The TEF and HE reform Adam Wright – NUS Lead Policy Officer

Overview Outline the TEF and the government’s wider plans for higher education in England. Explain how this may impact on Scotland and the other nations. Go through our campaigns and influencing strategy to stop the reforms. Talk about the NSS boycott/sabotage.

What is the Teaching Excellence Framework? A Tory manifesto commitment to measure and improve teaching quality in HE. Tories worried about grade inflation, lazy academics, poor accountability for public funds. But the TEF serves a dual purpose – to tackle the above, while also fitting with furthering marketisation agenda and raising fees through back door. Therefore TEF became a mechanism for forcing more competition between institutions by creating new market information and providing financial incentives.

How will the TEF work? Institutions can “volunteer” to have their teaching quality assessed through the TEF. The TEF will use a set of “core metrics” as the main source of information. TEF panels of “experts” will assess the metrics alongside additional information provided by the institution for context. The institution will receive a score: meets expectations, excellent, or outstanding. Institutions which pass the TEF will be able to raise their UG tuition fees above £9,000.

The TEF metrics UK govt. propose using the National Student Survey, retention rates, and graduate employment data as core metrics. Wrong to assume that student satisfaction scores represent the quality of teaching on a course. No clear link between the quality of teaching and the job someone gets when they leave university. Graduate employment more the result of subject, institution, student background, and external economic forces.

The impact of the TEF on the nations There will be pressure on the nations to ensure that their HE sectors remain responsive and can show their quality of provision equals that of the UK, and that their HEPs are accountable. The TEF will become an important piece of information to students. Nations HEPs will not want to miss out on opportunities to compare themselves to English HEPs. The TEF will create fee differentiation in England. Nations HEPs may need to respond by changing fee offer to English-domiciled prospective students.

The impact of wider HE reforms on the nations There is likely to be increased competition from new alternative providers in England. It is unclear what will happen to UK Performance Indicators and whether it will be possible to easily benchmark across UK on things like WP or research. Pressure to create student finance options for postgraduate students. All UK institutions will need to conform to regulations in consumer protections legislation.

A TEF in Scotland? Universities Scotland has set up a working group to look at the way forward in Scotland in relation to the TEF. There is a steer towards different objectives based more on collaboration and student partnership rather than competition. NUS Scotland is engaging as a sector partner in this process to ensure that the outcome is one which protects Scottish HE from the English marketisation agenda. Part of this involves maintaining the Quality Engagement Framework.

Green paper priorities Large ability to influence Get students on TEF panels Student representation in OFS Improvement to WP and Access Get other metrics included in TEF No attack on SU power Influence on learning gain Influence definition of “quality” Water down / remove employment metrics Low priority for members Keep HEIs in FoI Act High priority for members OFS control of teaching grant GPA Keep employers out of TEF panels Tighten regulation of private providers Stop or delay TEF Prevent HEIs from going bust Prevent raising of fee cap Small ability to influence

What happened GPA Large ability to influence Low priority for members Get students on TEF panels Student representation in OFS Improvement to WP and Access Get other metrics included in TEF No attack on SU power Influence on learning gain Influence definition of “quality” Water down / remove employment metrics Low priority for members Keep HEIs in FoI Act High priority for members OFS control of teaching grant GPA Keep employers out of TEF panels Tighten regulation of private providers Stop or delay TEF Prevent HEIs from going bust Prevent raising of fee cap Small ability to influence

Key priorities post-White Paper Stop fee increases / remove fee increases from the TEF. Challenge the use of metrics, particularly NSS and graduate employment outcomes. Ensure students have a voice in the evaluation and enhancement of quality. Have student representation on the OfS. Stop for-profit providers gaining DAPs and public funds (esp. if it is without proper scrutiny).

NUS response Build compelling evidence base as to why government plans are wrong. Form an alliance within the HE sector against the reforms. Propose amendments to HE Bill by working with MPs. Support students’ unions to lobby their institution and local politicians, particularly if MP is on bill committee. Coordinate wider anti-marketisation campaign and support actions to disrupt TEF (ie. NSS boycott/sabotage).

The NSS boycott/sabotage Amendment to motion at NC2016 called for NUS to investigate best method of disrupting NSS in order to make it unusable in TEF. NUS has researched and determined three main options: boycott, sabotage, and abstention. We are now consulting with members on the options. The online consultation closed today. There are still opportunities to feed in in person to consultation (30/31 August in London; 30 August in Edinburgh). The results of consultation will determine NUS’ campaign direction.

How a sabotage would work A student fills in the sections of the NSS to be used in TEF (teaching on course, Q1-4; assessment and feedback, Q5-9; academic support, Q10-12) with the lowest score. The impact of this would be to drive the aggregate results for an institution down in these particular areas without having an impact on the other scores in the survey. There are alternatives to this tactic, such as marking up rather than down or marking randomly, but this will have a much smaller impact on aggregate scores.

Saboteur numbers by institution size

Problems to consider We do not know for sure if a saboteur would have filled the survey anyway. If those sabotaging the survey would not have filled in the survey otherwise, the number of saboteurs would need to be larger to have the same effect. Filtering out sabotaged results Programmes can be used to pick up patterns in response and potentially filter out responses. The only way of avoiding this is to be more random in the answering of Q1-12. Impact on SU/SA relationship with institution The largest concern of unions is whether action would damage their relationship with their institution and prevent them from winning support for other campaigns as well as the potential impact on their block grant.