English higher education 2019: The Office for Students annual review

• Improving the quality of teaching
• The role of the OfS
• Mental health
• Hate crime and sexual misconduct
• Conclusion

The experience of students is at the heart of the OfS’s role as a regulator. We are committed to ensuring that all students from all backgrounds receive a high‑quality academic experience. This imperative encompasses a vast array of issues, from teaching quality and curriculum choices to mental health and the prevalence of hate crime. Such activities may involve regulation with individual providers and across the whole higher education sector. This chapter looks at how the OfS uses its regulatory role to improve teaching. It also examines how we address some of the major challenges affecting students, with an explicit focus on mental health and the experience of marginalised groups. Finally, it describes what the OfS will do in these areas in the future.

Improving the quality of teaching

Since the increase in fees in 2012, there has been a concerted effort by government to ensure that teaching at universities is given equal prominence with research. The National Student Survey, introduced in 2005, has been a driver of innovation in teaching and learning. The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework, created to balance the focus on the Research Excellence Framework, has recognised excellence in higher education teaching since 2017.

Overall, student satisfaction is high, with 83 per cent of students satisfied with their courses in the 2019 NSS.⁹⁶ Between 2006 and 2016, overall student satisfaction with teaching feedback increased by 15 percentage points.⁹⁷ For full-time young undergraduate students, continuation rates remain high, with 92.2 per cent of 2016-17 entrants still in higher education a year later.⁹⁸ Since 2017, 71 English universities and colleges have received a Gold TEF award, signalling the high quality of the teaching in the sector.⁹⁹ The great majority of students, therefore, already have a good experience at university or college.

However, NSS satisfaction rates between providers vary by over 20 percentage points for teaching.¹⁰⁰ Lesbian, gay and bisexual students report being more anxious than their straight counterparts.¹⁰¹ Numbers of students reporting mental health issues have risen noticeably in number over the last decade.¹⁰² Numbers reporting hate crime and sexual violence have also risen.¹⁰³ Course closure is a worry for students whose provider may be at risk.

The role of the OfS

The OfS has a number of ways of ensuring students have a good experience at university or college, but the most important issue to students when judging the value of their courses is the quality of teaching.¹⁰⁴ We measure students’ satisfaction with their courses through the NSS, and student experiences and outcomes at universities and colleges through the TEF.

This year we ran a trial national survey of students undertaking postgraduate taught degrees. This survey offers the chance to analyse the effect of the new postgraduate loan and get information on the experience of a hitherto overlooked group. Over 14,000 students responded and we will release our findings in 2020.

National Student Survey

We run the National Student Survey, an annual census of most final year students in the UK.¹⁰⁵ This year was the 15th year of the NSS, which has now surveyed over 4 million students. Its aim is to inform prospective students’ choice of what and where to study. It also offers providers information on where and how to improve the student experience. The survey has 27 questions on a variety of aspects of the student experience, from teaching and feedback to the resources in the institution’s library.

This is the third year of the new version of the survey. Students continue to report lower rates of satisfaction with the assessment and feedback on their courses than in other areas covered by the survey. 72 per cent agreed that the criteria used in marking were clear, and 74 per cent said they received timely feedback on their work. This set of questions also had some of the widest ranges of responses at a provider level (see Table 2). All four questions have a percentage point difference of 20 or more between the providers in the bottom 10 per cent and those in the top 90 per cent.¹⁰⁶ This highlights a wide variation in the quality of teaching and feedback between providers, with a number delivering extremely good teaching and others falling short.

We are looking at ways to make the NSS a richer source of information for students making choices about where to study.

Table 2: Percentages of students at providers agreeing with assessment and feedback statements in the National Student Survey, at specific percentiles

Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework

The TEF has become an increasingly powerful tool for identifying high-quality teaching at universities and colleges. Students tell us that teaching quality is the most important issue for them in determining whether they receive value for money. The TEF is intended to give students confidence in the teaching they can expect from their university or college and allow comparison between them. It measures excellence in the learning environment and the educational and professional outcomes achieved by students, as well as the quality of teaching. The assessment is based on a submission by the provider, alongside measures of:

• teaching on the course
• assessment and feedback
• academic support
• students’ continuation in their courses
• progress to employment or further study
• progress to highly skilled employment or further study, and earnings in the former.

Some 270 universities and colleges have received TEF awards, with the most common award being a Silver (46.9 per cent as of October 2019). The awards highlight excellence across a diverse range of higher education providers with different methods and styles of teaching. Across the board the TEF is incentivising and driving a better student experience, with some 73 per cent of providers that responded to a Universities UK survey saying it would enhance the profile of teaching and learning. Universities and colleges also recognise the positive impact that a Gold or Silver TEF award in particular can have on their reputation, and tend to promote these awards prominently in their marketing materials. Current students make up a third of the TEF panel members and are therefore an integral part of the assessment process.

During 2018-19 the government commissioned an independent review of the TEF, and we piloted ways of rating the subjects taught by a provider. The pilot explored the importance of understanding excellence in teaching and student outcomes for individual subjects. It looked at how ratings can vary for different subjects within one university or college, and what this means for an overall TEF rating for the provider. Following the outcomes of the independent review and our pilot, we will develop the exercise and continue to be ambitious about what TEF can achieve in driving excellence in the sector.

Mental health

Poor mental health among students in higher education is a major issue, which students have consistently identified as a priority for them. The number of students who report mental health issues has risen substantially over the last decade. While students remain significantly less likely to attempt suicide than their peers who do not go to college or university,¹⁰⁷ the increase in mental health issues is worrying.

There is more that the sector as a whole can do to support students with poor mental health. The OfS has invested £14.5 million across 10 collaborative projects to drive fundamental change. Many involve collaborations with organisations outside the sector such as the NHS and mental health charities.¹⁰⁸ Each project explores solutions to different challenges to mental health and higher education, such as helping first year undergraduates make the transition from school to university, understanding the specific needs of international students, and the effectiveness of early intervention with postgraduate students.

There are notable gaps in the data we collect on students’ wellbeing. We are developing ways of capturing more data and as a first step have produced experimental statistics on background characteristics including sexuality and gender identity, which will cover mental health.¹⁰⁹

Hate crime and sexual misconduct

A significant issue for student wellbeing and safeguarding is the prevalence of hate crime, sexual violence and harassment on and off campus. A recent report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission shows that nearly a quarter of ethnic minority students have been subject to racial harassment on campus,¹¹⁰ and a 2018 survey run by the National Union of Students showed that a third of Muslim students experienced a hate crime while at university or college.¹¹¹ In 2019, in a study of over 6,000 students, 49 per cent of women said they had been touched inappropriately.¹¹² There have been several high-profile cases of universities admitting to failings when students have reported sexual abuse or harassment.¹¹³

We have distributed £4.7 million to 119 projects to tackle hate crime, across 71 higher education institutions and 14 further education colleges. This funding has enabled them, for example, to hire specialist staff, implement bystander intervention training and create online reporting tools.¹¹⁴ These projects are already having a marked impact in improving the protection of students and allowing them to report incidents of sexual violence, hate crime and online harassment. They offer practical steps and resources that universities and colleges can embed to effect the necessary radical change.

We intend to publish a consultation document laying out our expectations for universities and colleges in terms of preventing harassment and sexual misconduct, and dealing appropriately and effectively with reports of infringements.¹¹⁵

Conclusion

Students are entitled to expect a good overall experience while at university or college. But there remain significant variations between different providers in the quality of teaching, assessment and feedback. We will continue to highlight such differences through the TEF and an enhanced National Student Survey, as such transparency is important to effecting improvements.

At the same time, there is growing concern about how universities and colleges address issues that have a wider impact on students’ lives on campus. More students are reporting poor mental health. There is growing concern about sexual and racial harassment. And this has served to highlight the inadequacy of many of the processes used to address these issues.

We will work to improve the quality of the academic and pastoral experience of students, using our powers of monitoring and intervention where appropriate.

We will:

• Explore expanding the NSS survey to cover all years of a student’s course.
• Continue to fund and evaluate priority areas such as mental health.
• Set out our expectations of universities and colleges in preventing and dealing with incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct.
• Following the outcomes of the independent review of the TEF, develop the scheme to increase its future role in securing high-quality teaching and learning in the sector.