I have been involved in setting and monitoring the standards of higher education in several capacities. The most senior of these was a year-long stint as the Deputy Chair of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) Subject Pilot for Business and Law.
As a leader of that committee I was responsible for chairing meetings of senior academics, looking at the performance of universities against a set of metrics and helping the group to come to a judgement as to whether a given subject was gold, silver or bronze. I really enjoyed it and I believe that this work made a difference, although I agree with many of the criticisms of the process.
Aside from my role in TEF, I was a reviewer for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. for nine years from 2015 until 2024. We would assess the quality of the education provided by universities and colleges to their higher education students and would produce reports setting out the extent of their compliance with the UK Quality Code for Higher Education. This was an honour that taught me much about teaching, the values of our education system and the work of regulators.
Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.
Abiodun Michael Olatokun 