Don't Even Think About Asking

All a FEC wanted from me was a little advice on whether or not an “Annual Assurance Statement” had to be provided to the Office for Students every year (and as far as I know they all submitted one when registering in 2018).

On the face of it, this doesn’t exactly sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland, but it’s not mentioned in either of this month’s new OfS regulatory advice notes – #15 covering monitoring and intervention, and #16 explaining reportable events. So does that mean that it wasn’t “annual” at all, and should have just been called an “Assurance Statement” or is one still required because it hasn’t explicitly been superseded or withdrawn and is in the framework?

Note #15 tells us how the OfS will monitor compliance of registered providers with the ongoing conditions of registration and the activities which allows it to respond proportionately to regulatory risks and identify changes to risk levels which are basically:

• Data and information flows that will assist the OfS in the identification of trends and theoretically help them to predict the future,
• notifications of material decisions/issues/changes,
• and other intelligence such as whistleblowing or student complaints.

None of which really fits with my understanding of “quality assurance” as it’s not doing all that much to actively assure quality, it’s more like trying to get somebody (Who? Students? Government? The public?) to believe that quality is actually present until there is something to show that it isn’t. Which as I see it is rather like the religious types who knock on my door every few months and leave still convinced that God must exist because I couldn’t prove that He doesn’t.

Anyway, despite this flaw and the fact that looking at outcomes rather than inputs leaves colleges (and HEIs/others) operating under a constant threat of failing to meet Condition B3 (“the provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students”) thresholds which are always in the future and so can’t actually see.

But the real fun, the “Alice Through the Looking Glass” moment if you like, is in Regulatory Advice 16 which explicitly warns HE providers not to ask the OfS any sort of question:

"Where a provider seeks to abdicate responsibility for decision making, and seeks steers from the OfS, this behaviour may indicate non-compliance with condition E2."

So, in addition to what we’ve known for 18 months or so in that under/over reporting can have serious consequences – basically sending the OfS something they don’t want might be a sign of incompetence, as could not sending them something they need to “assure quality” - we now know that just asking for guidance from the regulator if in doubt is just as bad.

All of which is why I was asked to ring the OfS on behalf of someone who daren’t speak to a regulator that assures baseline quality not by looking at what goes on, but the outcomes from it, and threatens those it regulates with serious penalties just for asking questions which may help them to deliver outcomes they probably can’t really control because they don’t know what they are.