TEF Silver award recognises quality teaching at Reading

The University has been awarded Silver in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), recognising that the student experience and outcomes are typically very high quality, with outstanding features.  

Run by the Office for Students (OfS), the TEF aims to encourage higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence by rating them on the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies. 

Reading was awarded silver overall, and silver for student experience and student outcomes. 

The award is valid for four years and signifies that the University consistently exceeds the national quality requirements for UK higher education.  

A cross-University project team submitted our provider submission to the OfS in January. This was considered alongside a separate student submission, key student outcomes data and NSS results. 

In particular, the TEF Panel feedback, which will be published in November, noted outstanding quality in the following areas:

• Research, scholarship, professional practice and/or employer engagement, noting that research-informed teaching, use of specialist research resources in teaching, examples of embedding professional practice and employer engagement across a range of provision contribute to an outstanding academic experience for students.
• Approaches to supporting student success, noting a holistic approach and uses of tailored approaches that are highly effective in ensuring its students succeed in and progress beyond their studies.
• Continuation and completion rates and progression rates, noting evidence of very high continuation and completion rates for all groups of students with outstanding rates for some groups of students and outstanding rates of progression in some subject areas or student groups. 

Elizabeth McCrum, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education & Student Experience), said: “This award is testament to the dedication of the highly professional and talented staff who teach, inspire and support our students throughout their learning experience here at Reading. We are very proud of the hard work that goes into this and welcome the TEF rating as official recognition of the great job they are doing. 

“It also reflects the significant efforts we have made to strengthen the quality of our teaching and our student experience, to create more opportunities for student and staff partnership and to maintain a positive learning environment that helps all our students to achieve their best. Embedding the Curriculum Framework, introducing the Academic Tutor System and a focus on employability have all contributed to this.

“The University is committed to continuous improvement and further enhancements, developed in response to student feedback, will be realised as we implement the Portfolio Review programme from 2024/25.”

Over the coming weeks, colleagues will reflect on our achievement and the Panel feedback in the context of the wider sector outcomes of this TEF exercise, with a view to further enhancing the provision of teaching and learning at the University.

Information on the awards for each of the participating institutions is available on the Office for Students website.