Enhanced monitoring for business in Bolton

The University of Bolton (recently renamed as the University of Greater Manchester) holds the distinction of being the subject of the first Office for Students investigation into quality and standards in business and management provision that identified concerns.

Specifically, the OfS investigation team reported that the available academic staff resource could be overstretched, and that the (formative) support available to students was “not specific”.

The wheels of regulation grind slowly but grind they do – mid-February 2025 (that’s two years and four months since the launch of the investigation) saw OfS decide to conduct enhanced monitoring of the provider. The university will provide updates against an action plan at periodic intervals.

If you are wondering what is in the action plan (for instance if you are another provider hoping to find ways to mitigate the student impact of not being able to afford a full complement of staff), we are not told directly.

There’s a suggestion that Bolton was “in the process of securing additional staff resource” as far back as 2023 – when OfS popped in this time last year this appeared to be “in progress”. There’s also been improvements to staff training regarding assessment and feedback, which is good as it goes. And the university claims an improvement in NSS scores (you’d have to squint). However, OfS is not completely satisfied:

We do not however consider that all risk of noncompliance has been mitigated. This is because a number of the provider’s actions have not yet been enacted, while others are yet to have a substantial demonstrated impact on students.

So the regulator will keep monitoring the action plan until it is completely implemented, and has a “demonstrable impact” on student’s experience and outcomes. By what metric? We are not told.

The rules around “enhanced monitoring” (as of November 2022, at least) are set out clearly. There’s a frankly adorable “internal reminder” to OfS staff to keep an eye on things, and a requirement for the provider to submit additional information as requested.

There’s a keenness not to impose more burden on the university than is necessary, even though there is also a recognition that the reported issues have an impact on a large number of students:

We have also noted the scale and impact of these breaches; due to the university’s context and the nature of the concerns, a large number of students could potentially be disadvantaged by the concerns outlined in the assessment report.

What else could have happened, and what else could happen if the information requested is not to the regulator’s liking? The next step up would be a specific condition of registration, which would allow the OfS to compel Bolton to do things (or, not do things). If the university was in breach of a condition like this we move on to the scary stuff like fines and deregistration.

Based on the OfS decisions on Bedfordshire and Bolton, enhanced monitoring appears to be the initial regulatory action of choice in such cases. This is interesting in that, as recently as 2022, OfS was proudly declaring that it was substantially lowering its use of this particular sanction. To be an effective regulator, OfS needs to be able to step up oversight where needed, and we should welcome the fact that it feels able to act in the interest of students. Though let us draw a veil over the fact that a full time student starting their course in 2022 (when the concerns were live) is by now only a few months away from graduation.