Monday 12-12-2016 - 14:06

Undergraduate Education Officer, Zoe Backhouse, discusses the Teaching Excellence Framework, and explains why final year students should reject the TEF by joining the NSS Boycott.

The University recently announced it will be participating in the second stage of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).  This is despite hundreds of students and staff signing two open letters to the Vice Chancellor, Hugh Brady, urging against this.

The TEF is a new government measure that Universities are using to raise tuition fees.  It forces Universities to compete like they’re in a market, battling for a bronze, silver or gold award, winning a fee increase for each medal.  With the TEF, some Universities will charge higher fees than others, meaning poorer students will be priced out of the highest ranked Universities.  Fees could reach 12k by 2026.

 

Since the TEF was announced, students and staff have taken action.  We have lobbied in Parliament, campaigned in national press, fought on campuses and marched in our thousands.  

 

But still the Government refuses to cut the link between the TEF and increased fees.

 

We have one tool left to stop the TEF: the National Student Survey.  

 

Alongside our employment data and drop-out rates, the Government will use the National Student Survey (NSS) to rank Universities.  

 

This means that a satisfaction survey, that less than a third of students complete, is being weaponised to in-debt an entire generation.

 

We are calling on final year students to join thousands of others across the country and boycott the NSS.  Withdraw your participation in the TEF, refuse to be complicit in the act of raising fees: boycott the NSS.  It’ll be the easiest activism you’ve ever done.

 

Pledge to boycott at: bristolsu.org.uk/nssboycott