Assuring quality

We are legally responsible for ensuring that the quality of teaching is assessed in the higher education provision we fund. Like other UK funding bodies, we do this by contracting the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to devise and apply ways of ensuring the maintenance of academic standards and assuring the quality of teaching and academic support.

This means the QAA is responsible for reviewing the quality of all publicly funded higher education (HE) teaching in England on behalf of HEFCE.

Assessing quality

The processes that the QAA carry out operate within a system designed to secure the quality of teaching and the standard of awards.

This quality assurance system includes a range of processes suited to different forms of HE teaching at universities and colleges.

We develop this system in partnership with the QAA and the sector.

More on the quality assurance system

Public information about higher education

Public-facing information about HE is also an integral and increasingly important part of the quality-assurance process.

Universities and colleges produce a broad range of information to this end. Some of this is published on the Unistats web-site, including the results of the National Student Survey and the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey.

We are also creating a new set of publicly available information that will be published by HEFCE and universities and colleges.

More on information about HE

Current developments in quality assurance

We are working together with partner organisations to improve the quality assurance system.

These discussions aim to build on recent work which has made the system more public-facing, student-centred and responsive.

More on current developments in quality assurance

Governance

One of our five strategic committees - The Teaching, Quality and the Student Experience Committee (TQSE) - advises the HEFCE Board on the quality of education provided in the institutions we fund.

Previously a sub-committee of the TQSE Committee met from November 2008 to investigate specific concerns about quality and standards and to advise us on how this affected our statutory duty. The results of this work have contributed to discussions on the future of quality assurance. The sub-committee produced a report and recommendations in autumn 2009.

Quality in Higher Education Group

With DELNI, UUK and GuildHE, HEFCE have also set up a joint Quality in Higher Education Group. The group takes a strategic overview of quality assurance of HE in England and Northern Ireland, and makes any necessary recommendations to the sponsoring bodies.

The group is chaired by Professor Philip Jones, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University. It includes representatives from universities, colleges, secondary education, some of HEFCE's partner bodies in the HE sector (including the QAA), and central Government.