How we regulate quality and standards
Evaluating the impact of our quality regulation
We evaluate the impact of our requirements for quality and standards. This is to assess how far these regulations meet our aims.
This page lists our evaluation work so far.
We’re working with Ecorys, an independent research organisation, to improve our understanding of how institutions understand, plan for and deliver quality courses and what drives improvement.
This project will inform our work and help us understand the impact our regulation has on institutions over time.
Fieldwork for this project began in autumn 2025.
We will update this page with further updates on this work.
We commissioned York Consulting LLP to evaluate the impact of our published ongoing quality compliance assessment activities on universities and colleges that were not involved in these assessments.
The report explores providers’ awareness and understanding of our published assessment reports, the actions they took after reading them, and their views on how our approach could be more constructive and transparent.
The findings will help inform how we operate and communicate our approach in the future.
In 2022, we revised our approach to regulating student outcomes (condition B3).
This included setting numerical thresholds for continuation, completion and progression to help inform our monitoring of whether a higher education provider is delivering positive outcomes for its students.
We evaluated the initial impacts of the revised approach on providers’ understanding and implementation.
We have evaluated how effectively the TEF 2023 ran and the impact it is having on improving the quality of students' experiences and outcomes.
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