The Office for Students (OfS) has published summary statements from the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) panel explaining the rationale for the ratings awarded to 157 of the universities and colleges that took part in TEF 2023. Alongside this, the OfS has published the TEF submissions made by these universities and colleges and their students.
The TEF panel’s summary statements show that the panel found excellence from across a broad range of different size and types of universities and colleges in the sector. Publishing the statements will help all universities and colleges to explore how other universities and colleges have delivered excellence and to improve the quality of teaching and learning. These statements can also be used by universities and colleges to promote their TEF awards to support student recruitment.
For TEF 2023, the OfS invited students to submit their views on the quality of their educational experience and outcomes through a student submission. This supplements the university or college’s submission and the OfS’s TEF indicators and provides important insights from students to the TEF panel. Today, 143 student submissions have been published.
The OfS has also published a group of case studies. These contain examples of excellence found by the TEF panel to show how the TEF process worked and to provide universities and colleges with examples to inspire improvement in their own institution. Further case studies will be published on the OfS website over the coming months.
Jean Arnold, Deputy Director of Quality for the OfS, said:
‘The outcomes from the TEF demonstrate the extent of outstanding teaching and student outcomes in universities and colleges right across the higher education sector. TEF is an important tool for driving improvement and the information published today will increase transparency and allow students and all those with an interest in higher education to better understand the work of the TEF panel and the reasoning for the awards it has made.
‘We are pleased that the results show that most universities and colleges are performing well above our minimum quality requirements, and that there are examples of outstanding teaching in all parts of the sector.
‘Students are at the heart of our approach to quality, and for the first time we are able to publish students’ TEF submissions. The TEF panel found these valuable in deepening its understanding of the experiences and perspectives of students at individual universities and colleges and they demonstrate why students' views should always be a central part of conversations about excellence across the sector.
‘The resources we have published today will provide prospective students with a richer range of information to help them identify the universities and colleges offering excellent teaching.’
For further information contact 0117 905 7676 or [email protected]
Notes
- The Office for Students is the independent regulator for higher education in England. Our aim is to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers.
- Student submissions were optional. Students from the remaining 14 universities and colleges did not make a student submission.
- Some universities and colleges have submitted representations in relation to the panel’s provisional decisions about their ratings, resulting in ‘pending’ awards. These outcomes are being carefully considered by the panel and the summary statements for those universities and colleges will appear on the OfS’s webpages after the ratings have been finalised later this year.
- Students engaged with the TEF 2023 through student submissions and as members of the panel. Students from a wide range of universities and colleges made up 34 per cent of the membership of the TEF 2023 panel.