Regulating higher education

These are core regulation functions focused on:

• Provider governance: designing and delivering the OfS’s approach to assessing, monitoring and intervening in relation to providers’ compliance with the management and governance conditions of registration. For instance, charitable status, funding assurances, protection of public funding, compliance with the Prevent duty.

• Case management: operational delivery of regulatory casework, information gathering and investigation, assessment of risk appetite, intervention strategies, the continual improvement of systems and processes.

These roles are responsible for leading our work investigating the quality of higher education courses at registered providers.

We use teams of external academic assessors to assess the quality of courses, and these roles will oversee the progress of their assessments.

They also develop the regulatory strategy for cases and determine and implement regulatory action on the basis of advice provided by our external academic assessors. This includes the operational delivery of the OfS’s quality and standards assessment functions, such as:

• recruitment, training and support for external academic assessors

• planning and resource allocation across all quality and standards assessment functions

• governance arrangements for the performance of the assessment functions, including reporting to and supporting the work of the Quality Assessment Committee.

The OfS is working closely with government, the higher education sector and other stakeholders to support the introduction of a new approach to student finance. This will enable students to get student loans for modules as well as whole qualifications.

The work covers different areas:

• developing a policy to register new providers and implementing the registration process

• designing, developing and delivering regulation of whether students achieve positive outcomes on modular courses

• developing an enforcement approach for modular courses

• planning for the effects of the introduction of LLE on the wider regulatory and funding framework.

This area delivers the OfS’s work on access and participation plans (APPs), our main tool for regulating universities’ and colleges’ approach to pressing issues of equality of opportunity in higher education. The major focus of the work is to make sure we clearly express our expectations for APPs to higher education providers and that we assess their plans fairly and efficiently.

This includes related work, such as the Uni Connect programme – an initiative that brings together 29 partnerships of universities, colleges and other local partners to offer activities, advice and information on the benefits and realities of going to university or college.

The OfS is implementing a revised approach to regulating free speech and academic freedom in English higher education providers.

Work on regulating free speech matters includes:

• extending the OfS regulation to students’ unions

• introducing a new complaints scheme for free speech complaints.