Eighth Report - Financial sustainability of the higher education sector in England
Select Committee
Public Accounts Committee
HC 257
15 June 2022
Recommendations
6 results
3
Accepted
Protections for students, in the event of providers facing financial distress, are not strong enough.
Recommendation
Protections for students, in the event of providers facing financial distress, are not strong enough. The OfS requires providers to have a student protection plan in place to address the risk of continuity of study for its students, but it …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees that the OfS should prioritize ensuring that all providers’ published student protection plans are fit for purpose and sufficiently clear, highlighting the OfS's risk-based approach, the introduction of Registration condition C4, and intentions to begin discussions with the sector to update and revise requirements, with a target implementation date of March 2023.
HM Treasury
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5
Accepted
Student satisfaction with the value for money of their courses is at a worryingly low...
Recommendation
Student satisfaction with the value for money of their courses is at a worryingly low level. One of the OfS’s four regulatory objectives is that students receive value for money. OfS says that students should receive the academic experience they …
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Government Response Summary
The OfS is introducing an enhanced quality regulatory regime including student outcome thresholds and new registration conditions covering students’ academic experience; it is also considering how it measures value for money and is reviewing blended learning.
HM Treasury
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8
Accepted
We asked the OfS whether satisfaction rates among students had changed as a result of...
Recommendation
We asked the OfS whether satisfaction rates among students had changed as a result of the pandemic, and what the impact of hybrid learning had been on students. The OfS told us that, following the widespread use of online provision …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to improve the quality of higher education provision and ensure students are satisfied with value for money, with the OfS introducing an enhanced quality regulatory regime and reviewing blended learning, with a target implementation date of Autumn 2022.
HM Treasury
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11
Accepted
The National Audit Office reported that the OfS does not yet have a complete and...
Recommendation
The National Audit Office reported that the OfS does not yet have a complete and transparent set of performance measures to demonstrate its own performance as a regulator.21 Of the 26 performance indicators the OfS sets out on its website, …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to work with the OfS to establish a complete set of robust, published performance measures and targets, including structured feedback from providers, to hold the OfS to account for its effectiveness, with a target implementation date of September 2022.
HM Treasury
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12
Accepted
The OfS assured us that it consulted widely on changes to its regulatory framework and...
Recommendation
The OfS assured us that it consulted widely on changes to its regulatory framework and holds meetings and workshops with stakeholder groups. However, there is no routine way in which it captures structured stakeholder feedback through which it can gather …
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Government Response Summary
The OfS is in the process of concluding the review of its key performance measures, with a view to these being published by September 2022 and the Department for Education is working with the OfS to agree an aligned suite of internal performance measures which will help the department to hold the OfS to account better.
HM Treasury
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13
Accepted
Publicly funded teaching and research make a loss across the sector once the full economic...
Recommendation
Publicly funded teaching and research make a loss across the sector once the full economic costs of those activities are taken into account. Providers’ financial viability depends on subsidising these activities from the surplus generated by non-publicly funded teaching – …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to set out the risks to achieving continued forecast growth in overseas student numbers and explain how it is mitigating those risks, noting the importance of the International Education Strategy (IES) and diversification of international student recruitment.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (3) Observations and findings — click to expand
22
Conclusion
Accepted
The OfS told us that one of the things it became very aware of during the early days of the pandemic was that it did not have the tools needed to intervene quickly if facing a provider failure. It said that, because addressing that issue was urgent, in early 2020 …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation and the OfS focus has been ensuring that protections are as robust as possible in those providers which might face financial distress.
24
Conclusion
Accepted
The results of the National Student Survey show that overall student satisfaction was stable at 82–83% between 2017 and 2020, falling to 75% in 2021.44 The OfS measures students’ perception of value for money in a separate survey, which, unlike the National Student Survey, is not restricted to final-year undergraduates. …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation, with the OfS introducing an enhanced quality regulatory regime to tackle the pockets of low-quality provision.
26
Conclusion
Accepted
The OfS suggested to us that students’ satisfaction with their courses and assessments of value for money were also related to their perceptions of what they were getting for the tuition fee. During the pandemic, there were calls for higher education providers to refund a proportion of tuition fees in …
Government Response Summary
The OfS is introducing an enhanced quality regulatory regime including student outcome thresholds and new registration conditions covering students’ academic experience; it is also considering how it measures value for money and is reviewing blended learning.