Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Teaching Excellence Framework on improvements in the quality of teaching at higher education providers.

The purpose of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) is to drive up standards of teaching quality in higher education, as well as to offer prospective students information about where to find high quality teaching and the most positive graduate outcomes.

We are assessing and evaluating the development of the TEF on an ongoing basis. Since 2016, we have published consultation reports, research reports and evaluation findings on the development of the TEF. The Office for Students also published its findings from the first year of the subject-level pilots on 22 October.

We intend to publish further research on the initial impact of the TEF, based on the provider-level evaluation 2016/17, in the New Year. That research report will include evidence, drawing on the views of providers and students, about the effect of the TEF on the choices made by students. It will also report on the perceptions of changes to institutional reputation that providers and students, both home and international, attribute to the TEF.

On 19 November, we announced the appointment of Dame Shirley Pearce as the independent reviewer of TEF. Dame Shirley Pearce will report on the operation of the TEF, in line with the remit set out for her in section 26 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. We expect her to report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in Summer 2019.