Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of higher education providers which will be outside of the registration frameworks of the Office for Students.

The department published the enactment impact assessment for the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 last year. In that, we estimated that there would be 540 providers outside of the Office for Students (OfS) Register in 2019/20. These were broad estimates, made before the OfS took the decision not to proceed with a Registered (Basic) category. In response to the consultation conducted in the autumn, only five providers indicated that they would seek to register in that category.

Any English higher education provider wanting to be officially recognised as providing higher education in England, access public grant funding from the OfS or UK Research and Innovation, access the student support system, recruit international students with a Tier 4 sponsorship licence or apply for its own Degree Awarding Powers and/or University Title must be registered with OfS.

Of those providers outside the OfS register, the majority are likely to be small and specialist institutions offering sub-degree provision and will include a number who are in sub contractual arrangements with providers that will be registered with the OfS, where the registered provider retains responsibility for the students, and for the quality and standards of provision.