Financial Statements 2019/2020
SUPPORT FOR OUR STUDENTS AND STAFF
Health and wellbeing
Mental health and wellbeing is always a top priority at Middlesex, so we have invested in an online service to support our global community. Togetherall (previously called Big White Wall) offers peer-to-peer support monitored by trained professionals, and a wide range of mental health resources, including clinical tests, tips and guided group courses. Topics range from managing stress and anxiety to giving up smoking.
Togetherall works collaboratively with Fika, a mental health and wellbeing smartphone app that our staff and students already had access to. We made sure all staff and students had specific support and resources on topics such as domestic violence, coping with bereavement, and working from home while looking after children.
The University’s online spaces have played a vital role during the crisis. For students, we built the #TeamMDX online web pages offering links to online fitness classes, virtual activities, advice and support. We also built a platform for staff to access services and to share the many social and learning events that were organised from across the University. Examples include weekly crafting classes run by the Faculty of Professional and Social Sciences, a range of activities to help staff keep active from MDX Sports and Recreation, and online sessions from our personal development programme Invest in You. ‘Working from Home’ kits of computer equipment were provided to those staff who needed this, including remote access to specialist software.
We kept our halls of residence open for those students who were unable to return home, and released others from their accommodation contracts without financial penalty.
Our lively research blog, MDX Minds, kept people up-to-date with what was new in coronavirus research. As well as providing useful information, our research resources offered recreation and inspiration. For example, our Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) shared a large online library of images from its collection documenting the interior design of British homes since 1850, and musical performances were available through our SoundCloud.
above: We have focused on providing a COVID-19 secure environment on campus
Financial support for students
To support students experiencing financial difficulty, we released an additional £30,000 directly into our hardship fund. Santander Universities provided £25,000, in addition to agreeing that over £18,000 of unspent funding could be re-allocated to our hardship fund. The University’s Welfare team arranged food vouchers and parcels from our caterers, Chartwells, for students who live in the local area and were self-isolating or in financial difficulty. In the April 2020 – July 2020 period, our students benefitted from nearly £22,000 of food vouchers and parcels. We have also extended payment terms in order to provide overseas students with additional flexibility in times of difficulty.
Our employability service, MDXworks, provided a range of support and training to help students adapt during lockdown and beyond. They offered advice and support on finding immediate work – a lifeline for the many students who had lost their part-time jobs. Students who had been booked to work by the University employment agency, Unitemps, were still paid for these hours even when events were cancelled or postponed.
In line with the sector and government advice, Middlesex has taken the following position on tuition fees: where we have been able to deliver alternative online teaching, supervision and assessments to our academic standards we will not be issuing tuition fee refunds. This is in line with regulatory policy where students continued to receive scheduled payments of loans for the remainder of the 2019/20 academic year.
Middlesex University
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