Responding to Minister Vallance’s announcement today on the three-month pause to REF 2029, University Alliance CEO Vanessa Wilson said:
“Shortening the REF runway at this stage presents real challenges for the sector and this ‘pause’ should be as short as possible. The Autumn 2028 submission deadline might appear at a comfortable distance, but within institutions this is a critical phase of the cycle where they need the certainty and time to plan and put in place key underpinning policies. A full three month pause and subsequent delay in guidance will have significant knock-on effects for institutions, hampering their capacity when many are already under immense strain.
REF 2029 is advancing some important principles, including that it should be a more inclusive exercise. It will be impossible to please everyone, and the priority should be reaching a clear set of targeted decisions that minimise burden and simplify the principles of REF 2029 without reversing them in their entirety. Within a diverse sector, this will be the best way to maintain the trust and confidence of a vast majority.
Many of the potential changes reported on in recent weeks are extremely sensible, such as using the REF 2021 template for environment with the addition of a limited range of new elements emerging from the PCE pilot; placing strategy at the heart of PCE; and the removal of separate disciplinary level statements for CKU and E&I. In this context a modest reconsideration of weighting across the three elements for this exercise would be justifiable (i.e., 55% for CKU, 20% for PCE and 25% for E&I) to bridge the 2021 and 2029 exercises whilst still signalling the important direction of travel on PCE. A return to the weightings used in REF 2021 should be firmly out of scope, particularly if changes are made to the disciplinary level statements, which would also contribute to strengthen the focus on outputs.”
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