TQEF Toolkit

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Slide 1: Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework

Scotland is introducing a new approach to quality assurance and enhancement, Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework, or ‘TQEF’ will seek to answer the question ‘is the learning provision delivered by Scotland’s colleges and universities of high-quality and is it improving?

Slide 2: Partners in the co-creation of the TQEF

SFC co-created the TQEF with college, university, student, and quality agency partners to deliver a shared vision for a more coherent and streamlined tertiary education system from the student perspective; and support the development of a shared quality culture to deliver the best learning experience for students. The development of the TQEF has also been supported by the Tertiary Quality Steering Group (TQSG), who will continue to have oversight of the framework.

Slide 3: Principles of Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (Summary)

The TQEF is founded on a set of shared Principles that have been used to shape its development, and will underpin and permeate every aspect of the new Framework, these are:

• Excellence in learning, teaching & assessment
• Supporting student success
• Enhancement and quality culture
• Student engagement and partnership
• Externality and
• Data and evidence.

At the very heart of the shared principles sits our ambition to deliver better outcomes for our students.

The principles were initially developed over AY 2021-22 as SFC started engaging with the sector and stakeholders to explore options for how the common approach to quality assurance and enhancement could be developed and what the key principles underpinning such an approach might be. They were further refined during the co-creation workshops in AY 2022-23.

Slide 4: Principles of Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (Detailed)

The Principles are core to the institutional Self Evaluation and Action Plan (SEAP), with institutions expected to reflect on their performance in the first four headline principles (Excellence in Learning, Teaching and Assessment, Supporting student success, Enhancement and quality culture and Student engagement and partnership), while “Externality” and “Data and Evidence” are underpinning and are expected to be threaded throughout the narrative.

The Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review also uses the principles as the basis for evaluation within the new review process.

Slide 5: TQEF Delivery Mechanisms

The TQEF has five interconnected delivery mechanisms that collectively give assurance on the quality of provision delivered by our colleges and universities, and support sector wide enhancement, these include:

• The Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review, or TQER, an external peer-led review cycle of colleges and universities managed by QAA.
• Institutions’ Annual Quality Engagements with QAA and SFC. Briefly, the engagement with QAA will be to discuss preparation for and follow up to external review and with SFC to focus on the institution’s performance, data and evidence that are relevant to quality but also to other outcomes such as funding and widening access as part of the new Outcomes Framework and Assurance Model.
• Institution-led quality activity, this is the normal quality assurance and enhancement activities including annual monitoring and Institution-Led Quality Review (ILQR), that is managed by institutions to evaluate and enhance their provision.
• Scotland’s Tertiary Enhancement Programme, or STEP, a sector owned national enhancement program managed by the QAA and supported by CDN in the college sector.
• Data and evidence will be a thread that runs through all the other aspects of the TQEF; used by students and institutions to reflect on institutional performance, by QAA to inform external review, and by SFC to provide assurance on the quality of provision.

Slide 6: TQEF Outputs

Though the principles and delivery mechanism in themselves will support the tertiary educations sector enhance its delivery of further, higher and work-based learning, it needs to be assessed effectively to evaluate progress and identify areas of good practice, as well as areas for development.

The TQEF will use a range of outputs to assess progress, including:

• Quality agency reporting on review activity.
• The Self-Evaluation and Action Plan, or SEAP. An annual report developed by institutions reflecting on themes arising from internal and external quality processes to inform an institution wide improvement plan.
• Impact reporting on enhancement activity for colleges, universities and our quality agencies.
• And looking at how effectively our institutions respond to concerns and challenges.

Slide 7: Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework

This is the framework in its entirety, presenting the component parts in a single diagram.

The framework’s principles, delivery mechanisms and outputs can be applied to the different contexts of our colleges and universities to give assurance on academic standards, the quality of the student experience, and ensure accountability for public investment in learning and teaching – supporting SFC’s ambition to make Scotland an outstanding place to learn and educate now and in the future.

Slide 8: For more information

You can find out more about the development and implementation of the TQEF on the dedicated SFC project webpages by using the QR code on screen or going to https://www.sfc.ac.uk/tqef.