Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress he has made to improve the quality of higher education courses.

The government is committed to improving the quality of higher education (HE), tackling low-quality courses and ensuring all students, regardless of their background, benefit from high-quality world-leading education.

We are taking forward significant regulatory reform with the Office for Students (OfS) which aims to introduce a more rigorous and effective quality regime. This includes setting stringent minimum numerical thresholds for student outcomes, where the OfS is currently considering responses to its consultation, and measures to ensure a high-quality academic experience.

HE courses which lead to poor outcomes let down students, fail to provide value-for-money for taxpayers and students, and erode confidence in our world-class university system. Where quality requirements are not being met, the OfS will impose sanctions on providers where appropriate, including financial penalties, suspension from the OfS register or, in the worst cases, deregistration.

We have asked the OfS to implement a visible and effective inspections regime where the OfS has concerns about the quality of provision. This will involve on-site inspections. The OfS is delivering this and announced its first wave of onsite inspections on 26 May which will look specifically at Business and Management courses provided by eight HE providers. These will also examine whether poor-quality online learning has replaced face-to-face teaching to the detriment of students’ academic experience.