Building higher education pathways locally: Lessons from the OfS’s validation project with the Open University

Today we have published an independent evaluation report by Ecorys into our three-year validation project (2022 to 2025) with the Open University (OU) – so it’s a good moment for us to consider what we’ve learned and how we plan to take these insights forward.

For this project, we used our commissioning powers under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 for the first time. These allowed us to partner with the OU to run the project with funding from the Department for Education. We gave the OU a specific condition of registration that allowed it to take on the validation of courses at nine further education colleges. The OU was selected based on criteria set out in guidance from the Secretary of State for Education and the OU’s strong track record of providing validation support to further education colleges on a national scale.

This pilot project was designed to test how validation and regulation might work differently and how the OfS could take a more active role by facilitating validation arrangements.

Project and evaluation background

The aim of the project was to address the challenges further education colleges face in accessing validation partnerships in a competitive environment and being able to deliver high quality Level 4 and 5 courses in geographical areas where there are specific local skills gaps and limited higher education provision.

We commissioned Ecorys to deliver an evaluation of the project in January 2025 to help us to reflect on the project’s implementation, delivery and impact and enable us to share lessons learned with the sector. This included producing two learning digests that outline key learnings about validation partnerships for validators and colleges.

What worked?

The evaluation report we’ve published today shows that our commissioning powers were used constructively to address long-standing barriers and test alternative approaches.

Operationally, the OU quickly established effective project management and governance arrangements, alongside new validation models and supporting systems. Despite tight timescales, 15 programmes were approved and ten launched, many in areas with limited local higher education provision.

The most significant success was the capability built within further education colleges. Colleges strengthened governance, quality assurance and curriculum design processes and gained a clearer understanding of what is required to deliver higher education at the required standard.

As one participating college reflected, ‘the confidence that’s given us has been transformative’.

What’s next?

This project has demonstrated that partnership working in higher education can be tailored in different ways to meet students’, higher education providers’ and regulatory interests. The evidence shows that partnerships can be beneficial for universities, colleges and students if the aims, design and oversight are thorough and aligned.

This is important in a policy context shaped by the government’s Post-16 Skills White Paper, which specifically called for stronger collaboration across the post-16 system to meet skills needs and improve local opportunities.

For us, it’s been an extremely valuable exercise in strengthening our evidence base. It is an example of positive partnerships, which has helped our understanding of effective partnership practice. In these partnerships, risks were closely monitored, providing confidence to the validator (OU), delivery partners (further education colleges) and us, as the regulator.

Looking ahead, we’ll use what we’ve learned from this project to shape how we work in this area. Our focus will be on supporting and overseeing strong partnerships so they deliver high quality outcomes for students.

Where partnerships are not developing on their own and intervention is needed, our commissioning powers are one of the options we can use. By making sure regulation is evidence-based, the OfS is now better positioned to support the shared ambitions of meeting skills needs, increasing higher education provision in geographical areas where it is limited, and building accessible, local pathways into higher education.