White Paper on governance published

1 June 2006

Significant changes to the way Oxford University plans and shapes its future are set out today (1 June) in the concluding report from an official working party on governance.

The report, described as a University White Paper, contains a series of recommendations on how the University should go about making key decisions and choices on important academic and organisational issues.

The White Paper calls for a range of changes to current governance arrangements. They include measures to strengthen the University’s internal democracy, to safeguard the primacy of its academic values and activity, to ensure appropriate accountability and transparency in decision-making, to lend greater coherence to planning and policy-making, and to enlarge the involvement of expertise from outside the University.

The report is the culmination of a wide-ranging process of consultation lasting eighteen months, conducted by a working party chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, and including members from across and beyond the University.

Commenting on the White Paper, Dr Hood said: ‘Putting the right governance arrangements in place is vital if we are to maintain the academic pre-eminence and global reputation of Oxford University. These sensible and progressive recommendations, which have been developed with great care and attention, can do much to help us to meet that challenge. They should give new confidence to people inside and outside the University about Oxford’s commitment to remain a centre of learning, teaching, and research to stand comparison with any in the world.’

The White Paper recommends a number of practical changes to University structures and procedures. These include modifying the size and composition of Council (the University’s main policy-making body), and the establishment of an Academic Board to oversee the academic activity of the University. The over-arching powers of Congregation, the University’s parliament, would be unaffected.

The main recommendations are as follows:

• The size and composition of the University Council should be modified in the light of its key role in institutional governance. Membership should be reduced from 23 to 15. It should have seven internal and seven lay (non-University) members and a lay Chair. Congregation, the University’s parliament, should approve the membership of Council.
• A Nominations Committee should put forward the names of lay candidates to Council for approval by Congregation. The Committee should be chaired by the Chancellor of the University, and a majority of its members should be drawn from Congregation.
• Congregation’s procedures for passing a vote of no confidence in Council should be simplified.
• Council should have four major committees, responsible for Audit and Scrutiny, Finance, Investment, and Remuneration (of senior officers). The Audit and Scrutiny Committee would have wide powers, including the right to instigate investigations, to summon officers and to see any document it required.
• An Academic Board should be created to oversee the University’s academic activity. Its membership of 35 should be wide-ranging, with the majority representing Congregation and the Colleges.
• The Academic Board should have five main committees, reflecting its responsibility for academic affairs: Education, Research, Personnel, Planning and Resource Allocation, and General Purposes.

The University Council has welcomed the main principles of the White Paper and commended it to Congregation, which is expected to consider the recommendations in the autumn.

For more information, contact the Press Office on 01865 280532

Notes to Editors

• The White Paper is available at: www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/whitepaper.pdf
• Approval of the last changes to University governance, which came into effect in 2000, was accompanied by an undertaking that there should be a review after five years. Council established a Working Party on 12 October 2004 to conduct this review. The working party issued a discussion document on 24 February 2005, entitled Oxford’s Governance Structure: A Green Paper. Comments were invited by 20 May 2005. These comments informed a further Green Paper, the Governance Discussion Paper, published on 29 September 2005. This paper was discussed by Congregation at a meeting on 1 November 2005. No vote was taken but further written submissions were invited by 18 November 2005. The consultation process culminated in the current Governance White Paper.
• The members of the Working Party are: Dr John Hood (Vice-Chancellor and Chair of the Working Party); Dame Fiona Caldicott (Principal of Somerville College and Chair of the Conference of Colleges until 1 October 2005); Dr John Wheater (Senior Proctor 2004–05); Professor Keith Burnett (Head of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division); Bernard Taylor (external member of the University’s Council); and Professor David Womersley (Chair of the English Faculty Board 2003–5).
• Oxford is an independent and self-governing institution, consisting of the central University and the Colleges. Under the governance structure that was introduced in 2000, its principal policy-making body is the Council, which has 26 members, including those elected by Congregation, representatives of the Colleges and four members from outside the University. Council reports upwards to Congregation, which comprises over 3,700 members of the academic, senior research, library, museum and administrative staff, and which decides on resolutions put by Council and is the ultimate decision-making body of the University. Council is responsible for the academic policy and strategic direction of the University, and operates through four major committees: Educational Policy and Standards, General Purposes, Personnel, and Planning and Resource Allocation. The 39 colleges, though independent and self-governing, form a core element of the University, to which they are related in a federal system, not unlike the United States of America. Through their collective body, the Conference of Colleges, they engage in discussion and debate on key strategic academic decisions within the University.