University leaders and university performance in the United Kingdom: is it ‘who’ leads, or ‘where’ they lead that matters most?

With key performance indicators (KPIs) part of everyday life in the higher education (HE) sector, universities have become increasingly concerned with league tables and performance indicator-led strategy and planning. The choice an institution makes concerning the KPIs it wishes to be evaluated on depends on its mission and objectives, with a Head of Institution (VC) appointed to deliver against this. As such, this raises the question as to whether institutional performance can be related in any way to the characteristics of its leader. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to identify any empirical justification for the socio-demographic characteristics which those responsible for searching and appointing VCs appear to have favoured over the past 10 years. Also, whether these can be shown to be related to the performance of their institutions. Using data available in the public domain and for UK (excluding Scotland) VCs in service for, at least, some time during 1999–2004 inclusive, evidence for the importance of VC characteristics for institutional performance was limited. Indeed, our findings suggest that, whilst the performance of a university may be ‘moulded’ by the characteristics of its’ leader, most of the variability is explained by non-leadership factors. We also found highly significant correlations amongst the KPIs used in HE, which has very significant implications for those wishing to differentiate themselves from other institutions.     

Relationships between reading,phonological skills and language development in individuals with Down syndrome: A five year follow-up study

This article is based on language, memory andreading information gathered for a five yearfollow-up study of 30 children and adolescentswith Down syndrome, aged from 10 to 24 years atthe end of the study. At Time 1, 10individuals were classified as readers but byTime 2 this number had risen to 16. Readers significantly outperformed non-readerson tests of nonverbal ability, languagecomprehension and production, phonologicalmemory and phonological awarenesss. However,some of these differences could be accountedfor by readers' significantly lower hearingthresholds. Phonological memory and earlyletter knowledge at Time 1 were significantpredictors of reading scores for Time 2readers, after controlling for age, nonverbalability and corresponding Time 1 readingscores. There was no evidence that learning toread had a significant impact on later languagecomprehension, but early reading skills may besignificant predictors of MLU five years later,after controlling for age, nonverbal abilityand hearing.