A framework fit for the future of education and research at Oxford

Professors Patrick Grant (Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research) and Martin Williams (Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Education) share insights into the Academic Career and Reward Framework and its plans to enhance Oxford’s world-class reputation for research and education. This blog builds upon the update from Professor Anne Trefethen (Pro-Vice-Chancellor, People and Digital) in April. 

Key developments:  

• The Academic Career and Reward Framework (ACRF) project will deliver clear, consistent and rewarding career pathways for all staff with education and/or research responsibilities. 
• This project will deliver on key outcomes of the Pay & Conditions Review relating to pay, progression and reward and recognition, to support the University’s global standing in both research and education.  
• Overseen by the ACRF Steering Group, it is anticipated that the new framework will go through formal consultation in Hilary term 2025 and be implemented from Michaelmas term 2025. 

Oxford’s world-class reputation in research and education relies on academic staff being ambitious and able to do outstanding work. In reality, many academic staff report significant workload pressures and an undeliverable expectation to excel equally in both research and education, despite operating in an environment in which career progression is often biased towards research. Without clear guidelines and more structured career paths, it is difficult to equally recognise and reward the diverse strengths and expertise that our academics bring to their roles – whether in research, education or both. 

What are we planning? 

Discussions at the ACRF Steering Group, which has representation from across the collegiate University, have considered the introduction of different academic ‘job families’. Job families are groups of roles united by a similar balance of skills and responsibilities. 

Proposed job families include: a Research and Education job family, which represents the predominant balance of activities of academic staff, that will sit alongside an Education and Scholarship (of teaching and learning in Higher Education) job family and a Research-focused family. Note that the term ‘Education’ encompasses not only teaching but also the significant time and skill that academics dedicate to student support, assessment and feedback, and educational leadership. In the proposed framework, each job family will encompass staff with a range of contract types and funding sources. Greater transparency around role expectations at different career stages will be provided for each job family. 

The first phase of implementation is planned for the 2025/26 academic year. Work will focus on providing clear and proportional mechanisms and criteria for staff to progress to the existing Associate Professor role, and then onwards to Professor. This will potentially be done via a new ‘Assistant Professor’ role. The transition to a higher grade (eg from Associate Professor to Professor) is planned to be a genuine promotion to a new grade, role expectations and salary scale, rather than the current ‘recognition of distinction’.  

The framework will also focus on valuing and rewarding academic leadership, both within disciplines and across the University or the sector. Similarly, it will be clearer on the expectations for citizenship (service to the University) and collegiality (supporting others to succeed).  

An advantage of the job family approach will be to overcome the current expectation that colleagues need to make significant contributions across all of research, teaching, citizenship and administration to progress in their career. In this way, the framework also explicitly enables the delivery of the Pay & Conditions Review recommendation to provide clarity of role expectations across different academic job families and career stages aligned to reward. 

So what will change? 

Under the framework, there will be a better understanding of what is expected of colleagues and how to progress in an academic career at Oxford. By providing clarity to roles and responsibilities at different career stages, we can be clear with one another that we do not expect everyone to excel at everything, all of the time. Consequently, the framework should also help Oxford employ academics into a range of different academic job families, according to the needs of the University in different areas. 

For the University to retain its leading reputation for education, we need academic staff who can ensure excellent educational experiences for all students. The framework will provide overdue recognition for the many staff who already do this, and incentives for those who might currently feel that doing so is not in their career interests. The framework can play a pivotal role by explicitly supporting and rewarding the highest standards in teaching, student support, assessment and feedback, and educational leadership.  

We conduct outstanding research that can and does change the world, but our world-leading reputation and increasing global competition demands that we must always be restless to do better. The 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) highlighted the strength and research quality of peer institutions; our current preparations for REF 2029 will provide a focus around which we can redouble our ambition for the originality and significance of our research outputs. For many colleagues, that involves collaborating with others across specialisms, sectors and geographies to make bold and transformative changes in understanding or impact. The framework will enable us to recruit to and explicitly recognise the new and varied roles that this level of ambition and these modalities of research require. 

What’s next?  

Thank you to colleagues who have contributed to discussions so far, including divisional boards and trade unions, staff who have taken part in focus groups and the activities of the cross-University project group that is working to connect this ambitious and complex programme.  

As the framework takes shape, it will be presented to divisional boards in Michaelmas term 2024, with formal consultation planned for Hilary term 2025.