Birkbeck University of London’s computing provision received a clean bill of health following an Office for Students investigation into compliance with condition B3.

The B3 reports so far released have all been structured around claims of contextual factors and prior action by the provider in question – in essence to excuse performance below the B3 numerical threshold by dint of circumstance. It’s been very difficult to – of what is now 12 reports, two-thirds have resulted in a condition of registration.

For it’s own part Birkbeck argued that its focus on older students would have an impact on the data, set out how flexibility offered to students affected outcomes measures, noted a review of the postgraduate course portfolio in 2019, and a portion of the undergraduate cohort not studying for a degree. OfS accepted the cases put forward on flexibility, the review, and other undergraduate study – so it is worth going over all four in a bit more detail.

Socio-economic profile

The Birkbeck case was that older students faced additional challenges (such as work or caring responsibilities) alongside study. In response OfS claimed such issues were already covered in the way numeric thresholds were set, and highlighted the fact that Birkbeck still showed a discrepancy against the performance benchmark (which explicitly takes into account the demographics of an undergraduate cohort). Of course, there are no benchmarks for postgraduate students – here OfS noted that outcomes were below those attained for similarly aged cohorts at other providers.

Demographic arguments have never really washed with the regulator in these investigations, so it was not surprising to see them fail again. It is always nice to see OfS look at benchmarks for B3, given earlier (and very public) antipathy towards the idea.

Flexibility for students

Birkbeck has long focused on what OfS describes as “non-traditional delivery”, and as a part of this students can have unusual changes in study intensity throughout a course. In its submission to OfS, it made the reasonable point that many students take breaks from study in between modules – in some cases a full year at masters’ level between the taught component and a dissertation. Maintenance loans for part-time students came in in 2018-19, so prior to this (and isn’t that a timely reminder of how old much of this data is?) many students would be nominally full time even if their study pattern was closer to part time.

OfS saw this as particularly relevant to all indicators for postgraduate taught provision, and for the completion indicator on full-time, first degree courses. It is to be emphasised that the way Birkbeck teaches is hardly a secret, and one is tempted to speculate whether a time-consuming investigation could have been avoided via a quick read of the prospectus.

Review of PGT indicators

Another common pattern in these reviews is that the provider in question had spotted and dealt with the issues before OfS got involved – another facet of the use of very old data in making initial threshold determinations. Here, Birkbeck had spotted that many computing postgraduate courses were not up to snuff – and weaker courses had been culled. The performance improvement resulting can be seen in the most recent B3 release suggests that the current core of Birkbeck PGT computing provision is much stronger – so OfS conceded the point.

Other undergraduate study

Many Birkbeck students register for a Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE) award with the intention of studying a small number of modules of interest rather than the full qualification. Again, this is hardly news to anyone who knows Birkbeck – who were also savvy enough to note planned work to support precisely this mode of learning via the proposed lifelong learning entitlement (LLE).

There was an issue particularly with students on a foundation degree – now withdrawn and replaced by an integrated foundation year of the sort the previous government wanted to defund. In this case, OfS felt that regulatory action (of an unspecified sort, but probably bad news) would not deliver any benefit to students.