‘Toughened up’ TEF will ‘further fragment divided sector’

A “high-stakes” Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) threatens to fragment England’s higher education sector without delivering promised improvements in teaching quality, critics have warned.

The Office for Students (OfS) has promised that its proposals for a revised quality assessment regime will root out bad provision – with potential sanctions for poor performers including enforced cuts to enrolment numbers and a ban on accessing tuition fee uplifts.

A 193-page proposal published by the regulator proposes to rate providers on a number of metrics connected to student experience and outcomes, with institutions receiving a gold, silver, bronze or “requires improvement” score for both categories.

Steve Jones, professor of higher education at the University of Manchester, told Times Higher Education that he found the approach of the watchdog “depressing”.

“My fear is that it further fragments the higher education sector at a time when we probably need to come together and articulate the value of universities.”

The OfS intends to start its revised approach in 2027-28. All universities and colleges registered with the regulator will take part, though participating in the TEF is an optional add-on.

Those who do not apply for TEF ratings will receive minimum requirement outcomes of satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Jones suggested that smaller providers – many of which “do a lot of hard work widening participation and supporting their local economies” – will lack the advantage larger ones do, in terms of their data collection.

“Larger providers’ data will be more meaningful and be able to tell different kinds of narratives, and therefore they will be able to insulate themselves from certain measures,” he explained.

Mission group University Alliance, which represents professional and technical providers, welcomed the TEF’s move away from one overall mark in favour of two scores but said it doubted the metrics would drive “genuine improvements” for students.

“The regulator continues to propose a high-stakes model in which quality assessments are closely tied to regulatory interventions and recruitment controls,” director of policy Susanna Kalitowski said.

Chris Husbands, former vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University who chaired the first two iterations of the TEF between 2017 and 2023, did not disagree that the proposals represented a “real toughening of the scheme”.

But he said that those updates should not be understood in a vacuum. “I don’t think that you can look at these changes and think of them separately from the changes in the sector in the last decade since the TEF was established,” he said, citing the “rapid growth of franchising” and “the appearance of quite small franchisers gaining degree-awarding powers”.

Compared with the government-commissioned independent review of the TEF in 2019, in which former Loughborough University vice-chancellor Shirley Pearce found its primary purpose was to “encourage enhancement” within the sector, Husbands said the revised version shifted the assessment towards a regulatory and compliance focus.

But he wasn’t overly concerned by the framework’s new sanctions. “I don't know if it will drive [university] closures, I think it will drive quality compliance,” he said.

The briefing released on 22 October by the OfS represents the second stage of proposals that have already been through one consultation round.

Independent Higher Education, which said the initial proposals would penalise many of the new providers and specialist institutions it represents, has welcomed some of changes made – but wasn’t totally satisfied.

Joy Elliott-Bowman, director of policy, told THE that the organisation was glad to see more of a focus on qualitative as well as quantitative information, with the OfS promising to take a contextual approach to institutions.

But she suggested that it appeared unreasonable to allow providers to opt out of the TEF, while rendering those who do so ineligible for benefits specifically linked to the assessment, such as any changes to tuition fee limits agreed by the Department for Education.

NUS England president Lewis Wilson said the proposals looked like “punching down”.

“Creating a system which encourages and embeds further division and inequality in provision is not in students’ best interests nor what we’ve been asking for,” he said.

“Students want to see courses supported to improve, rather than forced into a cycle that will lead to their closure, and the inevitable consequences that would follow at such a volatile time for higher education.”

Christopher Lewis, associate dean for education at Bucks New University, said the goal should be to raise standards for every student regardless of where or what they study – emphasising the need for “fairness” in regulatory assessment.

“Higher education faces considerable financial pressures and institutions serve diverse student populations, often with significant differences in disadvantage, access and attainment,” he said.

“Recognising these differences does not mean lowering expectations of quality but ensuring that excellence is assessed fairly and in context.”

For Manchester’s Jones, institutions did have a job to do when it came to explaining their teaching provision – but that wasn’t bound up with the TEF.

“It’s a legitimate criticism of universities that we’re not very good at telling potential students how we’re going to teach them,” he said. “Websites generally don’t have statements of pedagogy or anything like that. I’d be interested in a framework which did encourage universities to be very open and transparent, to go into schools and articulate what kind of teaching they offer.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com