"The Governor View": Tertiary education developments in England, Scotland and Wales

Advance HE Governor View: Tertiary education developments in England, Scotland and Wales

Recent tertiary developments across England, Scotland and Wales aim to closer align higher and further education, encourage collaboration, and boost the skills necessary to fuel economic growth.

In Wales, the regulator Medr has published the Tertiary Regulatory Framework outlining its expectations on financial sustainability, governance and management, quality and continuous improvement. The 16 regulations in the framework also cover learner and staff welfare, learner engagement and protection, investigating complaints, the Welsh language, and equality of opportunity. 

One university in Wales is ahead of the curve, having put together a task and finish group as soon as the first consultation on the framework was published last year. As a result, governors at this institution have access to a 10-page tracker that breaks down each of the 16 requirements into their component parts and plots the university’s progress in meeting them.

“We felt that was good governance because while there were likely to be changes though the consultation, it gave us an idea of the breadth of issues,” said the chair of governors. “We could see from the detailed tracker that we were covered on most bases, but much of it wanted review - these things need constant review - and there were tweaks to some of our policies and reports.”

Some of the conditions were a bigger challenge. The learner protection plan, for instance, was in need of strengthening.  

“We were already having discussions about a business continuity plan and we thought ‘let’s get ahead of that game’,” said the board chair. “If for example we lost an academic partner, they went into insolvency, or there is a massive cyber-attack and students can’t be taught, how would we tackle that?”

The framework has provided clarity about what is expected and the plan will be signed off at the next board development day.

Welsh universities are confident that requirements around financial sustainability and governance and management are already fulfilled. 

“These things can always be sharpened and we are continually doing that,” says one governor. “I don’t want to tempt fate but we I feel we are in a pretty strong position.”

Institutions have until the end of July to apply to be on the Medr register.  A board member of one university says the decision has been made to register around mid-June.

“We think there is strength in demonstrating to partners we are on this register and we are meeting those requirements,” he said. “We have factored quite a bit of work into board meetings so we can understand this and own it. It has been an intensive piece of work that has involved reviewing a lot of existing documents, but it is always timely to do that to ensure we are meeting the purpose.”

While much work has already been undertaken in Welsh institutions to improve staff and learner wellbeing, the regulatory framework formalised this in its requirement for providers to draw up welfare action plans. 

According to one governor, the risk factor here is not the plan, but continuation of funding.

“Some of the spend on student mind, staff welfare and sexual misconduct comes from the regulator so the risk is the continuation of that funding,” said a board member. “We are always looking to see what more we can do but there is a degree of dependence on funding from Medr.”

Grants in the funding settlement create an expectation about provision, but some grants are non-recurrent. Boards have to concern themselves with scenario planning and resource allocation to keep the work going.

Meanwhile in Scotland, The Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Act, became law in March.

It includes plans to establish a new apprenticeship committee, enable ministers to set funding priorities in a new national strategy and make new provision to promote widening access to HE. It also aims to strengthen the response to  gender-based violence at colleges and universities and provide greater transparency on university principals’ pay, and an expectation of fair work principles. 

The Act reshapes the non-departmental bodies structure in an effort to bring about greater coherence and to ensure that training and skills prioritise the needs of the economy.

It will mean a doubling of the size of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) as it takes on responsibilities currently undertaken by Skills Development Scotland, including creating an apprenticeship committee and appointing new members with training experience.

One court chair at a Scottish university says the jury is out about the impact of these changes at a time when higher and further education are working more closely to try to make pathways clearer, but are financially stretched to the limit.

“Optimistic people will say it is all very good and follows from recommendations made by Withers (2023 Withers Review of Scotland’s skills landscape), and the critics will say it is just re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic: proof of the pudding will be in the eating.”

At the very least, he says, the mechanics of merging elements of two separate organisations with different cultures may present challenges. 

“Will people with experience of FE or apprenticeships be moved into HE related activities and vice versa, that is the question,” he said. “As long as staff are familiar with the territory the risk should be minimised.”

According to this board member, the powers that the SFC will have as a result of the legislation are in reality “not that different”. 

“The administration will issue a note of strategic guidance saying institutions should do this or that and it will have powers to require institutions to do things in exchange for the public funds,” he said. “But my perception is that a lot of it was being done anyway and we all comply with the Scottish Code of Good Higher Education Governance.”

One potential area of tension, according to one council member, is the focus on the needs of the economy and the extent to which the government, through the SFC, will centre this in the delivery of HE courses. 

A national skills strategy is being drawn up that will highlight particular sectors including construction, engineering, renewables, digital, and financial services.

“The key for institutions that are concerned about their financial stability is offering courses that students want to study,” said a Scottish governor. “You’ve got the supply side and the demand side and the institutions in the middle. When funding arrangements are reviewed there may be an incentive to try to provide the kind of courses that the economy needs. But on the other hand, you need to ensure that, in a very competitive environment, you are providing an offering that will attract bums on seats to keep your head above water.”

In the Scottish context of free tuition fees for home students, market levers to incentivise student choices are not available. While politicians have committed to retain the policy, future reviews could change that. 

“Restructuring tertiary will not make much of a difference,” says a board member. “What will make a difference is if, in the fullness of time, perhaps under a new administration, the SFC embarks gradually on an attempt to steer the whole sector into providing a bit better for the needs of the economy.”

The focus on apprenticeships in the Act could be an early indicator. But one council member points to the difficulty of running programmes in areas of Scotland that do not have big employers or concentrated industrial cluster. 

“Graduate apprenticeship schemes are employer led,” he says. “If a university is going to offer such programmes, it needs a partnership with a big firm.” 

Since 2024, Scottish provision has been monitored via the Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review (TQER). Key features include external peer review, review against the principles of the TQER, review visits, student engagement and partnership, evidence and criteria-based judgements and findings, a published report and follow-up activity.

Teams seek to establish the effectiveness of institutions’ approaches to assuring excellent teaching and maintaining academic standards, supporting student success, use of data and embedding an enhancement and quality culture.

One governor in Scotland said that as the university’s quality assurance mechanisms were already strong, the TQER had not so far present any particular challenges that had come to the attention of the board.

“We are doing institutionally-led reviews consistently and the board gets module, course and department quality information,” he said. “We have academic working groups that are set up to learn any lessons. We are pretty good at quality.”

South of the border in England, the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper also includes an academic quality aspect in the form of a refresh of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Its new iteration will assess the quality of the student experience and student outcomes. 

Proposed ratings of gold, silver, bronze or requires improvement would be made for each aspect, with an overall rating based on the lower of the two ratings. 

One governor of a post-1992 institution said that the TEF could present a reputational risk but that governors were familiar with the metrics that are likely to feed into it.

“Although we don’t know exactly what new TEF will look like, it sounds like the metrics will be similar to those that governors have become used to: retention, graduate outcomes and the other metrics that go into the current TEF,” she said. “These have been a big area of focus on the board since I’ve become a governor. To some degree it will be about how the changes in the new TEF will work. Is it going to be about more regular reviews for those at lower levels of rankings, for instance?”

The white paper also covers government expectations on HE collaboration and specialisation, promoting “curiosity-driven” research and the international student levy. It also promises reform of the strategic priorities grant to support priority sectors, development of the lifelong learning entitlement (LLE), clearer expectations on HE in local skills improvement plans, a review of innovation funding and support for innovation, start-ups and spinouts.

Like their counterparts in Wales and Scotland, governors in England point to closer links with further education and across research but some feel collaborations more generally, particularly the kind designed to save money, need upfront investment - a difficult prospect when finances are tight.

“At time like these, does it make more sense to focus on our core business model and really getting that right for students?” said one board member in the Midlands. “Institutions can respond to government policy drives around research, for instance, because it brings incentives. In other areas, such as shared services or teaching, the reality is more ‘we want you to do these things but there is no clear incentive to do it’.”

Similar views were expressed about the opportunities that might be afforded by the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), which can be applied for from September for courses and modules starting from January 2027 onwards.

“Some universities will be better placed to embrace this than others, but it is part of good financial oversight to question what benefits the entitlement will actually bring to your institution,” said a governor. “The question is, are we going to put our efforts into something where there is potential and the government would like us to go there, but where we can’t quite see how students are going to understand it and whether there is going to be high demand for it.”tive,” said a board member. “At each SPC meeting we take one of the pillars of our strategy and take a deep dive into it and the report from SPC goes to the board. It is very thorough and provides a lot of assurance.” 

A deep dive into research income, for instance, proved to be a real eye opener for some governors.  

“I could see people were really unaware of how difficult it was to get research funding,” said the governor “They were presented with the figure and how many bids we have to put in to get that amount, and I could see jaws dropping.”  

Boards also learn lessons from less successful enterprises: “We had a project not long ago that cost more than we thought it would and we did a ‘lessons learnt’ on procurement,” says a governor.  

The refreshed code will be published after the CUC annual plenary in May. Governors want to see a “set of boundaries but not minutia”. 

“We want the executive to be running the university and the board to be dealing with the bigger picture,” said one. “We need almost a pop-up box of the key issues that they expect consideration of, and everything outside of that should be at your discretion.”