed roles of School Councils and their Chairs but, advised by the Personnel Committee, the time commitment and level of remuneration of School Chairs in the light of Cambridge's new single spine salary structure. On pay, they have concluded that the most appropriate approach is to continue with the current model of remunerating Chairs which is under the regulations governing additional payments for administrative responsibility. The new role of Head of School is for a fixed term of four years, after which the Head will revert to their original role and the additional payment will cease. Albeit with increased support to reflect the extended range of responsibility, Heads of Schools will be expected to remain research and teaching active during their tenure so that they continue to contribute to the primary mission of the University and can more easily resume normal duties upon cessation as Head. As indicated in paragraph 10 of the Joint Report, the stipend to be associated with Head of School has been determined by analysing the role using HERA. This approach is consistent with the proposals of the Council and the General Board in their Second Joint Report on a new pay and grading structure for non-clinical staff (Reporter, 2004-05, p. 745).
In producing this Report, the Council and the General Board have been mindful of the issues raised in the note of dissent. The use of market supplements in the manner proposed in the Note, which implies the creation of an internal market, was not the intention of the Council and the General Board in their Second Joint Report on a new pay and grading structure for non-clinical staff (Reporter, 2004-05, p. 745, Annex 5). The Pro-Vice-Chancellor model of remuneration would imply loss of salary for many staff eligible to be Head of Schools if they were appointed. Accordingly, the Council and the General Board commend their proposals to the Regent House.
Professor G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, in August 2006 there appeared a short piece in the Newsletter which invited readers to send in for a copy of the Registrary's Final Report on the development of the Unified Administrative Service. I did so, and I have been looking out since then for the Report which must be made to the University at some stage before anything is taken forward which would require change to the Statutes and Ordinances. I understand from the Registrary, to whom I sent a draft of this speech in advance, that there has been extensive consultation since last summer, within the UAS, with Schools and Institutions outside Schools, and with the Colleges, and that a revised paper will be before the Council in February. He has suggested that it is premature to debate these proposals before the Report comes to the University.
I agree up to a point, but there are aspects of the UAS proposals as available to the general reader in August 2006, which I would like to touch on very lightly, and I apologize in advance if they have now disappeared from the proposals which will be in the eventual Report. I am sure the Council will clarify that point in its Notice in reply.
I hope the Council will also make it clear in its reply whether the present proposals constitute a move towards governance change. I ask because in the Annual Report of the Council, published on 20 December 2006, to be discussed in two weeks' time, there appears the following:
'The Council has discussed matters of University governance on several occasions during the year … The Council does not believe that there is a necessity for major structural changes, and has therefore concluded that the University's priority should be to make such targeted changes as will improve further the University's capacity to undertake efficient and effective self government. The Council believes that the principal areas in which early such developments would assist the University are these:
(a) The Council has considered some limited increase in the number of external members of the Council itself. An early green paper is planned.
(b) Development, and codification, of the important roles of the Councils of the Schools and their chairs, about which consultation has been taking place during the academical year; a Report on this matter has recently been published (Reporter, p. 230).' (For Discussion in early 2007.)
We are here today discussing (b). I just want the Regent House to be aware what it would be agreeing to by way of governance change, in accepting these proposals. (a), after all, is one of the themes so hotly debated here a few years ago, and still more fiercely in Oxford recently. (b) is also identified by the Council as a governance change.
The present Report says that since there is now a lot more to do than there used to be at the level of the running of the Schools, 'in the view of the Council and the General Board it is now necessary for the governance arrangements, in so far as they relate to the Councils of the Schools and the Chairmen of the Councils, to be amended to reflect their current roles and current practice more closely'.
Let me go back to that UAS development plan, and make a point which is unlikely to have changed even if the sentence has been amended in consultation. It identifies the Chairmen of the Councils of the Schools as 'senior officers': (paragraph 2) 'the University's 'Senior Officers' … are understood in this context also to include the VC, the PVCs and the Chairs of the Councils of the Schools'.
The proposal before us is to create new University offices for those who hold these posts, thus giving them substantive duties and powers ('to create the University office of Head of each School, in place of the role of Chairman of a School').
Two questions of immense constitutional importance arise.
The first is whether Cambridge wants to move towards a 'Senior Management Team' model for the running of the University, in which the clear separation between the Unified Administrative Service and the academic governance, agreed when the Wass Syndicate proposals were accepted, becomes blurred. This has happened de facto in Oxford, with the result that a body colloquially known as the Senior Management Team, which you will not discover in the Statutes and Regulations, now runs the place, meetings are held not known to the constitution either, and the old line between the advisory function of senior administrators and the decision-making function of academic committees has begun to disappear.
Two paragraphs in the UAS development plan as it stood last summer indicate that something like this is envisaged for Cambridge and that the new office we are discussing would become one of these hybrids. Among the objectives identified are: 'To ensure that those roles and responsibilities previously fulfilled by the Treasurer and Secretary General have been completely redistributed amongst the Senior Officers of the University and the Directors of the UAS'.
'To be fully effective as the University's Senior Administrator, balancing authority and accountability, and linked in to the developing roles of the other Senior Officers - most particularly that of the senior PVC - the Registrary should (eventually) have overall responsibility for the administrative functions of the University.'
If you look you will notice that the present Report 'positions' the new Heads of the Schools at 'the interface between the central bodies and the School's institutions'.
The Report emphasizes the protection of the principle of subsidiarity (paragraph 6). But letting decision-making on academic matters be local for the whole section of the academic community concerned is one thing. Allowing it to pass to an individual 'senior officer' is quite another, especially if that officer is going to be part of meetings including non-academics when the higher-level decisions are taken moving backwards from subsidiarity to centralization. When I read 'to ensure that the University's Senior Officers can take appropriate actions' in the UAS development document of last summer, against the proposals in this Report, I am tempted to repeat my Awful Warnings when we were discussing the change to Statute K, 9 allowing delegation to a person. The Privy Council may find that there is a conflict between the proposed new Statute K, 9 and Statute A, III, 4 which still says delegation has to be to a body, and not approve the change. But if it does so K, 9 will allow any 'senior officer' to take decisions under delegated powers where formerly only a committee could do so.
There it is in the list of the duties of the holders of the proposed new offices in this Report. They will include: 'taking decisions on any matters as may be delegated to them by the Council of the School'. The new Statute C as proposed is surely the thin end of a wedge at the thick end of which we shall find that power has moved away from committees to individual managers with personal powers. We voted down the proposal to have a Chief Executive Vice-Chancellor. These would be little local CEO's surely? '5. The Head of each School shall be Chairman of the Council of the School and shall be the principal academic officer of the School.'
I suggest that to move in this direction while losing at the same time the clear separation of administrative (advisory) from academic (decision-making) offices is to paint over a boundary essential to protecting the future of Cambridge from managerialism. Is this what you want, members of the Regent House? (And where did that Senior-Pro-VC come from? I do not recall discussing that proposal.) But perhaps it is as the General Board says in its Annual Report that proposal is like these, which have 'been broadly accepted' before ever coming to the Regent House, for mere rubber-stamping, presumably.
Dr M. R. CLARK:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as a member of Council I had reservations about this Report and as can be seen I signed a note of dissent along with three other members of Council. Let me be clear that my principal concerns relate to the way that the provisions of the Second Report on Pay and Grading are being applied to calculate the remuneration of Heads of School not necessarily the actual level of remuneration. As well as being an elected member of Council I also declare that I am currently serving as the elected President of the Cambridge University branch of UCU.
As can be seen from the Report and our note of dissent, the proposal is that Heads of School will on giving up their normal duties in order to take on the substantive role of Head of School, continue to receive their full stipend for their previous role and then receive an additional payment calculated as the HERA score of the role of Head of School. In other words their rate of pay would be as if they had not given up any of their previous role but instead they are to be paid as if the role of Head of School were additional duties. But the Report makes very clear that the future role of Head of School should be considered as a major role in its own right and that the previous practice of treating the Chairs of School as simply carrying out additional duties was no longer appropriate. This leads to complications of how the remuneration of different roles are calculated using HERA and produces anomalies in the application of principles of equal pay, something that the Second Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on a new pay and grading structure for non-clinical staff1 was supposed to eliminate. Within the note of dissent we give the example of how the relative remuneration of the roles of Pro-Vice-Chancellor compared with Heads of School would be out of step, but similarly many other HERA scored roles that fall within grade 12 would also be unfavourably treated if compared with the proposed remuneration of Heads of School. Within the Second Report on pay and grading approval was given for a method of calculation of the remuneration of Pro-Vice-Chancellors and I see no reason why the same rules cannot be applied to Chairs of Schools.
What seems somewhat ironic and hypocritical is that at the same time as the General Board are recommending that additional payments be used to reward Heads of School it has come to my attention that some Schools are considering stopping additional payments for extra duties to more junior staff within their Schools. I make a request that the matter of fair treatment in the payment for additional duties be looked at urgently so that all staff are given fair and equal treatment no matter what their School or their level of seniority within the University. The General Board should be wary of being seen to give favoured treatment to its own members particularly where clear conflicts of personal interest exist.
1 Reporter, 2004-05, p. 745
Mr J. G. HEAD:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, these remarks were originally intended for the Standing Advisory Committee on Student Matters. However, it was suggested to me that it would be worth also raising them at this Discussion for wider comment.
As I am sure you are aware, there is currently no student representation on any of the Councils of the Schools. This contrasts with the 'rung below' where all Faculty and independent departmental Boards have student members, and the 'rung above', the General Board, which has two student members.
In the past, this lack of representation could be explained by the nature of the business that was discussed. The majority of it seems to have been concerned with personnel, which would automatically be 'reserved' under Statute K, 20. Having members in statu pupillari would therefore have been a futile exercise as they would not have been able to be present at the majority of the meetings. However, if the Councils of the Schools are to take a more active part in setting the academic vision for the School, as is suggested by this Report, then having a student contribution will certainly be worthwhile. A continuing lack of student representation on the Councils might also start to appear anomalous, and lead to the odd situation whereby a paper on, for example, 'Institutional and School academic plans' might have student involvement in the consultation stage in the Faculties and the final discussion stage at the General Board, but not at the important middle stage where drafts of the paper would be discussed in detail in the Council of the School.
I would therefore like to suggest that each Council could co-opt one or two members in statu pupillari by a method of its choosing. Having two members would allow one graduate and one undergraduate to sit on each Council, as occurs elsewhere. There are various methods by which the students could be chosen but it seems that the simplest method would be to run a ballot at the same time as the elections for the student members of the Faculty Boards. This would require a small number of changes to Chapter VIII of the Ordinances (which deals with the composition of the Councils). It therefore seems that now, when the composition and role of the Councils and their governing ordinances is being reformed, would a good time to implement these additional changes.
Dr S. J. COWLEY:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, although I have recently joined Council, this Report was published before I was a member. As such this is the first opportunity I have had to comment on it. I also declare an interest in that my spouse is a Secretary of a School, but as usual she has no idea as to what I am about to say. I wish to make three comments.
My first point concerns the proposed change of title from 'Chairman of School' to 'Head of School'. In the continuum between 'persuade' and 'require', in my mind Chairmen are closer to persuade while Heads are closer to require (and Deans are well into 'command'). Hence, while this change of title may not reflect 'greater centralization of decision-making within the University' (paragraph 4), I think it does reflect a greater concentration of power. Does the University work best when it is persuaded or required?
Second, as I have already alluded to, in paragraph 4 the Report declares that it is not the intention of the changes to result in 'greater centralization of decision-making within the University'. Regulation 5 states: 'The Head of each School shall be Chairman of the Council of the School and shall be the principal academic officer of the School and shall be responsible to the Council of the School and the Vice-Chancellor for the overall running of the School ...' (my italics). Under the old regulations there was no need for the Chairmen to be explicitly responsible to the Vice-Chancellor. What deficiencies in the old system is the addition of this explicit responsibility meant to fix? For example, I can envisage that it might be easier for the Heads of School to argue for budget cuts and re-organizations if they can claim the authority of the Vice-Chancellor. Further, while one might argue whether or not this change results in greater centralization of decision making, as my example possibly illustrates, it will result in the greater centralization of something, certainly influence and probably power. When an organization is working well, the need for a system of checks and balances is less obvious; when it's not, it's essential. The proposed change seems to weaken the system of checks and balances, and possibly moves the University too close to Deanesque management. Justification of this change is missing from the Report; Council might like to include justification in its response to this Discussion, or alternatively choose to revert to the status quo.
Finally, I add my support to Dr Clark, who has argued that the stipends of the Heads of School should be determined by the same formula as that of Pro-Vice-Chancellors, and that any top-ups that are required to recruit suitable Heads should be justified by means of market supplements.
Professor R. J. BOWRING:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, since I do not wish to repeat myself, may I request that comments that I shall make about the nature of Schools under the Topic of Concern later this afternoon be also taken into account under this head. My comments do not relate directly to the two recommendations listed in this Report but they do have a bearing on certain unintended consequences of the drive to strengthen the role of the Schools and their Heads.
Dr D. R. De LACEY:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, if we want an argument against strengthening the Schools and the powers of their chairs, we need look only at the second half of our agenda for this afternoon. Quite apart from historic experience of the chairman exercising arbitrary powers, there is an interesting comment in the initial Report of the Oriental Studies Review Committee. 'The School is, not least in light of the severe resource constraints within its other constituent institutions, not in a position to subsidise the minority areas.' So because Oriental Studies was arbitrarily linked with Music and Architecture at a time when no-one conceived of School cross-subsidies, we are likely to lose a major aspect of our teaching on India, just as that sub-continent is increasing its stature in the modern world. The School of Arts and Humanities has no logical coherence; further to empower its chairman at this stage makes no sense.
Report of the General Board, dated 6 December 2006, on the establishment of a Stephen Hawking Trust Fund (p. 312).
No comments were made on this Report.
Notice by the Editor: The Discussion was concluded before all remarks were made on the following:
Report of the General Board, dated 6 December 2006, on the restructuring of the Faculty of Oriental Studies (p. 314).
Topic of concern: The future of the study of the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and the Ancient Near East in the University (see Reporter, p. 170).
These remarks will be published following the continuation of the Discussion on 30 January 2007.