Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve quality and choice in higher education.

The department has established a new regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), and has given it the legislative powers and a clear remit to create the conditions in which the interests of students are consistently prioritised, and in which a diversity of high quality institutions can thrive. The OfS holds providers to account for delivering well-designed courses that offer successful outcomes for all of their students.

The department is taking a number of steps to enhance the information, advice and guidance available to anyone considering higher education. In particular:

• We have introduced the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework to provide students with reliable information about the quality of teaching and outcomes they can expect from different institutions.
• Through the Higher Education Open Data Competition, we are supporting the development of new, innovative digital tools to help provide information to prospective students on graduate outcomes.
• We are working with the OfS to redesign the higher education course comparison website, Unistats, by autumn 2019.