Waiting for OfS Board Papers – the outcome

The Office for Students has a commitment to transparency with the sector it regulates. One small part of this is the publication of the papers that go to its Board. This is helpful as it shows the broad area of both policy development and action. Over the years this has revealed some of the thinking at the highest level of the OfS, particularly as issues can be tracked as they are presented as papers or as part of the CEO’s report. You might not read them yourself, but you might have seen a commentary from Jim and/or DK on Wonkhe.

Back in the Spring, I’d spotted that we’d not had any for a while, so I tried to see if there was a pattern to when the papers where published. That appeared not to be the case. Sometimes they’d appeared before the next meeting, twice they appeared on what had been the day of the next meeting, and increasingly they’d appeared some time afterwards. It took 124 days for the December 2022 Board papers to be published (along with the February 2023 papers). And then it all stopped for a while.

The great news is that on 11 and 12 October 2023 three sets of papers were published and then on 18 March 2024 two more sets with another on 9 April. This blog has been updated to reflect this. Where there is a change – the text is in italics.

Since the inception of the OfS there’s been a stable pattern of when the Board meets. There were some extra meetings during the Pandemic, but it’s been pretty consistent. There was probably a meeting in March, May and July 2023. We’ve not had papers from those. There might have been a board by now in September, but we don’t know. What’s clear is that the time taken for the papers to be published is lengthening.

2020 Average time to publication 49 days
2121 Average time to publication 68 days
2022 Average time to publication 79 days
2023 Average time to publication 129 days

We now know the date of the March 2023 board meeting, it took 195 days for the papers to be published.

Meeting	Date Papers Published	Days after the Board	Relationship to next board
13th meeting, 28 January 2020	20 February 2020	23	25 days before next board
14th meeting, 16 March 2020	6 May 2020	51	15 days before next board
15th meeting, 21 May 2020	6 July 2020	46	4 days after next board
16th meeting, 2 July 2020	5 August 2020	34	50 days before next board
17th meeting, 22 September 2020	27 October 2020	35	35 days before next board
18th meeting, 1 December 2020	18 March 2021	107	43 days after next board
19th meeting, 3 February 2021	18 March 2021	43	9 days after next board
20th meeting, 9 March 2021	4 June 2021	87	42 days after next board
21st meeting, 22 April 2021	29 July 2021	98	70 days after next board
22nd meeting, 13 May 2021	5 August 2021	84	16 days after next board
23rd meeting, 13 July 2021	23 September 2021	72	Same day as next board
24th meeting, 23 September 2021	15 November 2021	53	10 days before next board
25th meeting 2 December 2021	13 January 2022	39	21 days before next board
26th meeting, 3 February 2022	24 March 2022	49	Same day as next board
27th meeting, 24 March 2022	1 June 2022	69	5 days after next board
28th meeting, 26 May 2022	5 September 2022	102	54 days after next board
29th meeting, 13 July 2022	23 September 2022	72	7 days before next board
30th meeting, 30 September 2022	29 November 2022	60	8 days before next board
31st meeting, 8 December 2022	11 April 2023	124	67 days after next board
32nd meeting, 3 February 2023	11 April 2023	67	12 days after next board
33rd meeting, 30 March 2023	11 October 2023	195	139 days after next board
34th meeting, 25 May 2023	12 October 2023	140	101 days after next board
35th meeting, 4 July 2023	12 October 2023	101	14 days after next board
36th meeting, 28 September 2023	18 March 2024	172	97 days after next board
27th meeting, 12 December 2023	18 March 2024	97	58 days after next board

It had looked look like OfS had a new pattern – it will release papers in two tranches a year, but then it released the February papers in April I’m not necessarily sure this would be an improvement, not least because the number of redacted items seems to be increasing, even if the average time to publish papers is now over 4 months.

Prospects for teacher training as shown by a prospectus

If you take a long-term view, then you can see solutions to present issues in the way things were done in the past. That’s not to create golden ages. If you had to pick a year in the last hundred for a golden age in higher education, you wouldn’t pick 1967. There’s reasons why students rioted. But, in these times of concern about information for students (codified in the CMA’s new guidance but also present in the Lord’s Committee report on the OfS) and student support (abundantly evidenced everywhere) here’s a random example from 1967.

‘Gipsy Hill College was founded in 1917 by Miss Belle Rennie and a group of friends as an independent, undemoninational college for the training of teachers of young children’. These are the first words in the description of the college in a booklet produced by Surrey County Council by way of a prospectus. Before the description has been a list of the governing body and the staff – these details are clearly more important.

The prospectus had been issued at a turning point in teacher training. The Robbins Report had recommended changes to the qualification offered; in 1967 students were still prepared for the Teacher’s Certificate Examination of the University of London Institute of Education but it was noted the first examination for the new Bachelor of Education degree would be held in 1969. It would be possible for students to register for this qualification. In 1967 teacher training colleges were still expanding.

The booklet comes with a selection of photos of the College. The black and white images of buildings and rooms are familiar to modern prospectuses, except there are hardly any people in them.

There’s a clear statement of the minimum entry requirements. There are annotations, presumably from the original owner of the booklet, against the mixture of GCE O and A levels. A distinction is made between passes at CSE which count towards admission for teacher training but not towards degrees.

Students get free tuition. They also get free board and lodging. And a grant. And a travelling grant. Although there’s a parental contribution, the booklet owner’s annotations perhaps showing which categories she is in.

For fans of being clear about the hidden costs of university, the booklet sets out the other expenses. Students are expected to spend at least £35 on books during the course, spend money on teaching practice and obtain ‘physical education clothing’ (at a cost of approximately £12). Students need to provide their own ‘sheets, pillow slips, towels, and rug or eiderdown’.

It’s less clear that the booklet would meet the material information that the CMA might expect. There’s a vagueness to the statement: ‘All students attend such courses on the teaching of the subjects of the curriculum as are appropriate … these courses may vary in length and number according to individual requirements’. There’s nothing much on the format of assessment beyond the threat of 3-hour papers and assessment of teaching practices. At least the list of staff would go some way to meet the need to provide ‘details about the general level of experience or status of the staff involved in delivering the different elements of the course’ (CMA, 2023, p29)

The College had been taken over by Surrey County Council in 1946, when local authorities were charged with finding a large increase in teacher training places, and had been moved 9 miles to Kingston Hill to a 40 acre site. In the reorganisation of teacher training in the 1970s Gispy Hill merged with Kingston Polytechnic and the site is still in use.

References
Anon, 1967, Gipsy Hill College, Surrey County Council Education Committee
CMA, 2023, UK higher education providers – advice on consumer protection law Helping you comply with your obligations Competition and Markets Authority