Northampton says OfS ‘not serving sector’ after courses criticised

The University of Northampton has hit back at the Office for Students (OfS) after the quality of its computing courses was criticised.

Two conditions of registration have been placed on the institution following an investigation by the regulator that identified issues with assessments, timetables and students’ access to resources.

But Northampton said the OfS had used outdated data and accused it of a “lack of clarity” over the investigation, which took place in 2023.

“Waiting over three years for a response to an in-person inspection is not a sustainable model, either for the OfS or for universities. It doesn’t serve students and it doesn’t serve the wider sector,” the university said in a statement.

It follows the publication of an OfS report into Northampton on 11 May, the last in the regulator’s “boots on the ground” inspections into the quality of provision at some English universities.

The institution was found to be in breach of three of its conditions of registration and, although it had demonstrated some improvements since the issues were identified, the regulator deemed further action was necessary.

Concerns related to the “complexity” of Northampton’s grading system and the assessment information provided to students that inspectors found to be “overly complicated, unclear, or contained errors”.

The university’s move to a “semesterised” delivery model for its undergraduate students was also found to be ill-suited to the cohort taking computing courses owing to its “increased pace of delivery, lengthy teaching sessions, a high volume of summative assessment in each period, and bunching of assessment hand-in dates”.

This breached OfS condition B1 because the university was “not ensuring that students registered on its computing courses received a high quality academic experience”.

Further issues were identified with student resources and support, breaching the B2 condition of registration.

In particular students studying gaming struggled to access the higher specification computers they needed for their course because of “the way that teaching space is used on campus”.

Access to specialist software was also limited “because of policies relating to cybersecurity that the provider had adopted”.

Breaches of the condition B4, which relates to effective assessment leading to credible awards, were caused by the low quality of some written feedback on summative assessment which was found to be “insufficient to support students’ performance on their future assessments”.

But Northampton has claimed that the concerns related to a short period in its history, when it was impacted by a cyberattack and still recovering from pandemic-era disruption.

Various measures have been introduced since the inspection including a new leadership team, investment in hardware and new IT labs as well as a specialist studio and faculty training.  

It is understood the institution pushed for a further inspection to consider the changes as well as closer dialogue with the regulator.

“We are disappointed that the OfS has chosen to take this action, we believe that the historic nature of the data, incredibly slow response times and lack of clarity from the OfS mean this is not a fair representation of our current provision,” said the university’s statement. 

The OfS report says the actions taken by the university were sufficient to address concerns relating to condition B1 but not the other two breaches and “there is continuing regulatory risk”.

Conditions imposed require the university to “identify and take actions that result in improvements to its resources and support, and to the quality of feedback” in the next 12 months.

Jean Arnold, interim director for quality and access at the OfS, said the regulator had “considered whether sanctions were appropriate in this case” but the university had “engaged constructively” and had “already begun to put in place a range of changes which will have improved the quality of these courses, and students’ university experience”.

She promised that in future regulatory judgements will be made at the same time as assessment reports are published, “meaning our judgements on quality will be made more quickly so we can best protect students’ interests”.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com