Medr has a regulatory framework

Medr, since 1 August 2024 the regulator of higher education in Wales, has published its regulatory framework – setting out conditions of registration and regulatory approaches for the entire tertiary sector.

Weighing in at 142 pages and containing seventeen ongoing conditions of registration (of which seven are also initial conditions), the new framework has been developed across two rounds of consultation – the first dealing with the overall direction of travel, and the second (which concluded in December of 2025) covering the fine detail of proposals.

Medr has hit upon the happy idea of listening to and responding to these consultation responses – with sector feedback on the first consultation leading to clarity over what needs to be done and guidance on how it is to be done. The second phase drew 120 responses noting further issues of clarity and burden: and once again the regulator has made changes as a result.

Across the closed-response questions, respondents generally agreed the approach would achieve its underlying intention – but there was less agreement that it was proportionate, and less again that it was clear.

Going forward there is still a great deal of work to be done, and again Medr will continue to work with providers, learners, and partners on monitoring operations, developing templates, aligning assurance cycles, and refining definitions. We will see further documentation and implementation support emerge during 2026-27.

The inevitable comparison with the Office for Students

There are currently 424 providers of higher education registered with the Office for Students: Medr has (if you include the UK-wide Open University) nine. While the OfS regulatory framework has to account for pretty much every version of higher education provision you could imagine, in Wales there are two smaller semi-rural pre-92 providers, two larger traditional civic universities, two larger post-92s with multiple locations, a small modern provider that became a university in 2008, and a medium-sized modern provider that became a university in 2011. And the Open University.

It’s a small sector: you could, weather and the length of your stay at each provider notwithstanding, probably visit all nine in a single working day. There are a few FE providers that deliver higher education courses on behalf of universities – but these are almost always based on long-standing and reliable agreements.

What I’m getting at here is that while OfS is compelled to be broader in its expectations and definitions given that similar rules have to apply to, for example, the Backstage Academy and the University of Leeds; Medr deals with a small closed pool of providers where structures and expectations are clearly understood. In higher education, at least, Wales has limited variation – there is no expectation that a huge swathe of “challenger institutions” will emerge on the Alternative (non-fundable) side – and a great deal of commonality. The FE providers that offer HE courses will be drawn closer in, but Medr also regulates them as FE providers!

The counterpoint here is that Medr is attempting to develop a regulatory framework that also applies to further education, sixth form colleges, adult learning, and apprenticeships. While the expectations held of higher education are easy to define, other areas of the wider tertiary sector have significant differences in itself. There is a danger that the tertiary approach will add substantially to the complexity of this framework, without seeing a great deal of benefit for students or staff in higher education.

The Act gives Medr power to differentiate conditions between provider types – but for core conditions including quality, welfare, learner engagement, and equality of opportunity, the same requirements apply across the board.

What’s new?

With an iterative process like this, changes are made in increments rather than as sudden shifts. It would be easy to assume that all the major decisions had already been made – and it would also be accurate to say that in the main the shifts in the final version are on wording and other matters of detail. But there are still some big moments (I’d point you to Jim’s piece on the consultation for the detail on other parts of these conditions).

Quality and continuous improvement

The minimum compliance section within the quality and continuous improvement condition Quality Framework– which dealt with basic expectations around things like using learner survey outcomes in institutional quality assurance, governing body oversight of quality strategies, and both self evaluation and external evaluation – has been removed entirely. The intention here is to move away from mandating a particular approach to quality. Medr will still expect to see evidence of a provider taking quality seriously, there’s still a requirement to self-report where things go wrong and there are beefed-up references to the work (in higher education) of the Quality Assurance Agency in providing the evidence (every six years) that the regulator would need to act.

Staff and learner welfare

Previous versions of the framework required a “welfare action plan” every year – this has now been refined to once every two years and Medr will be putting the work in on a template for providers. The annual assurance and compliance return will still contain information on compliance with this condition – higher education providers still need to provide a statement of evidence on their own internal welfare evaluation as a part of the registration process.

The welfare condition covers harassment and sexual misconduct in general terms but without the specificity of OfS’ standalone E6 condition – no universal definitions, no NDA prohibitions, no staff-student relationship requirements. Medr says it is “assessing opportunities” to strengthen its approach here.

Learner engagement

Each part of the tertiary sector will get a tailored briefing document to accompany the Learner Engagement Code – and every provider will need to “develop, publish, and review a statement on their commitment to impactful learner engagement in decision making” with learners (and learner representatives) getting a voice in these processes.

Reportable events

The draft consulted on did not include timescales for notifying Medr of “reportable events” – we now learn that “serious incidents” and “notifiable events” (there’s a list for both, answering another set of requests for detail) must be notified within 10 working days of the event happening, being discovered, or identified as something that is likely to happen in the future.

Learner protection

Learner Protection Plans will only be required when Medr specifically requests one – there is no standing requirement for providers to maintain or publish a plan. Triggers include course closures, significant changes to mode of study, loss of specialist personnel, and loss of essential facilities – but these are discretionary rather than automatic, and “planned” closures with teach-out are generally excluded.