Expert comment: TEF risks punishing universities for the students they admit

Writing in Times Higher Education, Vice-Chancellor Julie Hall explains why the recent overhaul of the Teaching Excellence Framework was a 'missed opportunity'

Date: 13 November 2026

No one in higher education should defend poor teaching. If a course is failing its students, the regulator should act quickly. But the Office for Students’ revised Teaching Excellence Framework, which its co-chief executives say will have “real regulatory bite”, is a blunt instrument pointed at a precise problem. I fear it will damage the institutions that do most to widen opportunity.

Start with what the framework measures. The TEF is meant to reward good teaching but much of it rests on student outcomes, such as progression into graduate employment. Those outcomes depend heavily on things teaching can’t control. Students from more privileged backgrounds often have networks and confidence, and a university that admits students without those advantages and still gets them into good jobs is doing excellent work. The new TEF will only look at the destination, not the journey to get there.

Then there’s the problem the OfS says it’s trying to solve. The English regulator speaks of pockets of poor provision, particularly in franchised courses. I don’t dispute that these exist but we already have tools for finding them. The B3 registration conditions on student outcomes and National Student Survey identify weak courses and trigger action. Building a high-stakes, sector-wide rating system to catch a minority of providers is like closing a motorway to deal with a pothole.

The TEF is an institutional judgement. Yet students do not enrol at institutions in the abstract – they enrol on courses. Even a gold-rated university will have bronze provision in some courses, while a bronze-rated one will have outstanding courses. What does a single rating tell an applicant choosing between two degrees? What does it tell the OfS about where quality is actually lacking? A label that is simultaneously too broad to guide students and too crude to guide regulators is not a quality system.

All this is a missed opportunity. Our most stubborn quality problem is the gap in life chances between students who arrive with socio-economic advantage and those who do not. A genuine quality framework would put that gap at its centre and reward institutions that close it. These proposals risk treating the gap as a mark against the universities working hardest to narrow it.

We’ve been here before. Ofsted’s framework has been criticised for penalising schools that take on the most complex and highest-need pupils. Heads in difficult circumstances ask whether it is rational to take young people who will count against them. Universities will ask the same question. If the stakes of a poor rating are high enough, even the most mission-driven institution will feel pressure to recruit fewer students from disadvantaged backgrounds, because their outcomes are statistically riskier. 

I have one other observation to make. Research has found that the people who actually teach in universities often feel uninvolved in – and unaffected by – the TEF. Their expertise, commitment and craft are not examined. A Teaching Excellence Framework that does not engage with teachers is a curious thing. If we want better teaching, we should be investing in the people who teach, rather than simply publishing a medal table.

I am not arguing for less accountability. London Metropolitan University welcomes scrutiny because our students and staff deserve nothing less. I am arguing for accountability that is accurate, fair and aimed at the right target. The OfS should use the tools it already has to tackle poor provision and build a framework that recognises the distance students travel, rather than only where they started. And it should involve teaching staff in shaping it.

The consultation is open. I hope the sector, including those who expect to be rated gold, will use it to join me in arguing that a quality system that penalises opportunity is not worth having.

This article was originally published as an opinion piece in Times Higher Education. Read it here.