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Education Strategy 2025/26
What is the ϳԹ's Education Strategy?
Our mission, vision and values
Our mission – To create, share and apply knowledge to make a difference to individuals and society.
Our 2030 vision – By 2030 we will be the UK's top modern University and one of the top 100 young Universities in the World
Our mission and vision
Our mission – To create, share and apply knowledge to make a difference to individuals and society.
Our 2030 vision – By 2030 we will be the UK's top modern University and one of the top 100 young Universities in the World
Our values
Our values underpin everything we do
- Ambitious – we pursue bold ideas, nurture and value relationships and partnerships, inspire all our people to achieve their potential and we never settle for second best.
- Responsible – we act with integrity for the greater good, uphold the highest academic and professional standards, respect and celebrate our inclusive culture and aim for sustainability across all our activities.
- Open – we work collaboratively to benefit from new perspectives, share ideas and maintain transparency, are trustworthy and listen and respond to the needs of our students and our people.
What is the ϳԹ's Education Strategy?
This Strategy defines our Education strategic priorities, areas of focus and high‐level actions to contribute to our Vision that by 2030 we will be the UK's top modern university and one of the top 100 young universities in the world.
Summary of strategic priorities and areas of focus to 2025/26
The University’s approaches to teaching, assessment, feedback and teaching practice reflect the principles and values of our University Strategy 2025 and enable the achievement of the Hallmarks of the ϳԹGraduate. Our inclusive and collegiate environment encourages effective learning and belonging, where students engage in future-focused curricula, co-designed for Blended and Connected learning, the University’s distinctive pedagogy. Innovative assessment for learning, supported by appropriate digital tools, provides students with rigorous, employment-focused opportunities to be productive and resilient life-long learners and change agents.
Our Education Strategy inspires all our students and our staff to engage proactively, reflectively and critically in transformational learning and teaching experiences. It is built on the basis of the following six strategic Principles and our 6P Framework:
Strategic principles
1. Prospect
Graduates set for life
Engage every student in life-changing and career-enhancing activities to learn through experience and to strengthen their personal development through our intellectually enriched and employability-focussed curriculum, preparing them for roles in the local, regional, national and global economy.
2. Portfolio
Addressing future-focused priorities
Provide intellectual challenge, enhance skills and knowledge acquisition, and develop academic excellence through our research-engaged, practice-informed courses designed to meet changing demand and widen participation.
3. Partnership
All students, staff and partners together
Raise educational and career expectations and co-create forward-looking lifelong education opportunities in partnership with employers, alumni, schools and colleges, and our students.
4. Place
Our physical and virtual campuses
Deliver an ambitious, impactful and outstanding student experience enhanced by excellent digital and physical spaces and resources that foster a genuine sense of belonging.
5. Principles for practice
Inclusive and personalised, risk-friendly, evidence-based, driven by our hallmarks, efficient
Change thinking and enhance criticality through a strong, innovative and inclusive academic community of staff and students.
6. Pedagogy for participation
Blended and connected, research-informed, digital by design
Sustain and disseminate pedagogic excellence with engaged and passionate staff recognised and rewarded for their achievement and creativity.
The 6P Framework (source: ) summarises and contextualises the six Principles. Each one provides a key ingredient of the ϳԹExperience. By conforming to our Principles and the 6P Framework across all of our courses, we support our students to gain the Hallmarks of a ϳԹGraduate.
The Hallmarks of a ϳԹGraduate - Summary
Our graduates will be knowledgeable, informed, intellectually curious, responsible, self-aware, self-motivated, independent and set for success in their future careers. These are the characteristics we want all our students to acquire.
Subject and discipline: Have an excellent understanding of subject
Society and citizenship: Be an active member of society and a good citizen
Personal competencies: Be able to engage with and communicate information in various contexts
Personal development: Be proactive and confident in career and life decisions
Strategic priorities and areas of focus by 2025/26 in more detail
1. Engage every student in a life-changing experience
We aim to be recognised nationally and internationally for our success in offering world-class education to people with the potential and motivation to succeed. Having embedded the Hallmarks of a ϳԹGraduate in our curricula and extra-curricular offer, our aim is to develop knowledgeable, independent graduates with a global outlook, who are set for success in their future careers and to make a positive contribution to society and the economy.
Academic integrity is at the heart of a world-class educational experience and we see academic integrity as an essential component of an effective and meaningful learning experience at Portsmouth. Academic integrity ensures that the knowledge and skills learned are reliable, trustworthy and valued.
- Ensure student experience is consistently outstanding
- Inspire and challenge our students
- Reducing disparities in outcomes across all sections of our student population
- Promote successful graduate progression into graduate level occupations and further study
- Position academic integrity as central to each student’s learning journey
- Enable our students to gain the Hallmarks as part of our civic agenda
We will:
- Design and assess our courses to ensure that our students attain and can demonstrate the Hallmarks of a ϳԹGraduate, providing a wide range of career-enhancing opportunities for all students.
- Encourage and provide opportunities for our students to gain work experience as a part of their student experience, and to be able to reflect on what they have learned.
- Ensure that our staff, whatever their roles, are equipped and supported to advise and assist students in the development of their academic and employability skills.
- Embed academic integrity into all our courses, supported by appropriate design, pedagogy, assessment and monitored during academic review.
- Ensure that our students are active partners in co-creating their ϳԹexperience, and that the student voice is consistently heard and responded to, with students' views and opinions on their experience sought, and the feedback loop consistently closed.
- Empower our students as active participants in a community of learning where staff, students, practising professionals and employers work together to learn, create, research and solve problems.
- Encourage our students to develop their global mindset through activities such as studying or working abroad, acquiring or enhancing languages, working or volunteering in relevant communities and engaging in the internationalisation at home agenda.
- Provide opportunities for our students to engage in peer and inter-cohort training, buddying and mentoring programmes.
- Take measures to address the awarding gap by deploying expert analytics systems and maximising opportunities for staff to enhance modules and courses co-created with students, including established processes like enABLe and Charrettes.
- Develop systems to monitor student engagement including in all extra- and co-curricular opportunities that contribute to their personal and professional development.
- Support and guide our students in the effective use of digital tools.
- Monitor and evaluate the impact of each activity we offer, to ensure it is adding value in helping our students achieve success in their studies.
- Actively support our students, in the initial period after graduating, to help them progress into highly skilled outcomes in employment, study, self-employment or to start their own businesses.
2. Meet changing demand and widen participation
Our aim is to rationalise and diversify our portfolio, offering courses that are flexible in their delivery and attractive to both 18-year-olds and mature students from both the home and global markets. We recognise the growing demand for vocational qualifications at a variety of levels, from level 4 to 8, and the need for both CPD and part-time provision to support upskilling within the workforce.
- Proactively responding to changing demand
- Championing Access and Inclusivity
- Revolutionising Digital Learning
- Meeting future employer and skills needs
We will:
- Make a positive, clear and significant contribution to encouraging, extending and sustaining the engagement of our students, and to inspiring and enabling their access to, success in, and progression from higher education.
- Diversify our student community by developing, promoting and delivering a broader and more flexible range of routes for entry to the University, in response to student demand, both for individuals and via strategic partnerships with educational institutions and employers, and, where appropriate, professional and statutory bodies, regionally, nationally and internationally.
- Nurture existing and create new productive collaborative partnerships with FE colleges and schools to provide pathways for progression to the University and raise expectations.
- Coordinate active engagement with employers in the region and develop a variety of flexible learning programmes that address their skills needs.
- Review our courses over a rolling three-year cycle to ensure they remain dynamic, innovative, grounded on synergies between teaching, research and professional practice, and contemporary for the changing needs of local, regional, national and global economies and communities.
- Ensure assessment is designed to promote academic integrity, underpinned by appropriate use of authentic assessment and digital technologies that promote effectiveness and efficiency.
- Ensure a range of central and Faculty-based student services support our diverse student population with their wellbeing and academic development through both common university-wide and bespoke and tailored approaches to meet particular student needs.
- Ensure our course portfolio includes both extensive blended and connected and digital and distributed learning provision, underpinned by responsive, agile and user-friendly central systems.
- Design inclusive and accessible courses which demonstrate a purposeful approach to internationalisation, fostering informed citizenship and promoting diversity and respect.
- Engage with our students to ensure that their voice is heard and fed into discussions and decisions that impact on their education and the wider student experience.
3. Inspire our staff to be creative and bold - In support of our People Strategy
Our aim is to empower and inspire our people to be creative and bold. Through evidence-based innovative practice, our students will be immersed and connected within co-created learning environments that provide an excellent student experience and support the acquisition of our Hallmarks of the ϳԹGraduate. We will provide the development opportunities and resources needed by staff to develop and enhance their practice, promoting effectiveness and efficiency, and disseminate it globally through pedagogic research and other scholarly outputs.
- Staff development and career progression
- Reward and recognition for evidence-based, impactful innovative practice
- Shared ownership of key agendas, such as student employability and tackling the awarding gap
- Co-design and pedagogic innovation
- Pedagogic research output
- Our physical and virtual estates enable sustainable pedagogic transformation
We will:
- Provide staff development and career progression opportunities to promote and reward innovative and effective teaching and support for student learning.
- Nurture an environment conducive to creativity, pedagogic exploration and risk appetite for academics to co-design and innovate in learning, teaching and assessment in partnership with students, colleagues and other key stakeholders.
- Provide approaches, such as enABLe and Charrettes, to support shared ownership and action to deliver on key agendas.
- Promote the wider and more creative use of Virtual Learning Environments, simulation facilities and other learning and assessment technologies to provide efficient and effective support and an integrated, streamlined, digital-by-design learning experience to students whether on or off campus.
- Engage staff in relevant continuing professional development to promote review and reflection, and, for example, to develop, disseminate, incorporate and spread best pedagogic practice to support the student experience.
- Draw on relevant research and professional practice to inspire students through subject content and pedagogic approaches that facilitate engaged and interactive learning.
- Support and guide staff in the development, effective and efficient use of digital tools for learning design, teaching practice and authentic assessment at module and course levels.
- Support staff to embed the student voice in co-creation across their academic practice.
- Recognise and reward excellence in support for the student experience.
- Engage and support staff in obtaining professional recognition of practice, notably through Advance HE’s Fellowship framework or the achievement of other relevant qualifications or types of recognition underpinning high quality teaching, support for student learning, scholarship and research.
- Develop the research culture, outputs and impacts required for an Education UoA REF submission.
- Ensure that developments in our physical estate support our innovative and effective teaching and student learning.
- Ensure that our virtual provision and “virtual estate”, including our VLE, digital tools, resources, and associated training and development, maximise benefits and efficiency for staff and students.
Our Strategy
Discover what we're aiming to achieve by 2025 to make our Vision a reality.
Civic University
Discover how we're promoting inclusion and enriching economic, social and cultural life in ϳԹand our region through collaboration, volunteering and partnerships.