To: all students Date: 26 May 2020 Subject: Covid-19 and our plans for 2020-21

Dear students,

I hope you are well and bearing up in these strange times.

I was lucky enough to graduate in warm sunshine in the 1970s and to see my daughter graduate in warm sunshine in the noughties. I do feel desperately sorry for those of you who are unable to graduate as planned in the Cathedral next month and I know that many of you will be worrying about your employment prospects after graduation. It is a deeply unhappy time – and most of all for families who have lost loved ones during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Looking ahead, we must assume that the UK and other countries will start to emerge into something like a ‘new normal’ in the months ahead and that our economies will gather strength. Employers of all sorts will then want to recruit graduates of the very highest quality, with Durham students to the fore. Meantime, we at the University will work hard both to ensure wonderful Congregations in the Cathedral for this year’s graduates (dates to follow) and to get our campus open again.

Academic year 2020-21 – Plan A

As you might guess, re-opening a campus is a much more difficult proposition than closing one down. The government is finding this to be true with the lockdown more generally. I will be communicating in more detail about our campus recovery and future teaching plans in the weeks ahead, both to continuing students and to freshers. In the very broadest terms we have a Plan A and a Plan B for Michaelmas Term, both of which are based on Induction Week beginning on 28 September 2020 with teaching to follow from 5 October 2020.

Plan A is what I will call the full residential and educational experience. We will have a timetable in place to run the academic year as ‘normal’ in the event that Covid-19 disappears over the summer and that we can safely re-open all of our buildings – the health and safety of our students, staff and local communities always being our first priority.

Plan B

Sadly, we don’t expect that we will be in Plan A territory in Michaelmas Term. Our base case assumption is our Plan B, which describes a spectrum of actions between ‘normal’ and ‘full lockdown’. Plan B assumes that we will still have 2m social distancing in place in Autumn 2020. This will mean that we can run our teaching estate at about 20% of capacity – a lecture theatre designed for 200 might safely only be able to seat c.40.

This will entail new ways of learning and socialising, the details of which we are working through. It is highly likely that most or all lectures in Michaelmas Term will be ‘online’ and asynchronous. (We are not assuming yet that this has to be the case for the entire academic year: let’s see where we are in the Autumn and keep our options open for as long as we can).

Face to face learning

We do, though, want to ensure that Durham students on campus get as much face to face contact with their teachers and peers as we can safely provide. Accordingly, we will open up rooms we haven’t previously used for teaching and use all of our estate as safely and efficiently as we can. Our aim will be to deliver a large amount of our small group teaching in the same format as we would in any other year, albeit with fewer people in a teaching room or laboratory at any one time.

We will also do our very best to deliver large parts of the Durham Difference – as much as we can, that is to say, of the extraordinary wider student experience that is offered in our Colleges and through Experience Durham and the Student Union.

Again, this won’t be easy and some of the delivery will be online. But we are committed to ensuring that Durham students get the most they can out of being in Durham during these difficult times.

Preparing for the future

More soon on our more specific plans, including on our efforts to ensure a truly safe and healthy campus. More, too, on our responsibilities to the City and the new guidelines we will need to put in place to provide assurances to our local communities. Also, on what we would do in another enforced Lockdown, at which point all of our teaching would have to put back online (and we will be ready to do this, if we have to). And, most of all, far more on what we can and will do for Durham students who can’t be with us in Durham City at any given point(s) in academic year 2020-21.

Lastly on this matter, let me say how much I and my colleagues look forward to having students back in Durham in academic year 2020-21. It will be a tough year: no doubt about that, unless we get unexpectedly good news on Covid-19. You will also find that many students from outside the UK and the EU won’t be with us in Durham in Michaelmas Term: at least that’s our strong working assumption. This will be true across UK higher education and those missing students mean not just lost intellectual and cultural exchange for all of us – we enjoy being cosmopolitan and global - but also missing income for universities.

Financial sustainability

You may have read about Russell Group universities facing lost income next financial year of the order of 20-25% of total income, and that’s broadly the territory we expect to be in at Durham. We are thus facing a doubly difficult year. That said, Durham University, your university, will get through this.

We are full of smart people, we benefit from strong financial governance and we will come together again (just as we are doing now around online education and our preparations for a second lockdown, if one happens) to ensure a cooperative and well thought out response to a challenging financial situation.

Student leaders will be part of those consultations and your collective voice will be key. We want to hear student views on what matters most to your communities.

More on that, too, in the months ahead. For now, though, let me wish you well with your exams and say again how sad I am that this current cohort of students is having to deal with the pandemic at such an important time in your lives. Please know it will get better. You are members of a truly great university and we will do our very best to support you, both here in Durham and further afield, and in whatever comes next.

Go well and stay safe and healthy.

With best wishes,

Stuart