11 October 2017 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
The Department for Education has published lots of information on the third year of the TEF framework this week. TEF 3 will still be known acronymically (who knew that was a word?) as TEF, despite the name now changing to the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework – to “better reflect the fact that the TEF has always had a strong focus on student outcomes and that this focus is being further strengthened through the inclusion of new metrics from the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset”.
The new metrics in question are the proportion of an institution’s graduates in employment or further study 3 years after graduating, and the proportion of graduates earning above the median. Both are to be derived from the new LEO dataset, which will itself be combined with the DLHE survey by 2020. Wonkhe has a comprehensive review, as usual.
The biggest question is how seriously the exercise will be taken, now that the halt on fee rises disconnects the exercise from funding levers, and that the NSS weighting in is halved in favour of earnings data - a disincentive for newer, teaching-focused institutions that may have performed well under (and previously welcomed) the TEF 2 metrics. In addition, the department’s reluctance to confirm the pre-announced HE review makes any enthusiasm difficult to find.
