Retention and attrition of students in higher education: Challenges in modern times to what works

Retention and attrition rates in higher education have long been a focus of research. This paper presents findingsof a single case study, undertaken in a School of Education, which identify important strategies that have led to attrition of five to eight per cent, compared with 18 per cent cross the education sector in Australia (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2004). Findings include: individual admissions interviews, funding of an Associate Dean Pastoral Care, course coordinators providing continuity of support, easy access for students to academic staff, well-supported, extended professional experience, senior staff lecturing undergraduates, congruence between co-curricular supports and the educational framework, and comprehensive mentoring of new students. Finally, sustainability of these strategies in modern times is discussed

Permeability of the weathered bedrock aquifers in Uganda: evidence from a large pumping test dataset and its implications for rural water supply

Weathered crystalline-rock aquifers underlie around 40% of sub-Saharan Africa providing water supplies for half of its rural population; they are also prevalent across the tropics. The hydrogeology of these aquifers is complex and better understanding of the controls to aquifer transmissivity, alongside accurate borehole siting and appropriate design, is pivotal to the long-term performance and sustainability of water services in many countries. This study examines a substantial new dataset (n = 655) of aquifer transmissivity values across Uganda derived from previously unanalyzed pumping-test data. These data provide important new insights: weathered crystalline-rock aquifers are distinguished by pervasively low transmissivities (median <2 m2/d) in comparison to other areas in the tropics; highest transmissivities are observed in boreholes <50 m deep, implying that drilling deeper boreholes does not typically improve supply success or sustainability in Uganda; and increased groundwater abstraction through the use of higher-yielding pump technologies will prove challenging in most areas of Uganda and limit their use for piped water supplies. This study highlights the scientific value of data held in drillers’ records, which remain unanalyzed in many countries but may provide useful insight and understanding of aquifer characteristics

COVID-19 in Pregnancy in Scotland (COPS):protocol for an observational study using linked Scottish national data

Funding: EAVE II funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/R008345/1) with the support of BREATHE - The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health [MC_PC_19004], which is funded through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered through Health Data Research UK. Additional support has been provided through the Scottish Government DG Health and Social Care. COPS receive additional funding from Tommy’s charity (1060508; SC039280). SJS is supported by Wellcome Trust (209560/Z/17/Z).Introduction The effects of SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy are not fully delineated. We will describe the incidence of COVID-19 in pregnancy at population level in Scotland, in a prospective cohort study using linked data. We will determine associations between COVID-19 and adverse pregnancy, neonatal and maternal outcomes and the proportion of confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in neonates associated with maternal COVID-19. Methods and analysis Prospective cohort study using national linked data sets. We will include all women in Scotland, UK, who were pregnant on or became pregnant after, 1 March 2020 (the date of the first confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Scotland) and all births in Scotland from 1 March 2020 onwards. Individual-level data will be extracted from data sets containing details of all livebirths, stillbirth, terminations of pregnancy and miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies treated in hospital or attending general practice. Records will be linked within the Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19 (EAVE II) platform, which includes primary care records, virology and serology results and details of COVID-19 Community Hubs and Assessment Centre contacts and deaths. We will perform analyses using definitions for confirmed, probable and possible COVID-19 and report serology results (where available). Outcomes will include congenital anomaly, miscarriage, stillbirth, termination of pregnancy, preterm birth, neonatal infection, severe maternal disease and maternal deaths. We will perform descriptive analyses and appropriate modelling, adjusting for demographic and pregnancy characteristics and the presence of comorbidities. The cohort will provide a platform for future studies of the effectiveness and safety of therapeutic interventions and immunisations for COVID-19 and their effects on childhood and developmental outcomes. Ethics and dissemination COVID-19 in Pregnancy in Scotland is a substudy of EAVE II(, which has approval from the National Research Ethics Service Committee. Findings will be reported to Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and published in peer-reviewed journals.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Evidence, ideology, and the policy of community management in Africa

This study examines the performance of the policy of community management for rural groundwater supply in Africa. Across the continent, policies that promote community management have dominated the rural water supply sector for decades. As a result, hundreds of thousands of village-level committees have been formed to manage community boreholes equipped with handpumps. With a significant proportion of these handpumps non-functional at any one time, increasing effort is targeted toward understanding the interacting social and physical determinants of this 'hidden crisis'. We conducted a survey of community management arrangements across six hundred sites in rural Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda, examining the extent to which management capacity is related to borehole functionality whilst accounting for a range of contextual variables. The capacity of water management arrangements (WMAs) was assessed according to four dimensions: finance system; affordable maintenance and repair; decision making, rules, and leadership; and external support. The survey reveals that 73.3% of WMAs have medium or high capacity. However, we found no strong relationship between the capacity of the WMA and the functionality of the borehole. Of the four management dimensions, affordable maintenance and repair was the best predictor of borehole functionality. However, the capacity of this dimension was seen to be the lowest overall, with 61.9% of sites weak or non-existent. Our results provide very limited support for the policy of community management, and we suggest that evidence alone has not accounted for its persistence over decades. After a short historical analysis, we conclude that explanation for the endurance of this model can be found in the nexus between evidence, ideology, and policy. We argue that it is this same nexus that will likely ensure the popularity of community management for some time to come, despite new ideas and evidence to the contrary

To what extent does community management ensure good functionality of groundwater supplies in rural Africa?

Within rural Africa, communal boreholes fitted with handpumps (HPBs) are likely to remain the main source of improved water supplies for decades to come. Understanding how the performance of these supplies can be improved will be central to achieving improved water security. The functionality of community HPBs relies on a range of elements which include not only groundwater resource availability, correct siting and construction of the borehole and handpump mechanism, but also equitable and enabling management arrangements. Since the 1980s – the first UN ‘Water Decade’ – Community Based Management (CBM) has been the policy prescription par excellence for operationalising participatory development in the rural water supply sector. The cornerstone of the CBM model is the creation of a local water point committee or similar community organisation, which is charged with the operation and maintenance of the borehole. Despite its popularity and endurance, there is a relative lack of evidence on how the management capacity of communities relates to the functionality of their boreholes, and a growing recognition among development practitioners and academics that CBM of rural water supply has struggled to deliver on many of its promises. Here we present the findings from a survey of six hundred communities across rural Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi to examine the extent to which community water management capacity is related to borehole functionality. The capacity of water management arrangements (WMA) was assessed according to four dimensions: finance system; affordable maintenance and repair; decision making, rules, and leadership; and external support. HPB performance was assessed using on a nuanced definition of borehole functionality, which captures different tiers of functionality from a simple binary ‘yes/no’ working, to capturing the level of functionality performance and reliability. The findings reveal that whilst over two thirds of WMA are of medium to high capacity in communities, there is no strong relationship between the WMA capacity and the functionality of the borehole. Of the four management dimensions, affordable maintenance and repair was the best predictor of borehole functionality. However, the capacity of this dimension was seen to be lowest overall, with nearly two thirds of sites having weak or non-existent capacity in this respect. These findings provide evidence to support the growing claim that, in many instances, CBM by itself does not ensure improved functionality performance

Environmental tracers to evaluate groundwater residence times and water quality risk in shallow unconfined aquifers in sub Saharan Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, shallow aquifer systems are relied on as the main safe and secure water resource available to rural communities. Information on the sustainability and vulnerability of groundwater abstraction is becoming increasingly important as groundwater development increases. As part of the UpGro Consortium Project- Hidden Crisis, 150 hand pumped boreholes (HPBs), ranging between 15 and 101 m depth were investigated to examine the resilience of aquifer systems in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the crystalline basement rocks of Uganda and Malawi. Environmental tracers (chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), SF6, chloride and the stable isotopes of water), water quality indicators (nitrate and E. coli), and groundwater-level time series data were used to estimate groundwater residence time and recharge at a regional scale (100–10,000 km2) and investigate the risks to water quality and water supply over different timeframes, and geological and climatic environments. Average estimated recharge rates using three different techniques (CFCs, chloride mass balance, water table fluctuation method) were between 30 and 330, 27–110 and 30–170 mm y−1, for sites in Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi, respectively. These estimates of recharge suggests abstraction from dispersed low-yielding HPBs is sustainable. Comparison of stable isotopes in rainfall and groundwater indicates that there is little evaporation prior to recharge, and recharge events are biased to months with greater rainfall and more intense rainfall events There was a weak correlation between nitrate and CFCs within all three countries, and no correlation between E. coli and CFCs within Ethiopia or Malawi. The presence of E. coli at a large proportion of the sites (Ethiopia = 38%, Uganda = 65% and Malawi = 47%) suggests rapid transit of contaminated surface water into the borehole and its presence in groundwater that has CFC-12 concentrations less than 75 pg kg−1 indicates mixing of very young water with water >40 years old. The rapid transit pathways are most likely associated with damaged HPB headworks and poor construction. In several monitored HPBs, daily drawdown due to pumping, drew the groundwater levels close to the base of the HPB, indicating that these HPBs were located in parts of the aquifer with low permeability, or were poorly designed, offering limited capacity for increased demand. Improved HPB siting and construction, coupled with groundwater level monitoring are required to capitalise on the more resilient groundwater within the shallow aquifers and safeguard adequate and good quality water supply for rural communities

Hidden Crisis Project, Survey 1 dataset: detailed functionality assessments of hand pump boreholes in Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi

This dataset provides the field data collected in 2016 to assess: the functionality and performance of 600 handpumped borehole supplies (HPBs) across the three countries, Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, and also the capacity of the community water management arrangements. The individual HPBs surveyed in the dataset were selected by a two or three stage randomised sampling approach. The UPGro Hidden Crisis project (2015-20) was an international research project aimed at developing a robust evidence base and understanding of the complex and multi-faceted causes which underlie the current high failure rates of many new groundwater supplies in Africa. The project was jointly funded by: DFID, NERC and ESRC as part of the UPGro programme (Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor). The project carried out the research work in three countries - Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda – to examine functionality and performance of groundwater supplies in a range of hydrogeological, climatic and social, institutional and governance environments in East Africa. The work focused specifically on examining the functionality of HPBs – these being the main form of improved community water supply across rural Africa. The Survey 1 dataset, is major dataset developed by the project. This data set is available under Open Government Licence, subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying any reproduced materials: "Contains data supplied by permission of the Natural Environment Research Council [YEAR]"

Hidden Crisis Project, Survey 2 dataset: hand pump borehole diagnostic tests in Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi

This dataset provides a detailed physical science dataset to the groundwater resource and engineering properties of 150 handpumped borehole supplies (HPBs) across Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, surveyed in 2017 as part of the UPGro Hidden Crisis project. The dataset includes measurements of aquifer resource potential, groundwater quality, downhole construction and condition of handpump components, and borehole construction. Detailed social science data were also collected as part of the second survey phases of the Hidden Crisis project. However, these data are reported as a separate (associated) dataset to the physical science Survey 2 dataset – and are available from Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) UK Data Service (UKDS). The UPGro Hidden Crisis project (2015-20) was an international research project aimed at developing a robust evidence base and understanding of the complex and multi-faceted causes which underlie the current high failure rates of many new groundwater supplies in Africa. The project was jointly funded by: DFID, NERC and ESRC as part of the UPGro programme (Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor). The project carried out the research work in three countries - Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda – to examine functionality and performance of groundwater supplies in a range of hydrogeological, climatic and social, institutional and governance environments in East Africa. The work focused specifically on examining the functionality of HPBs – these being the main form of improved community water supply across rural Africa. The Survey 2 dataset, is major dataset developed by the project. This data set is available under Open Government Licence, subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying any reproduced materials: "Contains data supplied by permission of the Natural Environment Research Council [YEAR]"