Teaching excellence will be rewarded and poor quality
teaching exposed under a new rating system for English
universities, the Universities Minister has announced today
(12 March).
In a global first, Universities Minister has launched a new tool
that will rate universities either gold, silver or bronze
by subject - holding them to account for the quality of
their teaching, learning environment and graduate outcomes.
By extending the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes
Framework – or TEF – to subject level the government aims
to:
- help prospective students compare the different courses
on offer across institutions, to make sure they get the
most out of their university education;
- shine a light on course quality, revealing which
universities are providing excellent teaching, and which
are coasting or relying on their research reputation.
The Department for Education has today launched a 10-week
public consultation, seeking views on the design of the new
framework. This will run alongside a pilot of the scheme,
which has 50 universities and colleges taking part,
including the University of Cambridge, Imperial College
London, London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE), De Montfort University and the Open University.
Universities Minister said:
Prospective students deserve to know which courses
deliver great teaching and great outcomes – and which
ones are lagging behind.
In the age of the student, universities will no longer be
able to hide if their teaching quality is not up to the
world-class standard that we expect.
The new subject-level TEF will give students more
information than ever before, allowing them to drill down
and compare universities by subject. This will level the
international playing field to help applicants make
better choices, and ensure that more students get the
value for money they deserve from higher education.
The plans announced today will build on the progress
already made under the first wave of TEF – which awards
universities with an overall rating of gold, silver and
bronze. This new framework recognises that outcomes and
teaching quality differ not just by university but also by
course, and will allow students to look behind
provider-level ratings and access information about
teaching quality for a specific subject.
Those universities and colleges taking part in the pilot
scheme for subject-level TEF are working with the sector in
academic years 2017/18 and 2018/19, with the intention that
the first full year of subject-level TEF will take place in
2019/20.
The new framework will take into account student feedback,
drop-out rates and graduate outcomes to help deliver the
objectives of the review of post-18 education launched by
the Prime Minister last month, ensuring that students get
the value for money they deserve from higher education.
The Minister will also launch an Open Data competition, the
first of its kind in the UK HE sector, which will use
selected government data on universities so that tech
companies and coders can create apps to help prospective
students decide where to apply.
This competition will build on the government’s recently
published Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset,
which gives information on employment and salaries after
graduation. By democratising access to information about
courses and their outcomes, it will help all applicants,
regardless of their background, make better decisions and
get better value for money.
The Universities Minister added:
Our new Open Data Competition will open up Government
data on universities for the first time. It will harness
the creativity and enterprise of coders and tech
businesses to create new tools to help applicants get
value for money. And it puts government data to work for
students, democratising the information Government holds
about universities.
