CONSULTATION ON THE OfS STRATEGY-2022-2025

The Office for Students(OfS) has just announced a change in emphasis to its regulatory strategy for university quality assurance:it’s about levelling up and the role of universities in this policy vacuum.

“Three and a half years since our public launch, this consultation on our new strategy marks a significant milestone for the Office for Students (OfS). During our first years of operation, we focused on establishing ourselves as the independent regulator for higher education in England, adding more than 400 diverse universities and colleges to our Register. We are now consulting on proposals for our second strategy, which will run from April 2022 to April 2025. The new strategy proposes two central priorities for our work: quality and standards, and equality of opportunity. It signals a step change in our focus and impact. Ensuring that all students can benefit from a high-quality academic experience has to be core to what we do.”

 The new strategy plans to assess graduates’ contribution to local and national prosperity, and the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda: with usual opaqueness this means:

• Our regulation of quality will ensure that courses require students to develop the skills they need for success beyond higher education and that all providers satisfy our minimum requirements for progression of their students to professional employment or postgraduate study.

 • Our approach to TEF assessments will incentivise providers to deliver provision that supports progression of students to professional employment or postgraduate study beyond the minimum requirements.

 • Our regulation of access and participation plans will ensure that providers take steps to address inequalities in relation to progression to professional employment or postgraduate study for any student due to their background, location, or characteristics.

 • We will work with others across government to design, deliver and evaluate programmes to address current and anticipated skills shortages for business and public services locally and nationally. Equality of opportunity.

 But nowhere does it say what is meant by levelling up?

Levelling up is designed to address the longstanding problem of the UK’s regional economic disparities – the 2020 Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Green Budget included a chapter on levelling up, which identified the following characteristics of areas most in need of levelling up: A ‘left-behind’ area, in need of ‘levelling up’, is characterised by broad economic underperformance, which manifests itself in low pay and employment, leading to lower living standards in that area. Behind these factors lie other considerations such as poor productivity, which in turn may be associated with a low skill base. The health of the population may also be relatively poor: in some cases, this could be a legacy of deindustrialisation or long-term unemployment, as well as deep-rooted socio-economic issues.

The most prominent measure of economic performance, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), shows the disproportionate contribution of London and the Southeast to UK GDP.

• In 2019 (latest available data), London accounted for 22.7% of UK GDP, with the Southeast adding another 14.8%. Their combined 37.5% of UK GDP compares with these two regions making up 26.8% of the UK population.
• As a result, GDP per head is much higher in London (£56,200) than the rest of the UK (UK average is £32,900). Only London and the Southeast have GDP per capita figures above the UK average, with London significantly pulling up the UK figure.
•  There is much less variation among other regions and nations. In 2019, most had GDP per head between £24,000 and £31,000. The Northeast (£24,100) and Wales (£24,600) had the lowest GDP per head of the UK’s 12 regions and nations. London saw the fastest GDP per head growth between 2010 and 2019, a cumulative increase of 18.0%, with the West Midlands second fastest at 13.4%. The UK average was 12.2%. The Northeast was an outlier, with growth per head of only 2.7% in total over the period. The next slowest was the Southwest at 7.2%.

Under these circumstances can we assume that the OfS will now be assessing how universities are progressing their impact on the implementation of the UN’s SDGs? “ Leave no one Behind?”