10th June 2024
UCFL warmly welcomes the British Academy’s Manifesto for the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts and urges the next UK Government to implement its recommendations as a matter of priority.
The Manifesto makes a clear case for the need for the next Government to utilise the vast potential of the humanities and social sciences and sets out a series of key actions through which the Government can achieve three overarching goals:
- To support an educational system that is sustainable, sparks creativity and offers opportunities to all;
- To use insights and evidence — from all disciplines —to address society’s biggest challenges;
- To collaborate with partners abroad and nurture research talent in the United Kingdom.
The University Council for Languages embraces the centrality of languages provision in the measures proposed by the BA to attain these outcomes, including the need for a broad, balanced and interconnected school curriculum which encourages all students to study a range of disciplines and languages for as long as possible.
UCFL also endorses the Manifesto’s call for a review of higher education funding to deliver a sustainable model that delivers a wide breadth of subjects and is resilient to regional inequalities in provision.
In line with other stakeholders, UCFL strongly supports the Manifesto’s proposal that the UK should rejoin the Erasmus Plus scheme and play an active role in shaping the development of the next round of European Framework Programmes.
We also echo the Manifesto’s emphasis on the potential of insights from SHAPE disciplines to inform thinking about key technologies and the ethics, sustainability and inclusivity of innovation. Indeed, as the President of the British Academy Professor Julia Black argues, the Arts and Humanities are not an ‘optional extra’ but need to be at the forefront of contemporary issues.
In addition to the Manifesto, the British Academy is preparing to publish a series of data-driven maps highlighting cold spots in access to humanities and social science in UK higher education, which will be available from the Academy’s SHAPE Observatory platform.