Earlier this week my colleague Debbie McVitty wrote about the conflict between the tidy data requirements of the Office for Students and the messy, mixed-up world, that is universities with all of their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks.
As she put it:
A high-handed response would scoff at this proposition [giving notice on changes to TEF] and argue that good, autonomous universities should be across their data, evidence, and practice and the TEF should simply be translating that work. That could be technically true, but it would not be fair or reasonable. If the TEF is to support teaching enhancement at all, it needs to take meaningful account of the conditions for that work to take place.
We also heard from Shân Wareing who wrote about how the TEF had focussed organisational activity and given her university a single source of truth from which decisions can be taken and plans can be made for the future.
