Office for Students board papers, 13 February 2025

Office for Students board paper release day used to be special.

Family and friends would gather round and read all kinds of fascinating papers about regulating higher education in England. I remember the squeals of delight when someone spotted a little nugget of fascinating news about Data Futures, and the joy with which we updated our regulatory activity wallcharts.

I might be misremembering, but I think it used to be a public holiday. Schools and workplaces closed for the day, and who could forget waking up late to watch Noel’s Risk Register on BBC1. I remember excitedly unwrapping my board paper day gift – Grand Theft Audit: Vice Chancellor for PS2 – but not being allowed to use the TV to play it until Michael Barber’s speech had been on.

We used, as my colleague James Coe never fails to remind me, to be a proper country. It’s board paper day again, but not that you’d know it. Just three papers – including the minutes from December 2024 – have been left in my stocking by (I assume) John Blake. I look outside and see people going about their business, oblivious to the fact that a proposal for an “integrated quality system” is considered to be exempt from publication, as is (with wonderful irony) a paper entitled “Freedom of Speech.”

The minutes for the meeting on 2 December 2024 (remember I wrote up those papers in January) focused largely on the draft OfS strategy, of note from the conversation is that it was clear that this was due to be published for consultation before the government’s strategy for higher education – and that it may need to be amended in the light of the latter (suggesting lines of communication between DfE and OfS are not working well).

The December meeting also featured a discussion on an integrated approach to quality – the minutes confirm that the proposal involves regular assessments of all providers, which would (finally) align OfS with ESG (if it also included students in the assessment). The risk-based component would be reflected in the frequency of assessments, and the focus on student outcomes and student experience would remain.

The Risk and Audit Committee report brings news of a meeting of 21 November 2024. The committee noted that 42 providers had been unable to submit student data of the required quality by the statutory deadline – delays were due to a knock-on effect from last year’s chaos, and challenges with some providers’ software suppliers. The deadline was extended to 29 November.

The Chief Executive’s report offers the usual summary of regulatory activity, glossing quality case work reports in perhaps more detail than usual as the usual lists of registration and DAPs progress were affected by the pause in registrations. Some 33FTE staff had been reallocated from registrations and other applications to work on financial stability; they were supported by five professional accounting services firms.

Six providers (including three FE colleges) have been subject to data audits regarding the quality of their student data. And we get an addition to the Data Futures story – 16 of those 42 providers who were experiencing delays in submitting data were still working after the 29 November extended deadline: three of these were still trying as of 20 December (they had, however, provided provisionally signed off data).

And that’s it. It leaves me with a profound sense of emptiness.