SeNSS Director's Bulletin - February 2023

Dear SeNSS community,

A belated happy new year! With the new year, we have some news and updates to share with you.

Competitions

·         Collaborative studentships

We are excited that we have awarded 10 collaborative studentships this year to supervisors. This is the highest ever number of collaborative studentships that SeNSS has ever funded. Many thanks to our collaborative partners for the financial and in-kind contributions. A list of the successful projects can be found on the SeNSS website.

Please could you circulate this information as widely as possible to ensure that it reaches as many potential applicants as it can? The competition deadline is 27 February 2023, and the studentships will start on 1 October 2023.

·         Student-led competitions

The final student-led competition for SeNSS DTP is currently underway. We received 414 applications as of the closing date of 20 January 2023. Our partner institutions are currently reviewing these before they are considered by our Pathways.

In preparation for the Pathway review, we strongly recommend that:

i)             before the online meeting, Pathway Leads watch a short video (~20 mins) the SeNSS Director has made which explains the role of the Lead both overall and specifically in relation to the competition; and

ii)            that Leads attend an online meeting from 11am-12pm on Friday 24 February 2023 (https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/91854022996), which will answer any questions in relation to competition policy and process, as well as showing Leads how to use HEIapply to review the applications assigned to them.

After the Pathway review, the SeNSS Management Board will moderate the successful applications and then meet to make the final awards, which will be announced by Friday 21 April 2023.

·         ADR UK PhD Studentship using linked administrative data

In a recent competition run by the ESRC, SeNSS was awarded one ADR PhD studentship. Congratulations to Prof. Holly Joseph, University of Reading, whose application was successful!

Here is a summary of her project: It is well-established that there is a substantial attainment gap between children and young people who are, and are not, eligible for free school meals (FSM). This so-called “disadvantage gap” has stubbornly remained despite government interventions and additional funding. However, we know less about the possible protective factors that may guard against low attainment in children who receive FSM. In particular, government data suggests that children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) show a much smaller disadvantage gap than children who speak only English, and it appears that this varies with home language and with ethnicity.

There are a number of reasons why speaking more than one language may result in better educational attainment. First, there is some (controversial) evidence that multilingual speakers gain cognitive benefits from switching between languages and these lead to better learning and hence better school outcomes. Second, there may be household variables (parental education, parental engagement with school, expectations in the home about education and careers) that influence outcomes, and these may be more common in certain types of families (recent immigrants, certain ethnic or linguistic communities).

The administrative datasets, Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) and Growing Up in England Dataset will be used to ask the following questions: To what extent does EAL status act as a protective factor from socioeconomic disadvantage in educational attainment? Which (if any) language backgrounds are particularly helpful and does language background interact with ethnicity and other factors (household information)? Which measures of early school attainment are most predictive of success at GCSE, A-Level, further and higher education, and career success? Answering these questions will increase understanding of the protective and risk factors for academic and employment success for those born into socioeconomic disadvantage.

This competition is currently open for applications for this studentship. For more information, please click here. The closing date for applications is 12.00 GMT on 27 February 2023, so please could you also circulate this information as widely as possible.

·         PDF competition

The post-doctoral competition is also underway. SeNSS will award six one-year Post-Doctoral Fellowships. Be mindful that the deadline (set by the ESRC) for completing an application on HEIapply is Thursday 23 March 2023.

Please note: In response to the announced strikes, the ESRC has stated that the closing date and eligibility criteria will remain the same. However, DTPs have been granted "local discretion" to accept supporting documents after that date where applicants haven’t been able to secure them due to strike action. The ESRC expects the case for support to be submitted in full by the closing date, but other supporting documentation can be submitted until 6 April 2023. If this is not received by then, the application will not be considered for the current competition.

Sentio 5: New Editorial Team

We are happy to announce that our student-led journal Sentio has a new editorial team, which will edit and produce the 5th edition of Sentio. Thanks to all the students who volunteered to be part of this team, which will soon decide on the theme for this issue and publish the call for submissions. Watch this space!

With best wishes for 2022-23,

The SeNSS core team