Chair’s Introduction
We have much to celebrate in the last academic year, as the University has bounced back strongly from the impact of the pandemic, and we look forward to celebrating our 60th anniversary in the coming year. We take the sustainability of the University in all its forms very seriously and I am delighted that we have been able to meet out cash surplus target (measured as the surplus for the year plus non-cash transactions (depreciation and movements in investment property valuations, fixed asset investments and provisions) less capital grants and loan principal repayments) two years earlier than anticipated in our post-pandemic recovery plan. Growth in tuition fees, an increase in research income and a recovery in campus trading activities have been key components of our performance recovery. Generating a cash surplus is vital in creating headroom for us to reinvest in the academic mission of the University, including in academic and professional services staff, and updating our research and teaching infrastructure, especially specialist facilities that allow us to respond to student demand for courses.
Anticipating a slow recovery for undergraduate student recruitment, in part as a result of the pandemic, a 65% reduction in undergraduate student registrations from the EU as a result of Brexit, and the freezing of the UK undergraduate fee, the University is benefiting from a student recruitment diversification strategy launched in 2016 and which has evolved into our Essex 2025 project. This project is fully supported by the University Council and ably led by the University executive. I am delighted our student numbers have almost recovered to the total student population that we had in 2020-21 with 19,090 students this year.
We have increased students registered on our postgraduate and research degree programmes, Students on our Postgraduate Taught (PGT) programmes have increased to 5,620 students, more than double the 2,240 in AY 2019-20. The profile of our student population is now 5% Postgraduate Research (PGR), 30% PGT and 65% Undergraduate (UG). In 2021 we successfully launched a January entry point for 10 Postgraduate Taught courses across five departments. In January 2023, 939 students registered on courses and from AY 2023-24 10 departments will offer 17 Postgraduate Taught courses with a January start. In AY 2022-23 we announced the largest investment in research degree scholarships in our history and expect to grow admission to our postgraduate research community in AY 2023-244 by 118%.
The University is committed to offering a cosmopolitan and international educational experience, where you really can find the world in one place. To this end we have invested in five regional international offices around the world, and we recruit students from around 130 countries. In managing risk, we have been careful to ensure a diversified portfolio of international recruitment and to avoid overreliance on students from one country. Our total fee income has increased by 12% to £196.7m and fees from international students are now £107.7m, an increase of 47%. With the UK fee frozen at 2018 levels, our ability to recruit international students is vital in allowing us to cross-subsidise UK undergraduate teaching and in ensuring our financial sustainability.
Tuition fee income for AY 2022-23 was above target and we remain hopeful this will be the case for AY 2023-24. Nonetheless we are concerned that our intake of home undergraduates fell for the third year in a row. With improving league table rankings, we will be leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that we recruit our fair share of the growing numbers of potential students in London and the eastern counties and from across the United Kingdom for 2024-25.
Financial Sustainability
The University Council has set a requirement for a minimum of 60 days liquidity which we exceeded with 169 days due to holding £120.8m in cash and deposits and having £40m available from our revolving credit facility with Santander. This leaves us well positioned to continue to refurbish and enhance our estate and infrastructure for teaching and research. As we have paid back loans, our total long-term borrowing has steadily reduced to £140.6 million. The University has been fully compliant with all our banking covenants, and we are on track to remain so. Over the past decade we have grown from being one of the smallest multi-faculty universities in England, to medium size, bringing economies of scale that are essential for our financial sustainability.
The University declared a climate and ecological emergency in December 2020 and has set a date of 2035 to reach net zero scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions. Our Sustainability Sub-strategy sets the aims, objectives and actions to reduce our carbon emissions and further our sustainability work. We have increased the capital committed to carbon reduction work over the next five years and grown the teams working on sustainability and carbon reduction. Our scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions have reduced by almost 17% from a 2019 baseline of 12,500 tCO2e, demonstrating the significant progress being made.
University League Tables
Our improvements across a broad range of performance measures were reflected in the three major domestic league tables. In the Complete University Guide we rose to 32nd (an improvement of seven places) and we were ranked 30th in the Guardian University Guide (an improvement of 12 places this year and a rise of 55 places over the past three publications).
Of particular importance to us – reflecting our commitment to social mobility – we ranked 4th for ‘value added score’ in the Guardian University Guide – a rise of 2 places on last year, and 74 places in two years (from 78th in 2022). The intention of the ‘value added score’ is to assess how departments supported students towards getting good grades, and the extent to which a student exceeded expectations, based on entry qualifications. Regrettably the Times Good University Guide has undergone substantial changes to its methodology, including the complete removal of facilities spend and the use of National Student Satisfaction data from August 2022 rather than the latest data in August 2023.
Education and the Student Experience
The University of Essex Strategic Plan sets out our vision to “put student success at the heart of our mission, supporting every student from every background to achieve outstanding outcomes; preparing our students to thrive in their future lives and nurturing our community of educators to support and promote student success”. We are committed to excellence in education; welcoming students to the University on the basis of their potential, supporting them to fulfil that potential, and transforming the lives of everyone who chooses to study with us.
With the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) shifting in focus to absolute levels of achievement as well as added value, we were pleased to be awarded an overall Silver in the TEF. We have also achieved Silver in both of the new aspect ratings: student experience and student outcomes. Silver indicates that our education has been judged to be very high quality. The panel concluded that “there was strong evidence of typically very high-quality features overall… The panel judged very high-quality to apply to all the provider’s groups of students, including students from underrepresented groups”. The period being assessed was between 2018 and 2022, including the pandemic period. The panel’s judgement was based on metrics from the period (student continuation, completion, satisfaction and graduate outcomes) as well as both an institutional written submission and a student submission.
We were also pleased to see our performance in the National Student Survey (NSS) make a significant recovery, following the pandemic. Times Higher Education (THE) calculated the average score of the 26 questions in the NSS to create a single ‘Overall Positivity Rate’ for mainstream universities. Essex has a score of 80.7%, ranking 28th of English Broad Discipline institutions and just 2.9% from the top 10. All sections (now called themes) show an increase from last year in ranking against the sector including, pleasingly, two areas we have been focussing on this year: a rise of 37 ranking places for the Assessment and Feedback theme and a rise of 31 ranking places for Academic Support. The theme on Learning Opportunities also rose 35 ranking places. It is pleasing to see these rises in ranking, reflecting good levels of student satisfaction. The results do nonetheless indicate some areas where we can do more. For example, despite pleasing rises of 11 and 14 ranking places respectively, the theme on Teaching is still ranked a disappointing 98th and the theme on Student Voice ranks only 72nd nationally. This does not reflect the quality that we aspire to offer. Therefore, we are continuing our efforts to provide high quality teaching, listening carefully to our students’ feedback on how we are doing and developing plans to deliver further improvements.
At Essex we offer a campus based residential experience and are committed to using campus life to create rounded happy and healthy students, well equipped for the world of work, and well positioned to make the world a better place. We want to put Essex on the map for the extra-curricular experience that we offer to our students, through sports, music and arts extra-curricular activities. We are proud of the absolutely vital and positive relationship the University has with our Students’ Union. In the latest NSS it was again ranked in the top 20 of all students' unions in the country and is now firmly established as one of the top students' unions in the UK.
Recognising the importance of nurturing a sense of belonging through events and activities and responding to our changing student profile with more masters and international students than ever before, the SU has run more daytime events than ever and launched art and craft-based ‘SU Makes’ events, for students who want to focus on a quieter activity and different ways to make new friends.
The University and SU took the opportunity to celebrate the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup with the SU Football Fest, a month of celebrations across our three campuses registering 10,000 student bookings to watch the games. As well as bringing our diverse community of students together through football, this also provided an opportunity for our community to debate the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar and run an SU Fireworks evening for 4,500 students.
We have promoted a mobile app to help Essex students meet new friends with more than 8,000 connections made through the app and 24,000 messages sent between students in the same period.
The impact of our welcome work delivered by both the Students’ Union and the University has been encouraging, with 98% of first-year students that we surveyed commenting that they had found the University to be either welcoming or very welcoming.
The total number of student-led societies run by the Students’ Union has increased to 125 with more than 3,600 student members between them, over 100 events happening every month and 8,000 hours logged by Society Executives this year. One of our student societies, the Women in STEM society was recognised by being national finalists for Equality and Diversity in the Bright Networks Awards. Responding to the changing needs of our students we have also redesigned our campus facilities to offer the very best experience, with the SU opening four new spaces for students: our new look SU Bar, The Atrium, The In-between, and the Communities Common Room. The University has also refreshed our food offer, opening five street food stalls and created new and refurbished cafés and restaurants.
An outstanding example of our success in building community on our campuses, our Essex Rebels Women’s Basketball team has the largest average number of spectators of any professional women’s basketball team in the UK. At an International Women’s Day event on 11 March, we broke the record for the largest attendance at a women’s basketball league game in the UK, with 1,505 spectators cheering on the team to victory that day. Essex Rebels also won the prestigious ‘Best Gameday Experience Award’ from Basketball England. The Prize for the men’s National Basketball League One, highlighted the “great atmosphere” and popular performances that have wowed crowds all season.
We remain committed to re-inventing and updating our approach to campus life, to create an even more exciting and re-invigorated experience and have a wide range of initiatives underway in AY 2023-24.
In the light of increasing emphasis given by government to the regulatory environment, we have refreshed our detailed risk assessments of the University’s course provision against the definition of condition B3 of registration with the Office for Students. We found that our data on student success continues to match up well against these targets and we are ever more vigilant to ensure that our students receive the transformational Essex education that they deserve.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Our 2019-2028 Strategic Plan commits us to growing the number of researchers to around 1,000 for the next Research Excellence Framework. We submitted 702 researchers to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 (up from 339 for REF 2014) and reflecting our performance our Quality Related (QR) core research grant has increased by £4.4m per annum – representing a 63.5% increase in QR income against a sector average increase of 19.3%. In addition, income from research grants and contracts has increased to a record £34.3m and is forecast to grow to £39.9m for AY 2023-24, an increase of 16.3%.
Putting research into action for the benefit of society is part of the DNA of the University. We put nearly £600 million into the regional economy annually and as part of this commitment, we have been working hard to establish an even wider range of connections to business and the public sector over the past few years. As a result, our consultancy has more than doubled over the past four years. Key achievements include:
- Securing £60 million investment for the Knowledge Gateway research and technology park, which includes Parkside Office Village and the Innovation Centre, which forms a regional hub for innovation and a new 40,000 square foot building. This building will be home to our Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing and new health and wellbeing hubs open to the public.
- Consolidating our top position in the UK for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with a portfolio of more than 40 initiatives worth £10m which highlights how we are delivering substantial value to UK business.
- Leading the evaluation of the impact of projects, including ‘A Better Start Southend’, a programme supporting children in areas of deprivation, and an innovative Internet of Things project involving five south London boroughs.
- Enhancing the work of our Angels@Essex platform, developed with University Enterprise Zone funding, which matches investors with businesses needing funding. So far 38 businesses have shared over £19m and a further £9.5m has been raised in an additional 15 funding rounds.
- Establishing a unique £500k partnership with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, to use state-of-the-art modelling, machine learning and data analytics to deliver improvements to their hospital services.
- Being a founding partner of Freeport East based at Harwich and Felixstowe and supporting new clean energy businesses and the offshore wind industry.
- Collaborating with Tendring District Council in the award of £19m from the Leveling Up Fund to create a Clacton Civic Quarter, which will rejuvenate a key area of the town including the creation of a University of Essex Centre for Coastal Communities based in the town. We hope this will become a national centre of excellence for seaside town regeneration.
We ranked first, again, out of all universities in the UK for the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships we have been awarded with a portfolio of more than 40 initiatives worth £10m. In the latest Government review of Universities and their Knowledge Exchange activities, we were ranked 3rd in our comparator group and 12th overall in the UK for our performance across a range of areas. We featured in the top 20% for our work with the public and third sector and for our performance in terms of commercialisation. And we were in the top 40% for work on local growth and regeneration, public and community engagement, working with businesses, and graduate start-ups. These achievements fed directly into our Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS) return which, in turn, determined how much Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) grant we received. In 2018-19, our HEIF allocation was £2.1m. In 2022-23, as a result of our continual improvement in Knowledge Exchange our HEIF grant almost doubled to £3.77m – our highest ever allocation.
Cost of Living
External research suggests nearly 20% of students in the UK have considered dropping out of their courses because of concerns over money. Working with our Students’ Union, we responded quickly with a package that included:
- Restricting the increase in rent for all University owned and managed accommodation to below the cost of inflation for Academic Year 2022-23, at a cost of £1.3m.
- Establishing our student hardship funding at £1.5m for this academic year.
- Spending £350k on introducing a daily hot meal for £2 in our on-campus food outlets.
- Promoting the wide range of free activities and events available to students.
- Removing the cost of re-sit fees.
- Paying the Voluntary Living Wage for University and SU student jobs.
- Investing £100k to fund 7,500 hours of work in part-time roles for our students in Colchester and Southend.
This amounted to a support package of £4m and the scale and speed of its introduction has received national recognition. This is welcome, but we took the steps we did because it was the right thing to do. Against a significant national decline in students staying the course at other universities, we are also pleased that it has resulted in a very welcome increase in our undergraduate continuation rates.
Other Successes
- We ranked 56th in the world this year (a rise from 76th last year) in the global rankings for sustainability out of some 1,600 universities.
- We ranked 24th for international outlook in the Times Higher Education World Rankings.
- The University of Essex’s beloved Wivenhoe Park has preserved its status among Britain’s top outdoor spaces after winning the Green Flag Award.
- British Council Alumni awards – Essex had 12 shortlisted individuals from nine different countries, two Global finalists, three National finalists, and one National winner.
- Essex has received the joint highest number of shortlisted entries at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023, dubbed the 'Oscars' of higher education. For the first time, Essex has been shortlisted in a total of four categories of the Times Higher Education Awards: International Collaboration of the Year, Most Innovative Teacher, Outstanding Support for Students, and Research Project of the Year (STEM). The outcome will be known in November 2023.
Capital Developments
This year will see completion of a new 40,000 square foot building at the entrance to our Colchester Campus. In addition to being the home of our Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing and new health and wellbeing hubs open to the public, following the success of Parkside Office Village, it will also provide lettable commercial space, strengthening our links with business and the community. Through our Pastures development on our Colchester Campus, 1,262 new study bedrooms will be available from September 2024. The University has increased capacity at our main Colchester Campus by 74% since 2013, reflecting student number growth of 53% in the same period. We are nearing completion of a project to re-clad our student residences at University Square Southend, and we are pursuing legal redress for the cost of this work from third parties vigorously.
Alongside these developments, we have made significant investments in research equipment and new technology to further enable efficient and secure hybrid working.
We have also invested in reshaping our teaching and learning facilities to ensure they are world class including: our Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Centre which has new state of the art collaborative learning spaces and interdisciplinary teaching facilities, our Causeway Teaching Centre with 15 new teaching rooms over three floors with the ability to provide flexible learning environments; Studio X, our digital creative collaborative studio and student start-up programme, has a state of the art AI/AR, 360 VR Video and animation studios; and we have expanded teaching space for our Health provision which provides teaching capacity for 300 students, including a replica nursing suite, occupational therapy teaching spaces, and consultation training spaces. Future plans include £50m for investments in Teaching and Research facilities over the next five years, as well as another £9m investment in the student experience and student housing. We have also increased and accelerated our investment in sustainable campuses to £14.2m for urgent energy reduction projects and the reduction of carbon longer term.
External environment
In 2020, we took out fixed price contracts for energy until September 2024, and recently fixed them again from October 2024. This has given us some time to maximise our investment in energy generation and conservation to avoid significant increases in costs and enable reductions in our carbon footprint. It was also with good foresight that we arranged a revolving credit facility with Santander for £40 million, incorporating discounts for green initiatives, that we can deploy to address this critical agenda and meet our Climate and Ecological Emergency Commitment to reach net zero by 2035.
In common with many other universities during the pandemic, we delayed our capital investment plan to conserve our cash balances. We have relaunched our re-prioritised plans for refurbishing and improving our infrastructure but are conscious that the value of our cash balances is being eroded by inflation. Therefore, I’m very grateful for the work of our Investment Committee and staff in securing over £3.4m in investment income, in comparison with £0.25m in the previous year.
People
I am delighted that Dr Sarah Perry, author of the Essex Serpent, accepted our invitation to be the next Chancellor of the University of Essex. Our wonderful Vice-Chancellor, Professor Anthony Forster announced his decision to retire at the end of the 2023-24 academic year, having led the University through a period of extraordinary growth and achievement since August 2012. The task of finding a successor to Anthony has begun and we hope to announce an appointee early in 2024. I am sure there will be opportunities to thank Anthony for his contribution as the University enters its 60th year.
I wish to offer my sincere thanks to four outstanding members of Council who concluded their service on the University Council at the end of AY 2022-23. Milan Makwana served on Council from August 2014, completing a full nine-year term of office in July 2023. Milan served as a Pro-Chancellor from February 2019. We benefitted from Milan’s expertise in human resources strategy and management. Alexa Coates joined Council in November 2017, serving over five years. Alexa’s financial expertise was very valuable; providing an authoritative and independent voice in positive meetings with the University’s banks and bond holder during the pandemic to give just one example. Stephanie Hilborne joined Council in April 2019, and made very valuable contributions to shaping our Sustainability Sub-Strategy and our Policy on Tackling Misogyny, Harassment, Sexism, and Sexual Violence Against Women which resulted directly from Stephanie’s insights and understanding of these issues. As President of the Students’ Union (SU), Nashwa Alsakka was a member of Council for AY 2022-23 and we are very grateful for her leadership in supporting students and placing the SU on a sustainable financial footing in the post-pandemic environment.
I would like to welcome four new members to Council: Julie Bentley, Ajit Menon, Mickola Wilson and Alan Newman who joins us as Treasurer designate to enable a smooth handover from Tim Porter with full effect from 1 August 2024. There has been so much happening at the University that time has passed very quickly and it seems extraordinary that this is my sixth year as Chair of Council. While I will miss it very much, I am very happy that the University Council will be in exceptionally good hands when Melanie Leech takes over as Chair on 1 August 2024 when I will have completed the maximum term of nine years as an external member of Council.
We are also grateful to Professor Andrew Le Sueur who concluded six years as Executive Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, over-seeing the introduction of Edge Hotel School as a successful academic department of the University and the expansion of the Essex Law School to be one of the largest in the country, ranked 3rd for research power.
In conclusion
The University has recovered well from the pandemic, but we are not complacent about the challenges that we face and the fragility of student recruitment. Alongside our Essex 2025 initiative, we continue to have robust planning systems in place, an effective approach to risk management, and are encouraged by recognition of our progress in university league tables. We also know that there is no long-term substitute for strong UK undergraduate student recruitment, and we must capitalise upon our bounce back success by regaining our share of home undergraduate students. It remains for me to thank the Vice-Chancellor and the University executive team as well as staff and students for all their hard work in making AY 2022-23 a very successful year. We have a history of understanding where we came from as well as where we are trying to go. I am delighted that we can look forward to our 60th anniversary year with a great deal of confidence about our future.
PLACEHOLDER - IMAGE JaneHamilton.jpg
Jane Hamilton
Chair of Council
27 November 2023
Balance Sheets as at 31 July 2023
