Regulating student awards

Higher education providers registered with the Office for Students must ensure that the degrees they award are credible and appropriately reflect the knowledge and skills of students.

Our ongoing condition of registration B4 (Assessment and awards) requires a provider to make sure that awards are credible when granted and when compared with previous awards. A degree must hold its value over time.

This is so that students, employers and the public can be confident that classes of degree awarded appropriately reflect students’ knowledge and skills.

Monitoring the award of degrees

As a risk-based regulator, we monitor the sector to identify where there might be risks to the quality of higher education provision. This includes analysing changes in the proportion of 1sts and 2:1 degrees awarded over time, and publishing reports on this data.

Ensuring awards reflect students’ achievements

We have been concerned that improved teaching may not fully explain the increase in the proportion of students awarded 1sts and 2:1 degrees over time.

To support providers, we published a report setting out things that institutions should consider when making changes to the algorithms they use to determine bachelors’ degree classifications. We’ve also published some regulatory case reports about specific risks we’ve identified.

Monitoring the use of degree algorithms

One area of potential risk that we have identified to maintaining the credibility and comparability of degrees over time is with two steps sometimes included in the algorithms used to determine bachelors’ degree classifications, including discounting credits with the lowest marks and selecting the best result from multiple algorithms.

We’re currently seeking to understand this risk better and asking universities and colleges to tell us more about their use of these steps and whether they intend to continue using them in the future.