Full Guardian university guide for 2010, along with advice on how to apply to university, fees, and how to get the best from your course
Oxford University holds on to its position as the UK's leading teaching institution in the Guardian's university league tables, to be published tomorrow.
The tables provide vital information for students who face the toughest ever competition for university places this year.
Oxford scores highly on teaching quality, student satisfaction and career prospects.
It also spends the highest amount per student. Dr John Hood, Oxford's vice-chancellor, warned last month that the university was suffering unsustainable losses because of the cost of teaching its undergraduates.
Oxford's traditional rival, Cambridge University, retains its second-place ranking, with St Andrews University moving up from fifth spot last year to third place in the 2010 tables.
Britain's oldest universities still dominate the high rankings this year, with the London School of Economics fifth, Edinburgh seventh, and Imperial College London eighth.
But universities founded in the 1960s have also made the top 10: Warwick retains fourth position and Loughborough the tenth spot; Bath ranks ninth, up from 13th last year. Sussex has leapt 15 places to 18th, and Herriot-Watt rises from 52nd to 22nd place this year.
Prof Paul Curran, vice-chancellor of Bournemouth University, which has come top of the post-1992 universities for the second year running, said its 32nd ranking was down to investing in staff.
"We focused very clearly on academic excellence and investing in academic staff and our performance has improved dramatically.
"We've recruited 150 new staff over two years and doubled the number of staff who have doctorates, which has improved the student experience.
"Academic staff who are really enthusiastic about their subject is what we think students want, and the results would indicate that."
Newer universities tend to do less well in the Guardian's tables because they spend less money on teaching, they have lower ratios of staff to students, and their students are less happy with the feedback they get.
Paul Marshall, executive director of the 1994 group of smaller, research-intensive institutions, said: "The excellent performance of 1994 group universities in these national league tables, achieving 10 of the top 18 places, highlights yet again that our members are second to none in delivering a world-class academic experience.
"Deciding on which university to attend is an increasingly important choice in a very competitive jobs market.
"Savvy students have worked out that 1994 group universities deliver the very best academic experience through a combination of world-class research, a commitment to research-led teaching, and the highest levels of student satisfaction."
Dr Wendy Piatt, director-general of the Russell group of older research-intensive universities, said they continued to excel.
"Evidence demonstrates that learning in an inquiry-based environment, where teaching is enriched by research, provides a real benefit to students.
"The high-quality teaching and research undertaken by our universities builds the UK's knowledge base and gives our students highly employable critical thinking and leadership skills."
She said Russell group institutions scored highly in the most important categories, including career prospects. "Our universities have, for many years, been developing a range of schemes to enhance graduate employability, including work-based learning, internships in coveted professions, and tailored guidance to help students consolidate the skills that are valued by employers," said Piatt.
The top three places in the league table for specialist institutions have shifted, though conservatoires still dominate.
The Royal Academy of Music ranks first, up from third place last year, taking over from the Courtauld Institute, which drops to second place in the 2010 tables.
The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama falls to third place from second last year.
• The Guardian University Guide and The Guardian Postgraduate Guide are now available from Guardian Books.
Offer free places or lose charity status, private schools told
Charity Commission's rulings have profound implications for fee-charging charities such as private schools
Private schools in England and Wales are today being ordered to offer a "significant" number of free places to pupils who cannot afford their fees – or face being stripped of their charitable status.
Four charities – two private schools and two care homes – will learn today that they have failed a "public benefit" test to justify their charitable status, after the first 12 inspections by the Charity Commission under a new law designed to weed out rogue charities.
The private schools are criticised for failing to provide enough bursaries, while one of the care homes was found to be operating as a hotel rather than a residential facility for the elderly and infirm.
The rulings have profound implications for fee-charging charities such as private schools, private hospitals and care homes. They must now prove that people who cannot afford their fees can still access their services, or face losing their charitable status – and with that, millions of pounds in tax breaks. Private school leaders warned they would be forced to put fees up to cover the cost of extra bursaries.
Suzi Leather, the chair of the Charity Commission, said: "The principle is that they have to provide ways for people to access benefits from the schools where they cannot afford the fees. The clearest and most direct way is through bursaries, but some schools will be able to satisfy it in other ways."
She said the schools that have been warned should look at the schemes successful schools are running, but that bursaries would have to be "more than tokenistic" in number. "They will gain a good idea from that of the right level of bursaries to be offering, but we are not going to give an inappropriate and artificial figure to be adopted by all schools," Leather added. Successful schools offered between 5% and nearly 15% of their income in means-tested bursaries.
St Anselm's preparatory school in Derbyshire and Highfield Priory in Lancashire are criticised for failing to give any full bursaries. They are each been given 12 months to overhaul their bursaries or risk losing charitable status. Two other private schools are told to make more efforts to publicise their bursaries, and only Manchester Grammar school, the largest and best known of the five assessed, was given a clean bill of health.
David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said he was "deeply disappointed" that the commission had chosen to focus on bursaries. "The implication of the commission's findings appears to be that many schools must now aim to provide a significant – but still unspecified – proportion of their turnover in full bursaries. This will inevitably lead to fee increases for the vast majority of parents," he said.
Two care home charities also fail the new public benefit test, according to the Charity Commission. The Rest Bay hotel, a seaside convalescent scheme, was set up in 1878 to provide support for injured miners and those working in heavy industry in South Wales.
The commissioners' investigation found that the decline in the mining industry had led to a sharp fall in the number of visitors to the rural Victorian retreat and that it no longer met statutory care standards. The charity's website, it noted, declares: "The Rest [hotel] today provides wonderful holidays for mature folk, able bodied and disabled alike."
The organisation has suffered from "mission drift", the study says, adding: "The provision of holidays for the general public is not a charitable aim." The charity has been ordered to re-examine its aims.
The trustees of Penylan House, a Jewish retirement and nursing home, have been told they must "ensure that their policy on assistance with fees is clear, open and transparent". It has been ordered to reassess its funding strategy.
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Could mental toughness training boost grades?
Could schools struggling to improve GCSE scores help their students with 'mental toughness' training?
Fay and Ajay, two pupils at All Saints Catholic high school in Knowsley, Merseyside, are locked in concentration.
The 13-year-olds are competing to control a ball using nothing more than their powers of concentration. They are wearing headsets that chart on a nearby computer how focused and relaxed their brains are. The pupil who concentrates the most finds the ball move to the opposite side of the table.
"It's proper hard," says Fay, wrinkling her forehead. "You think you are concentrating, but it turns out you aren't that much." Ajay says when the ball comes his way, it puts him off. "I have to think really hard to make it go in the right direction," he says.
Here in Knowsley, the proportion of pupils who obtain five A*-C grades at GCSE including maths and English is well under the national average. Just 30% of pupils achieved A*-Cs last year, making the local authority the 2nd worst performer in England. The national average for a local authority is 47.2%.
It's not that these pupils aren't every bit as clever as their peers in other parts of the country, says All Saints' headteacher, Peter Bradley. It's that their powers of concentration, resilience and confidence may need a bit of boosting, he argues. "Even where teaching is good and extra lessons are given, learners haven't been progressing at the same speed as they have elsewhere.
"Their mental toughness has a lot to do with why they are not achieving as much as they should be," he says.
Knowsley thinks it has found the answer in Peter Clough, a psychology lecturer at the University of Hull.
Clough believes he can boost pupils' grades by bolstering their mental toughness. By this he means their confidence, ability to control their minds, and their openness to challenges and commitments.
The psychologist has devised a psychometric test to gauge how mentally tough pupils are. Those who perform poorly participate in games that train them to concentrate, focus and develop confidence. One of these is Mindball, which Fay and Ajay are playing.
Clough's approach is hands-off. He only visits Knowsley's secondary schools occasionally, preferring to train teachers in his techniques.
Raising grades
Knowsley, the first local authority Clough has worked with, hopes schools that have used his method over the last year will raise their proportion of pupils who obtain A*-C grades at GCSE this year by six percentage points.
For Clough, though, it's not just about grades. "People who are mentally tough perform better in school and in life," he says. "They take the opportunities that life offers them."
He recognises that several neighbourhoods in Knowsley are very poor and that it's patronising and unreasonable to ask pupils to just "develop a positive attitude".
"It's not about training yourself to be happy, it's about controlling your thoughts," he says. "It's particularly important here, because these children may be presented with fewer opportunities than others."
He recognises, too, that a positive outlook won't get someone wherever they want to be. "No matter how positive I am, I'm not going to ever be able to put on a tutu and be a good ballet dancer. But working on your psychological state will help," he says.
Children are less resilient now than in the past, Clough argues. Their fear of failure is huge. "We live in a society that is stress-averse, but everything that is worth having is stressful. We seem to have demonised stress for some reason and to have accepted that life in 2009 is more stressful than in the past," he says. "We seem to panic more as a society."
His psychometric test, which is being produced and sold across the country by the firm AQR, asks children how strongly they agree or disagree with 48 statements.
These include: I generally feel that I am a worthwhile person; I usually speak my mind when I have something to say; and I can usually adapt myself to challenges that come my way.
The pupils in Knowsley who have taken the test receive a breakdown of how they scored and a few pointers to help them, such as tips on relaxing and goal-setting.
Fay and Ajay's class achieved scores that were bottom of the average for their age.
"Close your eyes," Clough tells the class. "Can you think of five things that are really positive about yourself? Those who can't, put up your hand."
After a couple of minutes, at least six or seven out of this class of 18 raise a hand.
"Don't forget, you control the way you think. If you learn how to control your brain, you can get on really well," he says. "Did you know that Rugby League players write down their best attributes and put them in their socks before a game?" Clough tells the pupils.
In one of his activities, children cover themselves in electrodes and a computer monitors their stress levels. If they are anxious, they see a caterpillar on the screen. Once they've breathed deeply, tried to imagine a "happy place" and relaxed, the caterpillar turns into a butterfly. In another, pupils shoot down canisters that are placed around the classroom with a toy gun. What they don't know is that some of the canisters can't be shot down. Clough examines how they cope with not being able to shoot them down.
All Saints now has a team of teachers to bolster its pupils' mental toughness, particularly at exam time. Clough says he expects a "dramatic improvement in exam performance and positive behaviour" as activities to bolster mental toughness are integrated into classrooms.
Bradley believes the techniques can "transform educational standards by making our youngsters more confident and able to meet challenges".
At exam time, all eyes will be on Knowsley. Let's hope the teachers, as well as the pupils, are mentally tough enough to cope well with such pressure.
Oxford fees could treble next year, academics warn
Lecturers expect student fees to rise to £10,000 a year as soon as the government allows it, which could be after a general election next year
Tuition fees at Oxford University are likely to more than treble as early as next year, academics at the 900-year-old institution have warned.
Lecturers have told the Guardian they expect students to be charged £10,000 a year "as soon as the government allows it" – which some believe will be shortly after a general election next year.
Full-time undergraduates starting at Oxford this year will pay £3,225 a year – the maximum universities are allowed to charge.
The university will struggle to compete with the US Ivy League institutions unless government funds increase or Oxford raises its fees, the academics warn. But chances of a growth in public subsidies are remote, they admit.
The government has asked English universities to make £180m in "efficiency savings". Government funding is thought to have covered 75% of universities' income 30 years ago, but accounts for less than 40% of their income now.
Oxford's famed one-to-one tutorials between academics and students are expensive for the university to maintain.
A fee increase is therefore unavoidable, the lecturers argue, and it could happen as soon as "Cameron's first term of office", according to one.
Their comments come after Oxford's unpopular outgoing vice-chancellor, John Hood, said over the weekend that it was "inevitable" that Oxford and Cambridge would charge more in future to compete with the best institutions in the world.
But Hood said this would be "gradual" and could be "decades off". A government review of university fees starts this year and is expected to end after a general election.
Iain McLean, a politics professor at Nuffield College, Oxford, expects the university to raise fees to £10,000 a year "as soon as the government allows it – most likely to be early in Cameron's first term".
He said £10,000 was roughly what it cost to educate an average student at Oxford per year.
Christopher Lewis, dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, argues that the cap should come off tuition fees.
Lewis said: "By whatever means, fees will have to rise. Many of our alumni say that they would give us greater financial support were we to 'go independent', by which I assume that they mean, charge the fees which Oxford considers reasonable. Our alumni are already very supportive, but I reckon that they would be even more so if they saw us as independent."
David Palfreyman, fellow and bursar of New College, Oxford, said raising the fees was "almost inevitable".
He anticipates that fees will rise after the next general election to "£7,500 at least". If they do not, and the government does not increase its subsidies, "some subjects would take a hell of a clobbering", he said.
Robin Briggs, a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, said a hike to £5,000 would be "fairly modest" and "possible".
But the academics and the vice-chancellor believe higher fees can be introduced only if the university provides "better bursaries" so that bright, poor students can take up places.
Hood, a New Zealander who is leaving Oxford in September after five years, would not state by how much he would like to see fees rise.
He wants the university to convince more of its wealthy alumni to donate money so that Oxford has more freedom from government.
He said: "If Oxford is successful over the ensuing decades in its endownment-raising, we could see it taking less government money for teaching. But that would be decades away."
But academics say this is a difficult way to raise funds. Briggs said: "It remains very hard to see how Oxford could raise enough to replace the current levels [from the government]. The UK does not have the tax breaks or the philanthropic tradition of the US, while we are forbidden to give any sort of preference in entrance selection to the children of donors, as the Ivy League used to do."
The Institute for Philanthropy says 1.7% – 108,000 out of 6.2 million – of UK graduates donate to their universities, compared to 22% of alumni of US public universities. Oxford says 14% of its alumni donate, but in the US Ivy League universities, more than half do.
Earlier this year, a report by Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, argued that raising tuition fees from £3,000 to £5,000 a year would not deter students from university.
But the report warned that students from low-income families would be discouraged if fees rose to £7,000, particularly if they had to take out private loans as well as government student loans.
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