In the olden days, the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) “listened” to students in two ways – it used some of a provider’s National Student Survey (NSS) scores, and providers were “encouraged” to involve students in the production of their narrative submission, and to show how they had done so.
That represented a significant downgrade from that seen in Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) led institutional review processes – which as far back as 2002 had included the opportunity for students to develop their own, independent Student Written Submission into the process – with plenty of evidence of impact.
So when Shirley Pearce’s review of the TEF kicked off in 2018, it was pretty much inevitable that we would end up with a call for students to be able to input in a way that was both more independent, and more current than the satisfaction and outcomes metrics driving at least part of the process.
So building on a notably successful round of inviting student submissions into evaluations of provider progress on Access and Participation Plans, the regulator proposed something similar for this new TEF exercise – a lead student contact for every provider would be able to choose to develop and submit their own report, offering “additional insights” to the TEF panel on what it is like to be a student at that provider, and what they gain from their experience.
