Thanks David, this is very useful. I wonder what implications this will have for institutional evaluation and the role of central units in supporting that. 

Anne 

-----Original Message-----
From: Online forum for SEDA, the Staff & Educational Development Association on behalf of david gosling
Sent: Tue 9/2/2008 16:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: HEFCE announces end to TQEF in consultation paper 08_28
 
Colleagues,
If you haven't seen it already the news from HEFCE is that TQEF will be
no more after this academic year (08-09). We have been expecting this
for some time but it is interesting to see how HEFCE are handling this.
They say that: 

"We wish to encourage a more strategic approach to teaching enhancement
and student success. We propose to do this by combining our support for
improving retention with our support for the Teaching Quality
Enhancement Fund (TQEF). This new approach recognises that improving
retention is fundamentally a part of learning and teaching enhancement,
and that work in these two areas contributes to the success of all
students."

"The enhancement of learning and teaching remains one of our key
strategic aims, so it seems sensible that we retain an influencing
mechanism in this area. From 2009-10, we therefore propose to combine
the funding previously associated with TQEF with that previously
associated with the improving retention allocation. The new funding
stream would be known as the Teaching Enhancement and Student Success
(TESS) targeted allocation." 

Comment: Improving retention is not just about learning and teaching
enhancement, though that is certainly a large part of it. Equally
enhancing learning and teaching is not just about improving retention.
Nevertheless I can see the point in consolidating these two aspects of
enhancement under one heading - though this may be just a post-facto
justification. 

The critical point for educational development centres is that "by
adding this funding to the block grant, we increase institutional
flexibility in resource distribution and reduce the monitoring burden
for institutions". In other words HEFCE will no longer monitor how
teaching enhancement funding is being used and that it will be up to
each institution to decide for itself how it uses the new 'targeted
allocation'. 

Although HEFCE says that it 'expects' that the targeted allocation
'would enable institutions to invest strategically in enhancing learning
and teaching' there would 'no longer be any requirement to submit action
plans as there was with TQEF'.

This in effect means that all EDUs will have to defend their budgets
without the fig-leaf of protection that the TQEF afforded.

In my research, I found that whilst most EDUs were funded from the
institution's core budget '12% of the sample are reliant on TQEF for
80-100% of their funding and are clearly vulnerable to changes in HEFCE
policy relating to TQEF. The majority of English EDUs continue to rely
on TQEF for a significant proportion of their activities (as opposed to
their staffing budget) and would undoubtedly suffer severe cuts without
that source of funding'(www.hedg.ac.uk/documents: p21).

The implications of the proposals contained in the current consultation
seem to me to be
(a) all EDUs will have to become more political about defending and
arguing for their budget,  
(b) arguments about 'value for money' will come to the fore, especially
for special initiatives,
(c) evaluation of the impact of EDUs' activities will become more
important,
(d) EDUs will have to think more about self-promotion,
(e) more of ED activity will need to be embedded in the activities of
Schools and Faculties.

This last point is based on the assumption that once funding is no
longer ring-fenced Schools and Faculties tend to want to have the money
themselves and dislike central units. Certainly this seems to have been
the Australian experience. On the other hand it may lead to greater
autonomy for EDUs and posssibly even greater diversity than is already
the case.

Institutions have til Tuesday 11 November 2008 to respond to the
consultation - though I don't think HEFCE will change their mind on the
fundamental shift they have announced - especially since it's been well
and truly signalled for some time now.  



David Gosling
Higher Education Consultant
Visiting Research Fellow
University of Plymouth 
tel/fax: 0161 456 6148
mobile: 0784 1647275






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