The government’s response to the Pearce review of TEF doesn’t do justice to it

The government’s failure to seriously engage with the Pearce review’s proposals sets the TEF on a course towards irrelevance, argues Paul Ashwin.

Make no mistake, the Pearce review of the TEF is a serious piece of work.

It takes an evidence-informed look at the purposes and design of the TEF and fully engages with the HE sector’s concerns about the exercise. It develops a holistic and systematic set of proposals for the future development of the TEF that even-handedly take account of the strengths and limitations of its current design.

In contrast, the DfE response picks and chooses elements it likes and dislikes while ignoring the underlying logic of the review. As a result, its response is made up of an incoherent set of proposals that largely end up mumbling uncertainly about what they will ask the Office for Students to do in the future.

You can read the full blog post at Wonkhe.

Professor Paul Ashwin

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University. He played a key role in creating CGHE, was a CGHE Deputy Director and led the Centre’s Graduate Experiences of Employability and Knowledge project.