. . . AND SOME COURSES WILL STILL BE ONLINE

NEARLY a third of universities plan to retain some online teaching when undergraduates return to campuses in September, a survey has revealed.

Thousands of students starting the new academic year will face remote lectures, despite restrictions on in-person teaching ending last summer. The institutions plan to defy Ministers’ repeated demands that as much face-to-face teaching is delivered to undergraduates as they received before the Covid pandemic.

A poll of 122 universities in the UK which offer law LLB courses has revealed that 30 per cent will have some online lectures. Meanwhile, 16 per cent did not supply an answer and 54 per cent said they intend all teaching to be in-person.

Law students at Staffordshire University will have three hours of online lectures a week, as well as in person seminars, the survey by campaign group UsforThem found. A mixture of online and in person provision will also be the approach at Bristol University, the University of East Anglia, SOAS in London, and Southampton Solent University. It means sixth formers are being forced to decide between offers of university places without knowing how they will be taught. Maggie Wiltshire, 17, an A-level student from Cornwall, said it was ‘incredibly hard’ to get detailed information about the extent of online teaching. ‘It is so vague,’ she said. ‘I want in-person teaching, not to be looking at videos online.’

UsforThem accused universities of being deliberately vague.

Spokeswoman Arabella Skinner, right, said: ‘Ministers need to stop talking and make all universities produce timetables prior to students committing.’