Edward Peck's speech to Universities UK 2025

Colleagues – Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity for Susan and I to share with you where we are up to in the repositioning of the Office for Students.

As most of you would expect, I am going to be direct in my comments about where we are with regulation and where we want to go next.

In doing so, I trust I do not have to prove to any of you my profound respect and admiration for a higher education sector of which I have had the privilege of being a part for thirty years, and for our academic and professional service colleagues who make it the envy of the world.

I joined King’s College London from the NHS in 1995, moved to the University of Birmingham in 2002, and have spent the last eleven years as Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University. During that time, I have been on the Boards of UUK, UCEA, and UCAS.

I have stayed and sought to contribute because I value the enormous difference that higher education providers make to the lives of individuals and to societies. When I contemplated stepping down as a VC, the role that I most wanted to take on was Chair of the OfS.

Nonetheless, we – you – must never see yourselves as being above challenge. The issues pursued by the OfS may be uncomfortable and sometimes appear intrusive to providers but they are on our agenda because they are of concern to students, public, and politicians. My experience over many years is that some providers and their representative bodies on occasions seek to discredit the messenger rather than focus on what might be important within the message.

Now, I am not suggesting that the approach adopted by the OfS to date has always made the issues we raise easy for providers to hear or respond to positively. We at the OfS recognise the truth in something that David Behan said to me when discussing its relationship with those it regulates: ‘the OfS has mistaken distance for independence.’

But please bear in mind that we at the OfS are still learning how best to regulate, just as you are still learning how best to be regulated. We have a mutual interest in getting regulation right for the benefit of students, wider society and higher education institutions themselves. Perhaps now more than ever, the sector needs a regulator which is a confident and credible voice with the current debates about the quality and relevance of higher education.

Talking of David, I want to say that I accept wholeheartedly the critique of and way forward for the OfS that David laid out in his review.

At the same time, over recent years some in the sector have made life more difficult for both itself and for us at the OfS. Let’s be honest, one of the fastest methods of reducing the burden and cost of regulation would be for some of you to give us – and government – less to worry about. Let me point to a couple of current examples.

Many providers could have taken more steps earlier to prepare for probable reductions in institutional income rather than rely on over-optimistic student number projections.

Other providers could have avoided adopting inadequate arrangements with those organisations to which they have franchised provision.

Both these areas are now requiring significant amounts of attention from the OfS.

However, rather than dwell on these present challenges, I want to move on to how I envisage the future attitude of the OfS. This will be reflected in our forthcoming strategy. The precise formulation is still to be explored by the board, and will probably be published in November, so what I am about to say should be seen in that context; some of the words may change but the underlying sentiments will not.

Today, I will express this attitude in four words: ambitious, collaborative, vigilant and vocal. I will give three examples in each case of what these will mean in practice.

First and foremost, we will remain ambitious for all students from all backgrounds, through:

• Broadening our methods of enabling those who wish to access higher education to do so;
• Integrating our quality tools into a revised Teaching Excellence Framework that has regulatory bite; and
• Enhancing capability within the sector by developing more effective service improvement techniques in partnership with Advance HE and the DfE’s new HE Student Support Champion

Mention of partnership takes me to my second attitude: to be collaborative with stakeholders in pursuit of our priorities, specifically over the next twelve months this means:

• Working with UUK, Guild HE, and IHE on the development of the complaints process within the context of the Freedom of Speech legislation and guidance;
• Ensuring Boards and Councils exercise robust oversight of higher education providers, initially exploring the implications of the review being undertaken by the Council of University Chairs; and
• Establishing with the DfE the policy and legal aspects of reimagining regulation of higher education in England for the 2030s.

The third is that we will be vigilant about safeguarding public money and student fees. This will encompass:

• Intervening where we judge student fees are being used for purposes other than genuine study;
• Continuing to monitor and act in response to the financial acumen and actions of providers to ensure that students’ interests are protected;
• Reducing our own costs and those of our regulatees by becoming the most efficient regulator we can be.

The fourth and final, attitude will see us being vocal that higher education is a force for good, for individuals, for communities, and for the country:

• Setting out to media and public, both nationally and internationally, the achievements of and improvements within English providers;
• Pursuing regulation in ways that facilitate higher education in playing a central role in a wide range of Government policy, in particular economic growth; and
• Engaging with UKRI, Research England, and other bodies – including those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – to align our activities to ensure coordinated oversight – what some have termed the stewardship – of the HE sector.

As a clear indication of the repositioning of the OfS that I mentioned when I began, we are announcing today that we are looking to recruit senior representatives from the sector to join a Provider Panel. This will be a key part of the governance arrangements of the OfS. It will examine and advise on present and proposed activities in a depth which demonstrates the openness and transparency that characterises exemplary regulation.

Like all of you, I am immensely proud to be a leader of an organisation which contributes to making higher education one of the major drivers of social, cultural, and economic well-being within our country. I look forward to working with you over the next four years.