Is the schools' grass greener? What HE can learn from today's Ofsted announcements

The education manifesto commitments are a-coming

Today's announcement from Bridget Phillipson's Department for Education contains a long-trailed manifesto commitment around replacing Ofsted's one word judgements with a report card.

Phillipson says the need for reform is "overwhelmingly clear" and that "single headline grades are low information for parents and high stakes for schools". As well as changing the one word grading system, struggling schools will receive support and improvement plans rather than a change in management. Not everyone will agree with these changes but, for me, they're a positive step towards a regime that supports schools to improve, rather than penalises them for every wrong.

But while school inspection might be getting a revamp, higher education providers are still operating under a scheme that clings to some of these blunter mechanisms and contains little of the announced nuance.

A little less blunt inspection, a few more answers please

The current quality system in HE is more than a little opaque, although the Office for Student's recently published business plan contains plans to ameliorate this.

In the current quality system, providers' do not undergo regular external quality review once they're on the Office for Students register unless, of course, they attract attention for all of the wrong reasons. It means the only "inspection" information we have is centred around perceived weaknesses in provision, and most of it is based on such a small slither of provision that it doesn't present the "full and comprehensive assessment" that schools are being promised.

Much of that is intentional application of a risk-based approach, and providers wouldn't always welcome an institution-wide review because one area has caught the regulator's attention. But the biggest distinction with today's announcements is that, even where issues have been found, anything resembling an improvement plan is - at least in the public realm - nowhere to be found. Where issues have been found, we are yet to learn what regulatory action, if any, will be taken.

This keeps the low information and high stakes that Phillipson criticises the current Ofsted regime for. Should students still apply to these courses? Is the OfS continuing to provide funding for them where applicable? Should providers being making changes (I expect they are, but are they doing so on their own accord or as part of the regulatory process)?

What's TEF got to do with it?

There's also some big similarities with the TEF Exercise. Having analysed the TEF submissions, I'd argue that they are pretty full and comprehensive and that the panel looked at the learning experience from many different angles. At the end of the day, however, providers are still slapped with a one word judgement (Gold, Silver, Bronze or Requires Improvement).

These single word judgements perpetuate the "low information" issue, telling applicants and parents very little about what the learning experience actually looks like inside an institution. So limited are they in distinguishing between providers, many have taken to declaring their "triple Gold" status in an attempt to set themselves apart. While you can dig deeper and find out how each provider did across a range of features, if you're busy considering many different institutions, why would you bother when there's a handy label on the front?

The bluntness of the ratings is most evident when it comes to "requires improvement". The Pearce review into TEF recommended against using it, because it doesn't mean the provider itself needs to improve necessarily, but that it needs to improve to receive a TEF rating. Given that the TEF is designed to look at excellence above the minimum quality requirements, it's not necessarily a cause for concern.

Universities are not big schools

The inclusion of higher education within the DfE's remit is often critiqued for producing a tendency to treat universities as big schools. They're not - and that means that the same inspection, quality and broader regulation regime won't work across the entire education sector. But that doesn't mean that one part can't learn from another, or that the principles that are leading to progress in one area can't be applied to the rest.

The question today's announcement has left me with is therefore less "how can we make HE regulation look more like Ofsted?" and more "how can we use this more nuanced, improvement-not-punishment approach to improve HE regulation?" Looking again at some of these issues might not be the worst start.