Transcript of Susan Lapworth's speech at the UUK conference

Thank you Vivienne for your kind introduction.

And thank you to everybody in the audience for staying with us for one of the last slots in a very full day.

We see this session as an opportunity for you to hear from us about the next steps in the OfS’s development as a regulator. I’m going to speak for a few minutes to set the context for that. And then we want to hear from you too. So Sir David is going to join me to answer your questions.

Introduction

I’ll start by stating the obvious. We’re in a difficult period for the higher education sector just now. You don’t need me to rehearse the financial challenges you’re all grappling with or the impact that’s having on you and your teams.

And we’re only a handful of weeks after the election, so government’s long-term strategy for the sector isn’t clear yet. And we don’t know which policy levers ministers will want to pull to deliver that strategy.

This sort of uncertain context forces any regulator to constantly think about how it works. So that’s inevitably true for the OfS. So we’ve really valued the engagement over recent months with you, and your colleagues and your students as we’ve been developing our new organisational strategy.

Public bodies review

And we also now have the added impetus of Sir David’s Public Bodies Review. That sets us off on a clear path for the next phase of the OfS and of regulation in our sector.

His report sets out challenges and recommendations for government, the sector and the OfS. And it’s important to underline that it addresses all three of those actors – government, institutions, the OfS – and the way we need to work together in the interests of students and the public.

And, of course, Sir David has now joined us as interim chair of the OfS. With a clear remit and clear support from ministers for all of the recommendations in his report. I think that means we can, and should, move out of a period of review and into a period of implementation. Review and reflection has been important for us. Sometimes uncomfortable. But necessary for us to move forward with confidence to bring the benefits of good regulation to students, the sector and the country more widely.

There’ll be time over the next few months to explore with you what that’s going to entail – including, as I say, when we consult on our new OfS strategy.

Refocused priorities

For today, I want to briefly pick up Sir David’s first recommendation: a clearer and sharper focus for the OfS. He recommended that we should focus on four key priorities:

• The quality of higher education
• The financial sustainability of higher education providers
• Protecting how public money is spent
• Acting in the student interest.

And he recommended that these priorities should all be underpinned by a continuing emphasis on access and participation. We know that when our sector works well, it works well for students from all backgrounds.

As you’d expect we’re developing our new strategy around these priorities. But what might you expect to see from us in these areas?

On quality, you can expect to see us bringing together the work of recent years into an integrated approach to quality. We want to draw together qualitative and quantitative approaches and refocus on enabling improvement across the sector. We’ll need to work with you all to develop our thinking on how that might work.

On financial sustainability, you can expect to see us continuing to focus on the financial risks that continue to build. We’ll continue to model, monitor and engage with those institutions facing the greatest immediate challenges. But we all need to extend our horizons too – what more can we do to ensure those institutions facing risks in the medium-term address them before they become acute? Enabling improvement in governance across the sector is going to feature here.

On protecting public money, you can expect to see more work to tackle the issues we’ve seen in some franchise partnerships. Students and taxpayers are getting a raw deal in some of these cases and the reputation of the sector depends on us being able to address these issues. Again, improvement in governance is key. And I’ll just give a quick plug to the insight brief we published yesterday, which sets out key issues for franchising.

Students

All three of the things I’ve just talked about – quality, financial sustainability, protecting public funding – are underpinned by our fourth priority to act in the student interest. I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means, not least because students have told us that we’ve not always understood or communicated what we mean by the student interest well enough for our regulation to be visible to them. That’s something I really want to change.

Again, Sir David’s review is helpful here. It reinforces the importance of pulling students and their perspectives more fully into our work. So, here, you can expect to see a strengthened role for our student panel, tying it more closely to the OfS board. An expansion in our use of polling and focus groups to develop a more sophisticated understanding of students’ experiences of higher education. More direct engagement with students and their representatives to make sure we hear what matters to them. And embedding students in our core regulatory work – as we’ve done on access and participation and the TEF.

My aim is to transform our approach to student engagement so students recognise the OfS as a regulator acting in their interests. I want to understand where the system isn’t delivering for students. And, critically, where the OfS can and should use its regulation to drive improvement.

Renewed relationships

So, this clearer and sharper focus for the OfS is signalling an opportunity for transformation. An opportunity to rethink how we approach regulation for these four priorities.

But we can’t deliver improvement or any of these priorities without you. So I see this next phase of the OfS as one where we continue to work hard to improve our relationships with you. To ensure that clear priorities and trust-based relationships can underpin effective regulation.

We’ll carry on doing the things we’ve already started – visits to institutions, briefing sessions, and so on. But I want to go further. I want to transform the way we engage with you on day-to-day regulatory issues. I want to work more collaboratively with you as we develop our approach to regulation – particularly as we grapple with the challenge of an integrated model for quality. And I want to reflect with you on the insights we gain from our student engagement. Because we all need to understand what matters to students as we lead the sector through these turbulent times.

Close

I’ll end by returning to the last paragraph in the foreword to Sir David’s review:

"Both the regulator and the sector want the same thing – high quality education provided by an effective, efficient, and sustainable system that operates in the interests of students. This is the basis of the mature dialogue that can secure that common and shared purpose. Let it be the foundation of their future work together."

I’m looking forward to securing that future with you all.