Leading nursing school universities fail to reach gold standard assessment

Several universities with leading nursing schools have failed to score highly in new teaching assessments.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has rated 295 institutions bronze, silver or gold according to their standard of undergraduate teaching.

Some universities with prestigious nursing schools, including King’s College London, Liverpool and Southampton, did not score gold.

Peter Griffiths, chair of health services research at the University of Southampton, pointed out that it was a rating for the whole university, and questioned if it would lead to any benefits for students.

‘Based on metrics’

‘It is based on metrics and gives little, if any, reflection of the teaching and learning experienced by the student,’ he said.

‘An early glance at the figures suggests little relationship with student satisfaction for example.

‘The big question is whether any benefits that arise from this focus on teaching quality will outweigh the costs, which include the extent to which institutions are distracted from the business of actually delivering education.

‘Experience from the Research Excellence Framework suggests that these costs will be huge.’

Appeal

The university intends to appeal against the ranking, and Christopher Snowden, president and vice-chancellor, described the TEF as ‘appears devoid of any meaningful assessment of teaching’.

All institutions taking part in the voluntary new assessment are likely to be able to raise tuition fees, which currently stand at about £9,000, in line with inflation in 2018-19.

The assessment, which is run by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, intends to recognise excellence in education and inform students’ choices.

King’s College London president and principal Ed Byrne, said: ‘This award is a fair reflection of the progress we have made in enhancing the student experience at King’s, though more work needs to be done to ensure we continue to improve the quality of our educational provision.’

In other news

• Processing tragedy: the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire
• Nurses across the UK to start 'summer of protest' rallies next week