TEF 2017: Times Higher Education metrics ranking

Full TEF results for all the universities in the TEF ranked by main award and core metrics

六月 22, 2017

With the teaching excellence framework (TEF) results now released for all the world to see, the inquest within universities into the results will begin in earnest.

Many of those marked bronze will want to know where they went wrong, the universities with silver will be keen to understand if they were close to gold and those at the top of the tree will want to hold on tight to their rating.

Central to their initial understanding will be how each institution did on the six core metrics underpinning the TEF, and upon which initial decisions were made about universities by the assessors.

From there, the assessors would have looked at contextual information like performance in metrics for different social groups and a university’s written submission. But the core metrics give a first flavour of how institutions in the same award category compare.

Times Higher Education has run the numbers on these metrics and below is a (sortable) table of institutions ranked first by final TEF award but then by performance in the metrics (see below the table for a fuller explanation of the methodology).

THE ranking	Institution	TEF Award	++ flags	+ flags	= flags	- flags	-- flags	Average Z-score

Source: Hefce/Analysis by THE. Note: Table is based on core metrics for an institution's majority provision (full-time or part-time). Three of BPP University's metrics did not return a flag as there were not enough data to form a benchmark. Table updated on August 25 to reflect an upgraded award for the University of East Anglia.

In each metric (teaching on my course, assessment and feedback, academic support, non-continuation, graduate employment or further study and highly skilled employment or further study), institutions were given a flag if they performed significantly well or badly (in a statistical sense) compared with a benchmark value.

An institution could have achieved one of five different flags in each metric: ++ (if they performed particularly well against the benchmark), + (if they performed well), = (if there was no statistically significant difference from the benchmark), - (if they performed badly against the benchmark) and -- (if they performed particularly badly).

THE counted the number of times an institution achieved a flag in each category (six being the maximum) and then sorted the final table according to TEF award, then flag performance and finally by average Z-score across the six metrics. A Z-score is a numerical value that expresses how far the institution deviated from the benchmark in a particular metric.

Who were the movers?

Thanks to work by THE data scientist Billy Wong, the analysis also means it is easy to identify which institutions would have been given an initial TEF assessment, based on the core metrics, that was different to the final outcome.

According to the official TEF guidance document, "when looking at the delivery mode in which providers teach the most students", an institution "with three or more positive flags (either + or ++) and no negative flags (either - or - - ) should be considered initially as Gold" while an institution "with two or more negative flags should be considered initially as Bronze, regardless of the number of positive flags". All other institutions were to be initially be considered as silver.

The following are institutions that based on this test would have been given a different initial outcome than the final decision, which also took into account other contextual factors like performance on "split metrics" (data relating to particular groups of students) and the written submission from a university.

THE TEF rank	Institution	Initial flag assessment	Final award
12	Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London	Silver	Gold
22	University of Derby	Silver	Gold
27	Liverpool Hope University	Silver	Gold
28	University of Huddersfield	Silver	Gold
29	University of East Anglia	Silver	Gold (after appeal)
35	University of Northampton	Silver	Gold
36	Rose Bruford College	Silver	Gold
37	University of Kent	Silver	Gold
38	University of Birmingham	Silver	Gold
39	Edge Hill University	Silver	Gold
40	Bishop Grosseteste University	Silver	Gold
41	Newcastle University	Silver	Gold
42	Royal Academy of Music	Silver	Gold
43	Imperial College London	Silver	Gold
44	University of Leeds	Silver	Gold
45	University of Nottingham	Silver	Gold
118	Bucks New University	Silver	Bronze
46	Royal Veterinary College	Bronze	Gold
48	Birkbeck, University of London	Bronze	Silver
51	Royal Agricultural University	Bronze	Silver
52	Ravensbourne	Bronze	Silver
59	University of West London	Bronze	Silver
60	Teesside University	Bronze	Silver
61	University of the Arts London	Bronze	Silver
70	University of Bradford	Bronze	Silver
71	Staffordshire University	Bronze	Silver
72	University of Bolton	Bronze	Silver
82	University of Bedfordshire	Bronze	Silver
83	University College London	Bronze	Silver
108	University of Central Lancashire	Bronze	Silver
109	University of Bristol	Bronze	Silver
110	King’s College London	Bronze	Silver
111	Leeds Beckett University	Bronze	Silver
112	Bournemouth University	Bronze	Silver
113	London South Bank University	Bronze	Silver