TEF Subject Pilot 2018/19 statements submitted to OfS
Thursday, 07 March 2019
We have now submitted our Provider and the majority of our Subject statements to the Office for Students (OfS), as part of our participation in the Teaching Excellence & Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) Subject Pilot 2018/19. We are participating in this pilot alongside around 50 other providers, as a learning opportunity in advance of the exercise becoming mandatory from 2020.
Producing our Provider and Subject statements has required a number of colleagues in Schools and Functions to take on a significant additional workload at a very busy time. We would like to thank everyone involved for their support to ensure our excellence in teaching and learning is well reflected in our submission.
Participating in the TEF Subject Pilot has provided us with a valuable opportunity to reflect on, and to gather impact evidence of, our teaching and learning excellence and enhancement across the Institution and to identify where we might improve. We are testing our data, metrics and narrative statements with the external subject-level panels, helping us to be better prepared for the mandatory exercise when this comes into effect in 2020.
The results of the pilot will not be shared with anyone other than ourselves. This is unlike those for the future mandatory exercise which will be published widely and will become an important element of our recruitment, teaching practice and enhancement activities.
TEF was introduced by the government in England in 2016 and is run by the OfS. It assesses teaching at universities and colleges, as well as how institutions ensure excellent outcomes for their students. Each institution is awarded a gold, silver or bronze rating for excellence, as judged by an independent panel of students, academics and other experts. The University of Reading was awarded a TEF Silver in 2017.
The next planned phase for the OfS is to introduce ratings at subject level. This year’s pilot aims to refine the potential metrics and identify the most effective way of producing these ratings. This is in advance of the subject level exercise becoming mandatory for all institutions from 2020.