Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has plans to include grade inflation as a criterion measured by the Teaching Excellence Framework.

The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) includes supplementary data about grade inflation as a measure to aid assessors in making judgements about the TEF criterion on ‘Rigour and Stretch’. The independent panel will take this data into account, alongside other evidence, as part of their holistic judgement to produce a TEF rating, during the TEF assessment process.

The scope of the report that the reviewer will prepare is set out in Section 26 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. This includes a review of the TEF process and the sources of statistical information used in that process. The reviewer may also consider other matters that they consider relevant.

The membership of the panel and subject pilot panels for TEF for academic year 2017/18 is published by the Office for Students (OfS) on its website. The OfS is currently in the process of recruiting panel members for academic year 2018/19.