The government is proposing to create something called the
Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to try to improve the teaching in higher education.
- See the article by Peter Scott in the Guardian for a negative view bout TEF
- See the collection of links from the Times Higher education section.
The goverment is preparing a white paper about the TEF. The
record of the speech given by
Jo Johnson MP, gives the goverment's current thinking about TEF. A couple of points from the speech
- The overment wants to increase student numbers and widen participationof students from all classes.
- Some surveys have shown showed that only around half of students felt their course had provided good value for money
- Between 2006 and 2015, the graduate earnings premium decreased from around 55% higher to around 45% higher than the earnings of non-graduates, with graduates now earning on average £31k and non-graduates £22,000.
- There has been a 300% increase in the percentage of firsts since the 1990s. So the goverment wants to include a fine tuning of the grade.Perhaps a GPA.
I was amused to see the phrase
But many full time students are still not being sufficiently stretched.
He complains that many students report low weekly hours on their course, but do they know how much independenet study they should be doing? In the mathematics degree, there is an implicuit assumption that students spend time woking through their lecture notes.
I was at fitrst excited to see the phrase
I am also pleased to see the piloting of new National Student Survey questions that measure the engagement of students with their course, staff and fellow students.
Someone from Poland told me that their student questionair's includec questions to know whether students were engaged in the course, before they can complain. However, I expect that it will be the lecturers fault if the students are not engaged in the course.
