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A man accused of taking part in a £40m jewellery raid at Graff jewellers in central London has been sentenced to 21 years.
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Finance Minister Sammy Wilson gave the document to ministers A final budget package is to be presented to a special session of the Assembly later.
Executive ministers agreed the budget on Thursday night, although UUP and SDLP ministers voted against it.
It is understood an extra £120m has been allocated to health over the next four years, and £150m extra to education.
The Employment and Learning Department, which is responsible for higher education, is due to get an extra £50m.
However, £70m is being cut from the Social Development Department.
Friday’s session of the Assembly will allow Finance Minister Sammy Wilson to outline the final adjustments to his budget and answer some questions from MLAs.
However, the budget package will not be put to a formal vote until next week.
Some of the exchanges across the Executive table on Thursday night were said to be ill tempered and brutally frank and gave an idea of how the battle lines in the Assembly chamber will be drawn.
The Finance Department has said it has identified more than £450m in extra money to distribute to the Executive departments.
Finance Minister Sammy Wilson said that the new cash is available partly because the Land and Property Service has improved its efficiency in gathering the rates.
Senior Executive sources claim the new cash takes the total of additional revenue generated under the budget to more than £1bn.
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The US space agency’s (Nasa) attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure.
The Glory satellite lifted off from California on a quest to gather new data on factors that influence the climate.
But about six minutes into the flight, officials became aware of a problem.
It appears the fairing – the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher – did not separate properly.
This would have made the rocket too heavy and therefore too slow to achieve its intended 700km orbit. It would probably have fallen into the Ocean near the Antarctic, but this still has to be confirmed.
It is the exact same failure which befell Nasa’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory in 2009. It too launched on a Taurus XL rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and again the fairing failed to separate properly.
On that occasion a “Mishap Investigation Board” was established to determine the root cause of the nose cone’s failure and to make recommendations to remedy the malfunction. It noted four hardware problems that needed correction. Friday’s launch was the XL’s return to flight after the OCO loss. Another board will now have to be convened.
The loss of Glory is a huge blow to the Orbital Sciences Corporation. It makes the rocket and assembled the Glory satellite for Nasa.
Glory was carrying two instruments. One of its instruments would have measured the total energy coming from the Sun; the other would have looked at particles in the atmosphere that can trap that energy or scatter it back out into space.
Understanding both is vital to our ability to forecast future change.
The Taurus XL lifted off at 0209 Pacific Standard Time (1009 GMT). A number of sensors on the rocket would have indicated the fairing failure, and the launch director Omar Baez had no choice but to declare a spacecraft contingency.
The Taurus XL is the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency.
Since its debut in 1994, this type of rocket has flown nine times, with six successes and three failures including this launch. This was the second time Nasa had tried to launch a satellite on the XL.
The OCO mission which failed in 2009 is being rebuilt and is due to be launched on another Taurus XL rocket in 2013.
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The barbed points may even have been arrowheads, moving the earliest known use of arrows back by thousands of years Caches of tools and animal remains from around 12,000 years ago, found on islands off the California coast, have given remarkable insight into the lives of the first Americans.
a rich maritime economy existed there.
The tools vary markedly from mainland cultures of the era such as the Clovis.
The finds, reported in Science, also suggest that rather than a land route to South America, early humans may have used coastal routes.
A team studying California’s Channel Islands, off its southern coast, has found that the islands show evidence both of differing technologies and a differing diet, even among the few islands.
“On San Miguel island we found a lot of pretty remarkable tools, but the animal materials there were largely shellfish,” said Torben Rick, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
“Over on Santa Rosa, that site was dominated by bird remains and a few sea mammal and fish remains… and no shellfish at all.
“What’s interesting about that is it shows us not only were these people out there living a coastal life, but they were taking advantage of the full suite of resources available to them; they had a very diversified maritime economy.”
“As more research produces more sites, we will see that the story of the first Americans is not linear and that there will continue to be more surprises”
Tom Dillehay Vanderbilt University
The tools that the team found hold the greatest surprise, however, in that they differ significantly from those of mainland cultures like the Clovis and Folsom.
Points found on the islands – which could even be arrow-heads – are thin, serrated, and have barbed points that show striking workmanship for the period.
Inland tools had fluted points, and it is known they were used to hunt large animals including the woolly mammoth. The island points were so delicate as to almost certainly have been used for hunting fish. What is more, many of them do not reappear in the archaeological record.
“These are extremely delicate, finely made tools that don’t occur later in time,” Dr Rick said. “Finding these types of tools at all three of these sites really suggests a similar group of people, in terms of technology and subsistence – and were pretty different from what came later.”
Dr Rick said that the evidence supported the idea that the islands were short-term or seasonal encampments, rather than permanent settlements. The team also found a piece of obsidian on the islands.
“The Coso obsidian source [is] on the mainland a couple hundred miles away, so we know they were participating in long-distance exchange networks,” he said.
A long-standing model of human exploration and settlement of the Americas holds that, after reaching North America through the Bering Straits off Alaska, a concerted push southward led early humans including the Clovis culture across inland parts of the continent to South America.
But anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University said that the Channel Island finds were part of a mounting body of evidence against that simplistic story.
The thin, serrated crescents are a testament to the island inhabitants’ manufacturing capabilities “What they tell us is that there was widespread cultural diversity at the outset of human entry and dispersion throughout the Americas, and that the old, now-dead Clovis first model often misleads us to believe that there was only one major way of first human expansion throughout the Western Hemisphere,” he told BBC News.
“As today, there are cultural continuities but there also is constant change, which is well evidenced by these and other sites being discovered throughout the Americas. As more research produces more sites, we will see that the story of the first Americans is not linear and that there will continue to be more surprises.
“As I have published and said before, there were probably many different migrations and many different migration routes overland and along the coastal ways, and this evidence is pointing in that direction too.”
However, Dr Rick said that it was too early to upend the larger picture of human migration across the Americas, and that further finds – some of which now lie underwater around the Channel Islands – could shed more light on the story in the future.
“My colleague Jon Erlandson refers to them as ‘postcards from the past’,” Dr Rick said. “They give us just a brief snapshot of ‘hey, we were here and here’s what we were doing for a brief period of time’.
“We have to be a little cautious in our interpretations; we’re trying to put together a puzzle, and the puzzle may have 150 pieces and we’ve got five of them. So it’s really difficult to get the full picture of what they were doing.”
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Sir Alex Ferguson will appeal against a Football Association charge of improper conduct, BBC Sport understands.
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Nasa’s attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure
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Dutch TV rebroadcast video of the crew with their faces obscured
A Dutch navy helicopter crew have been shown on Libyan state TV after being captured while attempting to evacuate two foreign citizens.
The TV showed the three-strong crew, their Lynx helicopter and weapons, saying they had entered Libyan air space “in breach of international law”.
Dutch officials say the helicopter was captured on Sunday near Sirte while trying to fly out two Europeans.
Talks are under way to free the crew, who are two men and one woman.
They had landed near Sirte, a port city in central Libya under the control of government forces, to carry out a “consular evacuation”, the Dutch defence ministry said.
An armed Libyan unit captured them along with the two evacuees – a Dutch national and another, unidentified European – who were later released by the Libyan authorities and left the country.
The Dutch defence ministry has been in contact with the crew who were “doing well under the circumstances”, a Dutch spokesman said on Thursday.
They had flown into Libya from the Dutch warship Tromp, which is anchored off the coast.
Footage shown by Libyan TV, which cannot be verified, shows the three crew members sitting in an office with Libyans and sipping canned drinks.
A helicopter with Dutch naval markings can be seen parked on sand as gunmen cheer and wave their weapons around it.
When a heavy machine gun and belt of bullets are displayed, an on-screen caption in Arabic says: “According to the [Saudi-backed] broadcaster al-Arabiya, this helicopter was sent to rescue people, but we can see something else here.
“The helicopter flew into Libyan airspace and landed in Sirte without any permission from the authorities and this is in violation of international law.”
Assault rifles, dollar notes, notebooks, pistols, mobile phones, bullets and ammunition, military-fatigue body armour, inflatable life jackets and a Sony digital camera are also shown off in the video.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that the Dutch national whose evacuation the crew had been trying to complete was handed over to the Dutch embassy and is now back in the Netherlands.
He had been working for the Dutch engineering company Royal Haskoning.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said news of the crew’s capture had been kept quiet initially to assist the talks on their release.
“It is terrible for the crew of the Lynx helicopter,” he said.
“Everything is being done to make sure the crew get home.”
The Tromp, which was initially to have taken part in an anti-piracy operation off Somalia, headed for the Libyan coast on 24 February.
Initial reports talked of “marines” being captured but an official statement posted later on the defence ministry’s website describes the captives as a naval helicopter crew.
The port city of Sirte is considered the main remaining stronghold of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the centre of the country, as he struggles with a spreading revolt against his rule.
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Unions have described the cuts as “inexcusable” Glasgow Caledonian University has confirmed it is to cut up to 95 jobs in a bid to save £5m from its annual running costs.
Management want to merge the university’s six existing departments – or “schools” – into three larger ones.
They hope to make the savings through voluntary redundancy but cannot rule out compulsory job cuts.
Unions have vowed to fight the job losses, which they have described as “inexplicable and inexcusable”.
Glasgow Caledonian currently has six academic departments – built and natural environment; Caledonian business school; engineering and computing; health; life sciences and law and social sciences.
Under new proposals, these would be merged into three larger schools – health and life sciences; engineering, computing and the environment; and business, law and social sciences.
Those jobs most at risk in each department are in senior management, administrative and support services, and marketing and human resources.
“To lose 95 more frontline posts will have a catastrophic effect on staff and students”
Dr Nick McKerrell Combined union committee
The university said it needed to make savings of £12m per year by 2014 due to cuts in funding from central government.
It has already made £5m, with £7m still to find. The latest proposed savings, if achieved by July 2012, would meet £5m of that balance.
In a statement, Glasgow Caledonian said: “The university’s governing body has approved plans to begin a 90-day consultation on proposals to re-profile and restructure its administrative and support services.
“While the university would seek to make changes by voluntary means wherever possible and in consultation with staff and their representatives, the proposals currently being consulted upon could see a reduction of up to 95 administrative and support posts.
“The university’s academic and service-based activities are continuing as normal during this time and final proposals will be submitted to the governing body for consideration. It is hoped that this will take place on 6 June 2011.”
Glasgow Caledonian currently employs 1,613 staff, so the proposed jobs cut would affect about 6% of the workforce.
The university’s combined union committee condemned the proposals and highlighted that they had emerged in the same week that senior management pay levels at the institution had been described by one MSP as “disgraceful”.
Committee convenor, Dr Nick McKerrell, said: “These job losses are both inexplicable and inexcusable at Glasgow Caledonian University.
“Some 300 jobs have already gone in the last four years. To lose 95 more frontline posts will have a catastrophic effect on staff and students.
“The trade unions will hold an emergency summit early this morning (Friday) to plan their next steps and protests. Management will not know what has hit them.”
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Red kites are now a much more common sight People are used to stories of conservational doom-and-gloom with fragile species threatened by creeping urbanisation, but recent reports suggest some birds of prey are booming in the UK. So why does the prospect of a soaring hawk or eagle leave some people worried?
Birds of prey are admired. Their powerful talons and soaring flight impresses. People relish the suspense that comes from watching them hover before making a kill.
Britain’s biggest, the white-tailed (or sea) eagle – the fourth largest eagle in the world – has a wingspan of eight feet.
But during Victorian times many birds of prey were hunted ruthlessly. Four species – the osprey, white-tailed eagle, goshawk and marsh harrier – were virtually extinct in Britain during most of the 20th Century.
And some of their emotional resonance comes precisely because of their perilous decline during the period of intensive industrialisation in the UK.
“This is not the Serengeti plain, the Amazon or Antarctica – we’re in a highly farmed environment”
Keith McDougall Songbird survival
During the 1950s and 1960s organochlorine pesticides were widely used, seriously inhibiting top predators like the golden eagle’s ability to breed. But at the end of the 1960s these chemicals were banned.
That together with reintroduction schemes and a new ethos of protecting birds of prey – culminating in the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act – has turned the tide, says Grahame Madge, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ conservation spokesman.
The white tailed eagle, after a successful reintroduction scheme during the 1970s on the island of Rum is now well established in the west coast of Scotland.
The red kite is now up to 1,800 breeding pairs – a “staggering turn around”, says Madge – while there are thought to be around 40,000 buzzards soaring over the UK. Everyone from hikers to motorway drivers can now expect to see birds of prey regularly.
But, it’s neither a story of unbridled success or acceptance.
“It’s a sweeping generalisation to say that birds of prey have bounced back,” says Madge. “It may be fitting for some of the 15 species but not all.”
Some farmers are worried by the spread of reintroduced eagles Several species – notably the hen harrier, golden eagle and goshawk – are still at risk. In England there is only one breeding pair of golden eagles and 12 pairs of hen harriers when there should be many more, Madge says. There’s plenty of food and territory, the problem is persecution, particularly poisoned bait, he says.
“Persecution was rife during the reign of Victoria. And we still see that mindset now with birds of prey being illegally persecuted in upland areas where you have grouse shooting, such as the Pennines and southern Scotland. “
A newspaper ran a spectacular photograph earlier this week of a golden eagle plucking a lamb from a field. Local farmers claimed the photograph was evidence that eagles – which have been reintroduced back into parts of Scotland – are now out of control.
The Scottish Crofting Federation is complaining that the reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle has been too successful. Donald Murdie, a crofter on the Isle of Skye and SCF consultant, says the bird has spread from its initial reintroduction to the west of the mainland, and the islands of Skye, Lewis and Harris.
“They’re magnificent to behold. But whereas people were initially happy to see them, these birds are now causing serious problems to sheep producers.”
Murdie says that the most seriously affected crofters complain they are losing 10 lambs a year. It’s now time for a rethink, he argues.
“It would be fine if the reintroduction was kept to one discreet area but the fact is they’re continuing to reintroduce in other areas like the East Coast and potentially Suffolk.”
Others even allege that birds of prey are hoovering up the UK’s songbirds. Keith McDougall, policy director of pressure group Songbird Survival, reels off a long list of species whose numbers are declining – the skylark down 51%, the song thrush down 48%, the tree sparrow down 89%. The reason is threefold, he says – intensive farming, a drier climate and an increasing number of predators.
There is only one breeding pair of golden eagles in England This last category includes cats, crows, foxes but also birds of prey.
“In this country we’re in the business of species balance – this is not the Serengeti plain, the Amazon or Antarctica. We’re in a highly farmed environment so Songbird Survival believes that the management of species is important,” says McDougall.
In the future that might mean extending its experimental cull of crows to birds of prey, he argues, a move that would require a change in the law.
“If things are going wrong for some birds it’s the duty of those in charge to help species that are in trouble,” he says.
But the RSPB says there is no evidence that birds of prey are to blame. And the idea of a cull appals journalist Rod Liddle, who presented a radio programme this week on birds of prey.
He believes that opponents oversimplify the relationship between predator and prey. The answer for all birds is not culls or more reintroduction schemes but to work on improving the biodiversity of farmland, he argues. “There’s no point putting the eagle back if the environment is ‘too clean’ for them. The answer might be to pay farmers more to leave one or two weeds in the fields,” he says.
And the awe that birds of prey inspire will continue to be a driver for conservation efforts.
“The golden eagle is pretty beautiful, the hen harrier stunning,” says Liddle. “But my favourite memory is seeing an osprey at six o’clock in the morning one summer in Wiltshire. It was flying south, a big, black, white and brown bird. It was a magnificent sight.”
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Houthi rebels in north Yemen say the armed forces have fired on their anti-government protest.
The Shia rebels claim two people were killed and at least seven were injured in the incident in the northern province of Amran, reports say.
There have been many anti-government protests in recent weeks, mainly focused in cities of Sanaa and Aden.
Demonstrators want the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled since 1978.
Thousands of people are reported to have gathered in the town of Harf Sufyan for a peaceful protest, calling for political change and an end to corruption.
A rebel spokesman told Reuters news agency that the military had fired rockets at protesters from an army base.
The government and the Houthi rebels, members of the Zaidi Shia sect, have been observing a truce, although there are occasional clashes.
The Houthi announced their support last month for anti-government protests which have been inspired by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
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England is the only part of the UK still charging for prescriptions The cost of prescriptions in England will rise by 20p to £7.40 per item from 1 April, the government has announced.
The move will be a blow to the British Medical Association (BMA), which has been calling for charges to be scrapped altogether.
Earlier this week MSPs voted to scrap NHS prescription charges in Scotland, while Wales and Northern Ireland have already removed the charges.
The Department of Health said removing charges in England would cost too much.
A spokesperson from the Department of Health said: “The extensive exemption arrangements we have in place mean that in England, around 90% of prescription items are already dispensed free of charge.
“The price of the 12 month prescription pre-payment certificate will be frozen for the second year running. This allows people to get all the prescriptions they need for an average cost of £2 per week.
The government went on to say that the NHS would be left with a shortfall of more than £450m per year if prescription charges were removed altogether in England.
“This is valuable income – equivalent to the salary costs of nearly 18,000 nurses, or 15,000 midwives, or over 3,500 hospital consultants. This income helps the NHS to maintain vital services for patients,” the Department of Health said.
The government also said it is investing an extra £10.7 billion in the NHS and cutting back on bureaucracy, which will release an extra £1.7 billion every year for patient services.
The Scottish government won the approval of Holyrood’s health committee to remove the current £3 charge.
A last-ditch Conservative and Lib Dem move to block the plan failed in Scotland.
The price paid by Scottish patients for prescription medicine has been reduced each year since 2008 and the final vote will see charges removed on 1 April.
Scottish government health minister Shona Robison said lifting the charge would reduce the long-term cost to the health service and would no longer put people off going to see their doctor.
The Scottish government has played down the risk of people in England travelling across the border to claim free prescriptions.
The Department of Health in England has also announced that dental charges will rise.
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The National Assembly website was among high profile targets South Korea has been hit by a series of cyber attacks which have targeted some of the country’s leading websites.
Government ministries, the National Assembly, the military headquarters, US Forces in Korea and major banks were among those hit.
It is believed that the attackers injected malware into two peer-to-peer file-sharing websites.
The attacks are similar to those that targeted South Korean websites in July 2009.
Some 29 institutions were affected by so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) which overload a site with data causing it to fall over.
The web page of the Financial Services Commission, the country’s financial regulator, was overloaded and an online stock trading system was shut down for a few minutes but both soon recovered, according to government sources.
“There was a DDoS attack, but no damage was done,” said an official from the presidential office.
South Korean security firm AhnLab expected another wave of attacks on Friday, targeting up to 40 government and corporate websites.
It estimates that up to 11,000 personal computers were infected by malware and recruited for the attack. It is distributing free software to clean PCs.
The South Korean cyber investigation unit has sent investigators to the two file-sharing sites that are believed to have spread the malicious code, according to the National Police Agency.
The cyber attacks against South Korea in 2009 were blamed on North Korea, although no link has been proven.
South Korean media outlets have, in the past, accused North Korea of running an internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into US and South Korean military networks.
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Rice is the staple food for about half of the world’s population A gene that increases a rice plant’s resistance to floods also boosts its ability to recover from droughts, a study has shown.
Researchers found that the gene, Sub1A, allowed to plants to survive by growing fresh shoots after a period of drought.
Rice is the primary food for three billion people, and more than 25% the world’s harvest is grown in areas that experience extreme weather conditions.
Details have been published in the journal The Plant Cell.
“Flood tolerance does not reduce drought tolerance in these plants, and appears to even benefit them when they encounter drought,” observed lead author Julia Bailey-Serres from the University of California Riverside’s department of botany and plant sciences.
The gene’s role in providing rice plants with a higher tolerance of being submerged in water was first identified in 2006, just 12 months after the vital food crop’s complete genome was unscrambled.
Professor Bailey-Serres and her team wanted to follow up the discovery of the “flood-proof” trait provided by the presence of the Sub1A gene did not reduce plants’ ability cope with other environmental stresses – such as drought.
A rice plant containing the Sub1A gene (at right in each image) recovered significantly better after a simulated drought They reported that the gene served as a point where the pathways of the plant’s response to both submergence and drought, resulting in the crop’s ability to survive and recover from either kind of extreme weather event.
“Our findings suggest that the plant recovers well from drought and growing new shoots,” Professor Bailey-Serres said. “This is something that is also seen with flooding.”
Plant breeders have already utilised the gene’s flood tolerance traits and transferred it into high-yielding varieties.
The researchers said the next stage of the research would involve scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) plant specimens containing the Sub1A gene in field trials to see if they display a similar trait in natural conditions.
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Stephen Sondheim has been honoured with eight Tony awards in the US American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is to receive the prestigious Special Award at the Laurence Olivier Awards later this month.
The honour is being presented in recognition of his contribution to London theatre, organisers have said.
Previous recipients of the award include Sir Alec Guinness, Dame Judi Dench, Sam Mendes and Sir Peter Hall.
Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton are to host this year’s ceremony. Musical Love Never Dies has seven nominations.
Over a career spanning seven decades, Sondheim, 80, has won numerous theatre awards including an Oscar for best song in 1990 for Sooner or Later from the film Dick Tracy.
Some of his best known works include West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and A Little Night Music.
He wrote the lyrics to Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd, which Olivier hosts Staunton and Ball will star in together at the Chichester Festival Theatre in September.
Phantom of the Opera sequel Love Never Dies leads the way with seven nominations at this year’s awards ceremony.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber show is up for best new musical, while its stars Ramin Karimloo, Sierra Boggess and Summer Strallen are in line for acting prizes.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Anne-Marie Duff, Lost star Matthew Fox, Mad Men actress Elisabeth Moss and Rupert Everett are among the stars who will be handing out prizes on the night.
The ceremony, which takes place on 13 March at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 2 and there will be live red carpet coverage on television via the BBC’s red button.
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Seven universities were classed as being at “high risk” last December More universities in England could be put at risk of bankruptcy as a result of cuts and changes to funding, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned.
A report from the financial watchdog says some universities will benefit from the changes but some will have less money.
It says the public might need to be told more about universities at risk.
Universities minister David Willetts says the changes will increase universities’ cash funding by 2014.
The NAO report says the sector has seen “strong growth in its income” in recent years.
But it says: “The new funding framework, coupled with the squeeze in public funding, is likely to increase the level of risk within the sector.
“While there are a number of financially strong institutions, there is wide variation in institutions’ financial performance.”
It notes: “The transition and the new environment itself will increase the risk within the sector, potentially raising the number of institutions at high risk of failing”.
Teaching grants to universities are being cut and universities will be expected to fund their courses from higher tuition fees, which are being raised in 2012 from just over £3,000 a year to a maximum of £9,000.
The government has said it will protect funding for science-based courses and research.
The NAO examined the regulation of the financial health of England’s universities by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce).
About one in 10 institutions had been in the red in at least two of the past three years, it said.
And a quarter of England’s universities fell below at least one benchmark designed to check an institution’s finances in 2009-10.
The auditors said that as of last December, Hefce classified seven universities as being “at higher risk” .
The length of time that a university was in this category had grown, the report found.
One institution, Thames Valley University, had been “at higher risk” for 12 years.
NAO head Amyas Morse said: “The funding council has performed well during a benign environment for higher education.
“Our universities do an excellent job and letting them fail would be an act of academic barbarity”
Sally Hunt University and College Union
“However, the sector is now facing a period of transition to a very different financial environment, increasing financial and management pressures on our higher education institutions.”
Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, Labour MP Margaret Hodge, said: “Ongoing reforms towards a market-based system open up higher levels of risk for the financial viability of institutions.”
Mr Willetts said: “I welcome the report’s finding that our higher education sector has ‘increasing robustness in its financial stability’.
“However, we are not complacent about the challenge ahead. We are clearly moving into a changing financial environment, but it should provide our universities with access to 10% more cash funding overall by 2014-15.”
The NAO report says Hefce should consider giving the public more information about universities judged to be at risk.
At the moment, the funding council waits at least three years before naming institutions thought to be at risk and then only does so if it considers there would be no harm to current students or the institution.
The report says: “As a greater proportion of funding begins to follow the student, the funding council should consider whether the current arrangements strike the right balance between protecting institutions and their students, on the one hand, and enabling prospective students to take more informed decisions on where to study, on the other.”
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the lecturers’ union UCU, said the report “lifted the lid on the financial health of higher education and the likely consequences of the government’s proposals”.
“The worrying conclusions are that, while there might be a handful of winners, many institutions will struggle to cope financially with the new regime,” she said.
“We believe that our universities do an excellent job and letting them fail would be an act of academic barbarity.”
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