On 22 February the Scottish Government updated its proposals for the national Strategic Framework for COVID-19.

This sets out the nationwide approach for living safely with the virus and includes indicative timescales for further easing of legal protections.

The new guidance does not involve any significant changes for universities at this point, although it does enable the removal of more control measures in the near future, provided the virus continues to be effectively managed.

We will communicate further with students and colleagues about what these changes mean for us in practice once the strategic framework is published.

Hybrid working

Our estate has remained open and operational throughout the pandemic and we appreciate many colleagues have been working on our campuses for some time. We have previously outlined work undertaken to assess workspaces and the comprehensive mitigation arrangements in place to protect the health and wellbeing of people working in them.

The University is delighted to be able to begin to fully embed future ways of working and reinvigorate our community, including greater use of hybrid working within the organisation.

In particular, our approach gives colleagues the opportunity to utilise different digital tools, access specialist facilities and reconnect with the wider community as we continue to see increased research and other campus-based activity over the coming weeks.

We appreciate that hybrid working is new for many, and it may take a little time to find a good balance between campus based and remote working. Line managers and their teams are encouraged to make arrangements within their team to discuss the best way of working, considering the balance of home and campus-based working. Some teams have found it helpful to agree on specific “anchor” days when the whole team is on campus each week.

Our researchers have received communications last week with more information on hybrid working approaches. Our online Hybrid Hub contains guidance and support for hybrid working to which all colleagues can refer for more information.

Learning, teaching and exams

As previously communicated, current arrangements for learning and teaching will be in place for the remainder of this academic year.

We are planning how we will deliver teaching for the next 2022/23 academic session, and we emailed colleagueson 7 March week with details about our Teaching Planning Principles for 2022/23.

In addition, we recently communicated our approach to the Spring 2022 exam diet. Unfortunately, this is still subject to some restrictions due to COVID-19 and we will be running a mix of on-campus and remote exams in the upcoming diet – further details are available on our Learning and Teaching Planning webpages.

You can find more information via our other resources:

First published: 11 March 2022

<< 15 March 2022