Waiting for OfS Board Papers – the outcome

/ Mike Ratcliffe

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.

MeetingDate Papers PublishedDays after the Board Relationship to next board
13th meeting, 28 January 202020 February 20202325 days before next board
14th meeting, 16 March 20206 May 20205115 days before next board
15th meeting, 21 May 20206 July 2020464 days after next board
16th meeting, 2 July 20205 August 20203450 days before next board
17th meeting, 22 September 202027 October 20203535 days before next board
18th meeting, 1 December 202018 March 202110743 days after next board
19th meeting, 3 February 202118 March 2021439 days after next board
20th meeting, 9 March 20214 June 20218742 days after next board
21st meeting, 22 April 202129 July 20219870 days after next board
22nd meeting, 13 May 20215 August 20218416 days after next board
23rd meeting, 13 July 202123 September 202172Same day as next board
24th meeting, 23 September 202115 November 20215310 days before next board
25th meeting 2 December 202113 January 20223921 days before next board
26th meeting, 3 February 202224 March 202249Same day as next board
27th meeting, 24 March 20221 June 2022695 days after next board
28th meeting, 26 May 20225 September 202210254 days after next board
29th meeting, 13 July 202223 September 2022727 days before next board
30th meeting, 30 September 202229 November 2022608 days before next board
31st meeting, 8 December 202211 April 202312467 days after next board
32nd meeting, 3 February 202311 April 20236712 days after next board
33rd meeting, 30 March 202311 October 2023195139 days after next board
34th meeting, 25 May 202312 October 2023140101 days after next board
35th meeting, 4 July 202312 October 202310114 days after next board
36th meeting, 28 September 202318 March 202417297 days after next board
27th meeting, 12 December 202318 March 20249758 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.

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