OfS accused of seeing student engagement as ‘tick box exercise’

England’s higher education regulator is more concerned with satisfying the demands of government ministers than addressing the genuine concerns of students, the vice-president of the National Union of Students has claimed.

Chloe Field, the NUS’ vice-president for higher education, told a House of Lords inquiry that she did not feel there had been “strong and consistent” student engagement since the foundation of the Office for Students in 2018 despite initiatives such as its student panel and the National Student Survey.

Ms Field, who has been the de facto leader of the organisation since the dismissal of its president last year, said gathering student opinions often felt like an afterthought across the higher education sector.

“I wouldn’t say that it is not necessarily that they don’t care, but I think that often student input…can become a tick box exercise,” she said, adding that there was a sense that certain policy directions were decided upon before students were even consulted.

“[It] feels more and more like students are being used to confirm...the strategic direction the government wants from OfS rather than how students feel and what they need,” she said.

Appearing in front of the Lords committee tasked with evaluating the work of the OfS, Ms Field said she felt the priorities of the regulator were “100 per cent driven by political priorities”.

Citing the example of free speech on campuses, she said she did not feel that this was an issue that was seen as a priority for students, yet it had become a key focus for the OfS, which was about to be handed new powers to regulate in this area.

Asked for her overall assessment of whether the OfS was doing a good job for students, Ms Field said it had been “forced into a position where it is working for the government interests, and it has lost that focus on students”.

The NUS – the UK’s only national student representative body – does not have a formal role within the OfS and is consulted only on an ad hoc basis.

Instead the OfS appoints a group of 15 current and former students to an advisory panel. However, appearing in front of the same committee, two former members of this body were no less critical about the work of the regulator.

Francesco Masala, a former president of the University of Bath Students’ Union, said although he did feel OfS staff members listened to their views, there was little evidence that they influenced the direction the organisation was taking.

He said his biggest frustration was that “often our voice and our input was valued and taken into consideration so long as we didn’t rock the boat; so long as what we were saying and trying to achieve fit very neatly into a course that was pre-established.”

When the panel tried to talk about other issues, he said it felt like their voice was “suppressed”.

“We were there potentially more as a tick box exercise rather than genuinely providing active challenge and for that challenge to be taken into consideration and worked on,” he added.

Martha Longdon, a former chair of the panel, agreed there was often a disconnect between some of the issues raised by the students involved in the panel and the policies eventually enacted by the OfS.

Although the organisation had set out in the early days to be independent, she said, it had become less adept at withstanding the “turbulence” of government, evidenced by the “flurry of guidance letters” that had come from ministers.

She agreed that free speech was an issue where the interests of students were “polarised” from the “desires of government” and said the OfS had to manage the tension of which side should “win out”.

Ms Longdon alleged that panel members had tried to raise issues in meetings, such as highlighting the importance of inclusive curricula, and a senior OfS staff member had addressed a subsequent meeting with the “veiled implication” that if students were to continue to say such things, “the position of the panel may be reassessed”.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com