With its focus on a holistic and collaborative approach, the award promises much that higher education dearly needs. At its heart, it offers support for universities to develop and improve our institutional priorities on a collaborative basis. And this is a recognition that collaboration is needed not only across departments and in alliances between academic and professional service staff but also between students and staff as co-partners in solution-finding. Even though the sector knows that partnership working is the only way to find long-lasting and effective solutions, institutional practices often relegate it to a short-lived, agreement-getting process rather than the long-term and interactive process that the award envisages.
More than this, the award encourages us to share best practices and will be developed over time to reflect the key issues in higher education. It is all the more positive that the award involves sector representatives in its comprehensive assessment of applications. As such it aims for an adaptive and realist approach as a way of building its ambitions into sector practice. We shall be all the stronger for it.
The award is personally exciting for me, as a PVC responsible for education at London South Bank University (LSBU) and also someone deeply committed to providing a transformative environment for all our students. One day I’d like to see LSBU in the list of awardees – and not only because it aligns with my own ideas, but because the process of application and assessment is one that would tell us a great deal about how our practice is perceived and where our strengths lie. I’d encourage all higher education providers to engage with the award as a way to engage in this important area.
Professor Deborah Johnston
Chair, Inclusive Practice Award Panel