Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the (a) quality and (b) choice of higher education provision in Yorkshire and the Humber.

The Office for Students (OfS) holds providers to account for delivering well-designed courses that offer successful outcomes for all of their students, and has a statutory duty to promote quality, and greater choice and opportunities for students.

Universities and other higher education (HE) providers are planning a range of changes to the degree classification system to ensure public confidence in the results students receive and the value of a degree. The consultation process for these changes is nearing its response phase.

The new OfS regulatory framework removes unnecessary barriers to entry for high quality new providers with the aim of increasing diversity, competition and innovation in the sector.

The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) is a national exercise that recognises excellent teaching and student outcomes. Four HE institutions in Yorkshire and the Humber hold the gold TEF award and seven the silver.

Students’ ability to make informed choices is at the heart of the HE reform agenda with prospective students free to make choices to apply to providers in any part of the country. The TEF is supporting student choice.

We are also improving the online offering for students, working alongside OfS to redesign the HE course comparison website, Unistats, by September 2019.

In addition, we launched the Higher Education Open Data competition last year for technology companies and coders to design an innovative digital tool to make it easier for prospective students to access valuable data on salaries and employability. Two winning technology companies have now developed two digital tools to level the playing field for all students, by giving them access to graduate outcomes data at their fingertips.