OfS is refocusing on the students in its title

I’d rather naively assumed that the speech would resemble those that OfS have been giving at other sector events over the past six months or so – but this one was surprisingly rich with signals about where the regulator is intending to focus next.

The big theme was acting in the student interest and how OfS is intending to expand and improve the work it does with students.

After the usual sector-specific hat tip on how amazing college HE is, Lapworth framed much of the content around its emerging response to the Lords Industry and Regulators Committee report:

…we too have come to recognise that our understanding and communication of the student interest has not always been strong enough or consistent enough for our regulation to be visible to students and for them to feel the confidence in our regulation they should.

Lapworth said that students have “serious questions” about the amount of teaching they receive, the frequency and usefulness of feedback provided to them, and the level of support, both academic and pastoral, they can access – and said that students deserve to receive what they were promised by their provider when they chose their course:

We want to see that spelt out with greater clarity, and students confident they can hold providers to account for it.

That sounds like the endlessly delayed stuff on consumer protection law – although given the volume of redundancies that providers seem to be making and the dangerously out-of-date Student Protection Plans that seem to accompany each announcement, students will also be hoping for action in that area too.

On its ongoing inspections, Lapwoth signalled some changes to nomenclature (“assessments or compliance assessments, rather than investigations”), additional training for assessment teams and more information about how institutions are selected for assessment and how the process unfolds from there. In the Q&A, she also committed to some summary work on the emerging themes to save everyone wading through each report.

The section on freedom of speech and academic freedom was fairly boilerplate – although the Q&A was trickier given the way in which the legislation accidentally catches all students in OfS providers and their SUs. It sounds like neither OfS nor the Department for Education really understood some of the messier implications of the Act, despite it taking over two years to get onto the statute book.

I’m very much looking forward to Arif Ahmed handling complaints from 11 year olds in some FE colleges that the external speaker they’ve invited needs the College to fund the security, or that the “offensive but otherwise legal” comment they made in class has been clamped down on:

In particular, I know that many of AoC’s members have made points about the age of student union representatives, given that they may be younger than those performing that role in universities.

Well yes.

There was an intriguing section on what students have been saying on OfS’ visits – Lapworth reminded the audience that mental health and access to accommodation have now been bodged into its Equality of Opportunity Risk Register:

[because it is] clear that students are increasingly concerned about the cost, quality and uneven availability of accommodation for their studies. It’s the most frequently mentioned issue in discussions with students in my visits to institutions.

On these sorts of issues, Lapworth stressed that while OfS must be careful not to promise the benefits of regulation that it cannot be confident it can deliver, it may well assume a role:

But we are open to the view that, as a regulator framed and formed in relation to the interests of students, it may fall to us to take action, or to seek to better co-ordinate the activity of others, or to just talk about them because they matter to students.

Hat-tipping John Blake’s new wider role, Lapworth described “the three ins” into OfS’ work for students:

• Student information: what OfS thinks students need to know (or at least have the chance to know) about higher education before, during and after their involvement in it.
• Student input: opportunities for students and their representatives to share what students think OfS needs to know, and hear OfS’ responses.
• Student insight: what OfS thinks it needs to know about what students experience before, during and after higher education in order to properly deliver its regulatory work.

To that end, it’s commissioned new polling and a range of focus groups to expand its insight into students’ experiences and preferences, is extending the terms of current members of its student panel to shape a refreshed approach to student input, and is conducting a thorough review of its student-facing communications to ensure they are relevant, meaningful and engaging.

The best news? There’s going to be a roadshow. A series of strategy development events is coming in the next few months – workshops in May and June in various locations around the country, the dates of which it will be announcing in the next few weeks. I bet you can’t wait.