Transparency. Openness. Trust.

There’s lots of benefits to publishing your board papers. Unfortunately, the way the Office for Students is currently doing it does not achieve any of them.

The most recent release (from the 2 December 2024 meeting) encompasses a short set of minutes from the October meeting, the regular unilluminating reports from the Quality Assessment Committee (it talked about degree awarding powers, we don’t know what was said) and the Risk and Audit Committee (it talked about Data Futures, we know very little about what it said, but are doubtless cheered to learn that “Most of the bugs in the rules have now been resolved”, and inevitably talked about sector finances in very general terms), and an update from the Chief Executive. And there’s a list of who the Office for Students have been visiting.

Part of the explanation for this paucity of reading material is that Board discussions concerned things that have already happened – changes to initial conditions of registration, the consultation on the OfS strategy, the independent review of Data Futures – others cover the running of the regulator itself (remuneration, resources, performance), or more general contextual conversations that are considered to be “policy in development” (political context, students, sector) or matters that probably pertain to how financially painful things are at individual providers.

But there is one shocker – there was a paper on “preparing for higher education legislation”, that may refer to an unexpected burst of primary legislation, some of the more eagerly anticipated statutory instruments covering things like the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, or just the ongoing DfE consultation on franchise relationships.

Should we have more information about the decisions made on behalf of the sector, or the way that registration fees (and substantial additional DfE funding) are being used to benefit students and the universities and other providers they study at? Frankly, yes. But we work with what we have.

From the October minutes (refresh yourself on the the rollercoaster that was that set of board papers, released during Wonkhe’s Festival of Higher Education rather than the day after Wonkhe’s Secret Life of Students) we learn that Office for Students are potentially in for a five per cent consolidated pay award in line with the Civil Service pay remit guidance.

Students are, apparently, not a generic group and do not use the language of consumer rights, although someone in the meeting noted that students are “comparable” to vulnerable consumers. A paper and discussion on OfS’ approach here has now of course manifested in a proposed OfS definition of fairness.

The discussion predates a CMA consultation on guidance on the unfair commercial practices (UCP) provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024, which says that vulnerable consumers – those susceptible due to age, health, credulity, or personal circumstances, have to be specifically protected – organisations can’t exploit foreseeable vulnerabilities (intrinsic or situational). It’s not clear yet whether subsequent meetings considered all of that before the new fairness definition was published.

To help OfS understand students a shift from the student panel to a new Student Interest Board (reporting directly and regularly to the main board) is underway, which will more closely involve students’ unions and draw on more regular surveys and other exploratory activity. The board is keen to ensure that perspectives are representative of the diversity of students across the sector. There’s also calls for an employer on the board.

The OfS board specifically requested a bunch of papers for the December meeting – the Data Futures review, a data strategy paper, an OfS performance report, and a report on the implementation of the Behan (public bodies) review of OfS. Three out of four isn’t bad.

Susan Lapworth’s chief executive report is a shadow of its former self, relegated to the back half of the meeting and running noticeably shorter than in the James Wharton glory years. The majority of it is a list of things the regulator has published, and that we already know about – such as the interim review of the financial health of the sector.

We learn (once more) that there were 108 submissions of access and participation plans for 2025-26, 149 bids to the equality in higher education innovation funds. There’s no mention of the pause in registrations (suggesting either a late decision or over-enthusiastic redaction, most likely the latter) – activity between October and December was limited (one application, one change of category request – one registration approved, one withdrawal, two provisional refusals).

And that’s it. That’s the board papers.