Top Scots cash in

Seven Scottish universities are to share almost Pounds 240,000 following "excellent" ratings in the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council's latest quality assessment.

There were seven excellents, 20 highly satisfactories and one satisfactory rating in the latest 28 assessments which cover history, history of art, sociology, politics and mass communications.

Institutions with an excellent rating win 5 per cent more funded student places, converted into an extra grant allocation. The biggest awards are for excellence in history, with Pounds 76,000 to Edinburgh University and Pounds 52,000 to St Andrews University. Glasgow, Stirling, Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities have respectively won Pounds 32,000, Pounds 22,000, Pounds 19,000 and Pounds 10,000 for excellence in history, while Strathclyde University has been awarded Pounds ,000 for politics.

Building and surveying at the University of Abertay Dundee, which was judged unsatisfactory last session, has been reassessed as satisfactory after implementing an action plan.

The SHEFC has issued videos in a bid to improve quality. These explain how to cope with the quality assessment process, the latest findings on how students learn, and case studies on student support, teaching, and curriculum and resources.