By Gavin Mackintosh-
The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has been criticised for failing to accurately reflect University teaching standards in a new ranking system.
TEF rated 295 institutions bronze, silver or gold according to their own standard of undergraduate teaching which was not clearly outlined. 59 Universities received a score of gold, whilst 116 received a Silver rating, with 56 Universities, including LSE, receiving a bronze. Other Universities that received a bronze include Southampton, Liverpool, Goldsmiths, and School of Oriental and African Studies.
Introduced by David Cameron’s government, the new teaching rankings aim to help students make informed choices about degree courses. Those awarded a bronze or higher are apparently now allowed to raise fees in line with inflation in 2018-2019, despite the general protests against the already high fees.
However, the methodology of the ranking has been criticised by some of the Universities unhappy with its rankings. Sir Christopher Snowden, President and vice-chancellor of the University of Southampton, said it was “hard to have confidence in a TEF which appears devoid of any meaningful assessment of teaching”.
“I know I am not alone in having deep concerns about its subjective assessment, its lack of transparency, and with different benchmarks for each institution removing any sense of equity and equality of assessment,” he said.
“Our own student satisfaction metrics, including satisfaction with teaching, are better than some of those universities who have been awarded silver and gold today.”
“There is clearly also a London effect, with one in three London institutions achieving bronze, compared to just one in eight outside London.
“The metrics were not benchmarked for London, when we believe there was a significant difference for London institutions, for example in relation to retention rates due to costs of living.”
Snowden is right that different benchmarks for different institutions make the quality and objectivity of any given assessment questionable.
BENCHMARK
The benchmark used cover a range of measures like facilities, student satisfaction, drop-out rates and whether students go on to employment or further study after graduating. This benchmark has some obvious failings. Student satisfaction is subjective and cannot constitute any competent measurement of assessment in full. Teaching assessment should be conducted by TEF themselves, and whilst it might be expensive to conduct a full assessment for all the Universities being assessed, that’s just tough. Students cannot be considered to be competent enough to give the best judgement of teaching standards until the students themselves have been assessed on their standard of judgement and assessment.
The proportion of students who go on to further study or employment after University is also not a very good measure of teaching standards. There could be various reasons why students drop out or don’t excel post university. Most of the reasons student’s drop out are actually likely to be the student’s own fault or like of seriousness.
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Differences between institutions, such as entry qualifications and subjects studied, were taken into account by an independent panel – made up of 27 academics, students, employers and experts in widening participation – which made the final awards.
In a statement, the University of Liverpool said it was disappointing to receive a bronze rating, but added that the TEF was “not an absolute measure of quality”.
“By other widely recognised rankings, the University of Liverpool is consistently named in the top 200 universities globally,” it said.
“Nonetheless, we’re committed to improving against the measures used in the TEF.”
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