The University of Law has been awarded a gold ranking in the new Teaching Excellence Framework. Arch competitor BPP University got the lowest possible ranking of bronze.

The first set of Government-led awards were announced last week and has ruffled several sets of feathers. The big surprise was the prestigious London School of Economics which tanked with bronze. A number of less well-known universities – De Montfort, Portsmouth, Bangor – scored gold, an honour shared with just eight of the 21 Russell Group Universities which entered the new framework.

The TEF comprises a panel of experts who assess undergraduate teaching against ten criteria. Views on its merits differ widely. Sir Christopher Snowden, Vice Chancellor of Southampton University (bronze) said “it is difficult to have confidence in a teaching excellence framework which appears devoid of any meaningful assessment of teaching”. Ooooh get you!

However Professor John Latham, Vice Chancellor of Coventry University (gold) said “a new order has been established in university rankings”. Dave Spart Sorana Vieru of the National Union of Students cut straight to the chase, describing it as “another meaningless university ranking system which no one asked for”.

    Sir Christopher yesterday. How he might have looked.

Still, if gongs are being handed out it’s clearly nice to be winning them and a statement from ULaw said that it was “delighted”.

BPP, whose shonky result might have something to do with the fact that almost its entire board has resigned over the past year, was rather more sanguine. Professor Tim Stewart, Vice Chancellor of BPP University, said that "the TEF rating relates solely to our undergraduate provision, comprising less than 6% of our overall student base and is based on one incomplete year of assessment. In BPP’s Student Experience Survey, which covers all programmes and not just undergraduate students like the TEF, 91% of our students are satisfied with BPP as an educational institution and 95% would recommend BPP Programmes to other students. Also, eight out of ten cats whose owners expressed a preference said their cats prefer us". Last sentence added by RollOnFriday, obviously,
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Comments

Anonymous 30 June 17 11:14

Heh at Russell Group/traditional unis not liking being exposed. Their current prestige relates to their research capability/output and not undergraduate teaching (which is what the majority of students are concerned with).

RG Uni students at TC level, have in my experience, being very mediocre on the whole.

The few mature OU/ex-poly trainees and junior associates I have come across have *always* been more impressive.

Anonymous 01 July 17 05:04

As someone who went to LSE and BPP I can confirm that the poor ratings for those two institutions are probably fair. At LSE most lecturers were indifferent to the students, seeing them as an inconvenience and a distraction from their research and fee-earning work. BPP lecturers were mostly failed lawyers who should not have been training the next generation. Just my highly subjective views.