The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS). The TEF aims to encourage higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies. It does this by assessing and rating universities and colleges for excellence above a set of minimum requirements for quality and standards.

Universities and colleges that take part in the TEF receive an overall rating as well as two underpinning ratings – one for the student experience and one for student outcomes.

The ratings reflect the extent to which a university or college delivers an excellent experience and outcomes for its mix of undergraduate students and across the range of its undergraduate courses and subjects.

The panel statement says, “In reaching this decision, the [TEF] panel considered there to be compelling evidence that the outstanding and very high quality features apply to all the provider’s groups of students, including students from underrepresented groups.”

The TEF panel reported that,

“The provider clearly articulates the educational gains it intends its students to achieve. Its courses are designed to be intellectually bold and academically stimulating with a strong emphasis on preparing students for leadership career opportunities. There is a strong emphasis on students gaining the high-level skills needed to be able to apply advanced knowledge, leading to prestigious employment opportunities.

“The agenda addresses key challenges faced by people, organisations, and societies around the world. This definition is framed in the context of the high quality and high levels of ambitions of the provider’s students, and it has been co-created with them.

“The student submission highlights the relevance of this framing of educational gains to their future ambitions to ‘make a difference’.“