Consultation on the future approach to quality regulation

Section 1: Overall quality system

Aims of the quality system

29. We want to be ambitious in securing positive higher education experiences for all students, and to use our regulation of quality to help drive improvement across the sector. Our aims for the quality assessment system are to:
    1. Ensure that students from all backgrounds benefit from high quality and continuously improving provision, through:
       1. Supporting and encouraging providers to deliver the highest levels of quality for their students.
       2. Creating incentives and intervening to drive improvements where quality is not high enough.
    2. Provide clear and useful information about the level of quality delivered by different providers to help inform student choice.
    3. Provide assurance to government and the public about the delivery of high quality education.
30. Our current system broadly seeks to deliver these aims, and we do not propose to change the overall aims of our approach to quality regulation. Instead, we are proposing improvements to our approach to quality assessment and a set of strengthened incentives, with the intention of better achieving these overall aims.
31. Bringing together the issues highlighted by the public bodies review, what we have heard in discussions with stakeholders, and the findings of the early evaluations, we have identified the following main areas for improvement of the future quality approach:
    1. Reach. The current system focuses on undergraduate provision delivered by larger providers. We propose to extend the reach so that future quality assessments benefit students studying at all higher education providers, including proposals about how the system could work effectively for smaller providers. We also propose that over time the system should extend to benefit postgraduate as well as undergraduate students, and students studying on a modular basis.
    2. Impact. The TEF has had a broadly but unevenly positive impact on participating providers, by increasing their attention on enhancement and excellence. Our proposals aim to have greater impact on the sector in a proportionate way, with a reduced burden for providers that deliver the highest quality. The proposals involve a streamlined approach to assessing student outcomes, and a strengthened set of incentives and interventions that vary according to different levels of quality and risk to students. The proposals also seek to strengthen input from students to focus improvement on what matters to students.
    3. Responsiveness. Aspects of our current approach rely on data that involves time lags, and the current TEF system has fixed timeframes for carrying out assessments. Our proposals aim to create a more dynamic and agile system that responds to emerging risks.
    4. Integration. Our current approach involves separate streams of assessment activity, with unclear connections between them. The proposals seek to create a more coherent and integrated system that reduces burden and is simpler to understand.

Proposal 1: A more integrated overall system

We propose to modify the overall quality system to ensure that it is integrated, drives improvement across the sector, and provides a clear view of the quality delivered by different providers.

32. Following the public bodies review, we discussed with sector and student groups how far we should integrate our quality assessment activities into a single system that would, through a single assessment process, provide a clear view of quality at each provider and drive improvement across the sector. This would have involved routinely assessing all providers to test fully whether they meet all the minimum quality requirements set out in the relevant ongoing B conditions of registration, as well as to rate the level of quality and drive improvement. Such an approach would be likely to involve visits to all providers, to assess whether they meet all the relevant B conditions of registration. Concerns were raised about the cost and scale of such an approach. We heard views that it would be more efficient and proportionate to continue with a risk-based approach to looking into concerns about compliance with the B conditions.
33. In light of this we propose a system that is largely integrated while remaining risk-based and proportionate, as follows:
    1. We would continue to expect all providers to at least meet the requirements for quality set out in the ongoing B conditions of registration. We would clarify that the B conditions set out the minimum level of quality required of all providers.
    2. We would incentivise all providers through a modified TEF to exceed the minimum level, and to strive for the highest levels of quality for their students.
    3. The TEF assessments would remain desk-based, and would be carried out on a rolling cycle (with a cohort of providers assessed each year).
    4. Through the TEF, providers would be assessed and rated for the student experience and student outcomes. Ratings would show whether or how far the provider exceeds the minimum requirements of the relevant B conditions.
    5. We would simplify condition B3 and fully integrate an assessment of whether each provider delivers the minimum required student outcomes into its TEF assessments.
    6. We would align the assessment of student experience in the TEF with our other quality requirements (conditions B1, B2 and the assessment element of B4). However, we would not fully integrate the assessment of whether a provider complies with these conditions into the TEF, as this would probably require routine visits to all providers.
    7. Where we identify material concerns about the quality of the student experience (through risk monitoring or through TEF assessments), we would carry out targeted investigations, including visits to the provider. These would be prioritised based on risk.
    8. We would improve and make more transparent the way we monitor risks to quality and our ability to respond rapidly to emerging risks in between cyclical TEF assessments.
34. The overall system would involve a strengthened set of incentives and interventions to drive improvement across the sector. These would vary according to the level of quality and risk to students, by:
    1. Rewarding providers that deliver the highest levels of quality and incentivising them to continue to do so.
    2. Strongly incentivising improvement by providers that only deliver the minimum level of quality, including through increased scrutiny and further regulatory interventions.
    3. Enabling us to intervene to ensure improvements are made by providers that do not deliver the minimum level of quality.
35. Alternatives we have considered for the future system are discussed in Annex E.

Quality and equality of opportunity

36. We propose the new system would be an integral part of our work to support equality of opportunity. The future TEF would hold providers to account for delivering equality of opportunity in relation to the experience and outcomes of their students. The TEF assessments and any quality compliance assessments would consider the experience and outcomes for all groups of students, and how well providers meet the needs of all their students, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
37. As set out in Proposal 4, a provider would need to deliver consistently high or outstanding quality for all groups of students to achieve a Silver or Gold rating. Our proposals also involve assessing that each provider is delivering the minimum required student outcomes for all its student groups. These proposals would strongly incentivise providers to make improvements for any student groups with less good experiences or outcomes, including students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
38. Access and participation plans (APPs) would continue to support equality of opportunity. They would continue to apply to any provider registered with the OfS in the ‘Approved (fee cap)’ category. They focus on forward facing plans and (because of the link to the higher fee amount) on qualifying students on qualifying courses.
39. Because we are proposing the TEF would play a stronger role in assessing and driving improvement in the experiences and outcomes of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, there may be opportunities to refocus APPs on access in future, to reduce burden on providers. We invite views on opportunities to reduce duplication of effort between the future TEF and APPs. Under Proposal 11, we also invite views on the sequencing of providers’ TEF assessments and their submission of APPs.

European standards and guidelines

40. We have heard from some providers that it would be helpful for their international partnerships and recruitment for the future system to be recognised as adhering to European standards and guidelines for quality assurance. At this stage we consider that our proposed overall approach broadly includes all the elements required by these standards and guidelines. We will explore this further, including whether adherence would involve further adjustment to the system and what the additional costs to the sector could be. We would work towards applying to join the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education at the appropriate time.