Thursday 28-06-2018 - 15:20

What is the Teaching Excellence Framework?

 

The Teaching Excellence Framework (otherwise known as the TEF) is a government initiative that ranks universities by Gold, Silver and Bronze. The TEF measures excellent teaching by looking at different data sources - including National Student Survey data on teaching, academic support and assessment, data on student retention, and graduate employment and earnings.

Why have we been talking about TEF?

In recent years the Higher Education sector has seen some of the most drastic government reforms in history. With the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and the rise in fees, students across the country have continued to show their resistance to the marketisation of higher education.

As a full-time undergraduate student, I have seen the extent to which students are positioned as consumers rather than co-producers of their education. Students at the University of Bristol believe passionately that education is a public good which must be provided for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than the for the self-interest of the individual student or learner. Alongside its vital role in supporting the national economy, education is a right, not a privilege.

Our vision is of a free and properly funded Higher Education system which delivers high-quality education, enables social mobility and provides students with the means to live and study with dignity.

What have we been doing?

While many students believe that there should be a way of ranking universities based on teaching excellence, the current TEF fails to capture the entire student experience. Over February and March we held six focus groups to explore with you your alternative vision for teaching excellence. We also held a focus group with staff that are teaching right now to get their ideas. All these views have been turned into a report which we will present to the University and the government. The report will lays out Bristol students’ alternative vision of teaching excellence and an alternative framework to measure this by.

This research is the first of its kind in student’s unions. It provides a qualitative approach to understanding the priorities of students when it comes to their education. By building an alternative teaching excellence framework that captures the priorities of students, we shed light on how the current model of TEF, based on principles of marketisation, is not compatible with students’ vision for excellent teaching.

I hope that this paper not only encourages the University of Bristol but also encourages universities across the sector to shift the narrative away from marketisation and towards a truly student-centred higher education system provided for the public good.

 

Mason Ammar, Undergraduate Education Officer 2017-18

Read the full report now