Quality assessment for registered providers

We assess registered providers to ensure they continue to meet our minimum requirements for quality and standards.

Quality assessments

We continually monitor the regulatory intelligence we gather relating to quality for areas of potential concern. This may lead to us selecting a provider for a further assessment.

Specifically, we monitor to make sure providers comply with our conditions of registration.  

The regulatory intelligence we consider covers, among other things: 

• student experience data
• student outcomes data
• information that providers submit to us (‘reportable events’)
• notifications we receive.  

For example, student outcome and experience data covers a range of compliance areas that relate to our requirements for quality and standards.

We may select themes for potential assessment using this general approach. We may also engage with a provider outside the scope of these themes if the intelligence suggests we should do so or as part of a wider investigation.  

How do assessments work?

To carry out an assessment of quality, we may decide to commission an assessment team that includes external academic experts.

The assessment team will focus on the areas of potential concern indicated by the data or other regulatory intelligence, or any information the team collects as part of its assessment. The team will also normally visit the provider.

The steps below show the process we followed for quality assessments undertaken in 2022-23.

The process we follow for any particular assessment will depend on a number of factors, including the nature of the potential concerns and the complexity of the provision or the provider being assessed.

Assessment reports

Once it has completed its assessment, an assessment team produces a report. This sets out the team’s advice based on the information the team gathered during the assessment.

The team’s assessment follows our risk-based approach to regulation. This means the team will not necessarily carry out a comprehensive assessment of every requirement in each condition of registration. The report a team produces should not be read in this way.

If the team identifies potential concerns through its assessment, the OfS will consider whether any of the findings give rise to concerns about the provider’s compliance with the OfS’s requirements for quality, and whether any regulatory action is appropriate.

The report of the assessment is used as evidence by the OfS in that decision making process and does not, in itself, represent any decision of the OfS in respect of compliance with conditions of registration.

Read published assessment reports