The Teaching Excellence Framework: What's the Purpose?

Throughout the summer of 2015, the newly appointed British Minister of State for Science and Universities, Jo Johnson, affirmed his intent to introduce what he has called the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ (TEF). The general ambition of the TEF has been expressed as ‘rebalancing the relationship between teaching and research’ in universities and ‘putting teaching at the heart of the system’, by introducing a metrics‐based teaching quality assessment mechanism. In exchange, universities deemed to have ‘excellent’ teaching will be rewarded with the right to increase undergraduate fees in line with inflation. On November 6th 2015, the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills published a Green Paper on higher education, entitled, Fulfilling our Potential: teaching excellence, social mobility, and student choice, outlining various reforms in higher education, one of which is the introduction of the TEF. This report aims to offer an academically informed rapid‐response analysis of the policy proposal, focusing on the TEF by engaging with the Green Paper as well as the Minister for Science and Universities’ public statements regarding the general ambition, objectives, and implementation mechanisms for the TEF. Moreover, this report aims to cast a critical eye upon the proposals made in the consultation paper relating to teaching excellence, by focusing on the question of purpose. More specifically, it will argue that there is a fundamental set of political and ethical questions about the purposes and social value of higher education that needs to be at the heart of this debate.