Awarded Silver for teaching Excellence

Canterbury Christ Church University has received a prestigious Silver award for teaching excellence, ‘exceeding’ national quality requirements for UK universities.

The award highlights the University’s core mission to provide excellence in higher education: transforming individuals, creating knowledge, enriching communities and building a sustainable future.

According to the Panel’s statement of findings, Christ Church students ‘achieve excellent outcomes in employment or further study’ and the University was able to demonstrate ‘high levels of student satisfaction’. The Panel highlighted the following:

• Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, ethnic minority backgrounds and those with disabilities, showing strong learning gain in terms of long term employment outcomes, and disadvantaged students achieving good degrees at the same rate as other students

• Students and staff working in partnership on projects, including working with the Students' Union in engaging students and rewarding excellent teaching

• Academic and peer support systems which are in place for students

• High levels of student engagement and commitment to learning and study as exemplified by students and staff working as partners on projects

• High quality physical and digital resources are used by students to enhance learning, as evidenced by the strategic approach to resource allocation with significant investments in physical and e-resources.

View the University's submission to the TEF.

The Government is introducing a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which aims to recognise and reward high quality teaching in higher education.

The purpose is to:

• give students clear information about where teaching quality is best and where students have achieved the best outcomes.
• encourage a stronger focus on the quality of teaching in higher education.

Through the TEF, the quality of teaching at higher education providers (e.g. universities and colleges) in the UK will be assessed and rated.

The TEF, developed by the Department for Education, is voluntary and each higher education provider decides whether or not to take part. 

Over time, the TEF will continue to develop, including moving to subject-level TEF assessments (which will be piloted in late 2017).

The TEF incentivises higher education providers to focus on teaching and provide students with high quality experiences and outcomes.

It gives students an opportunity to work with their higher education providers to understand current performance including both highlighting areas of excellent teaching and identifying further improvements.

For future students, the TEF will provide clear information about the quality of teaching and where students have achieved the best outcomes, to inform their choices.

The criteria have been designed to recognise diverse higher education provision and forms ofexcellence. Providers need to demonstrate their excellence in the following three areas in order to receive a TEF award: 

• Teaching Quality
• Learning Environment
• Student Outcomes and Learing Gain

Universities that applied are assessed using the following evidence: 

• A set of metrics provided by HEFCE to show: how many students do not continue with their studies after starting; how satisfied students are with key aspects of their teaching and learning; and graduates’ employment after they leave. The metrics are benchmarked to take account of different student characteristics and the mix of subjects studied at each provider.

• A submission which the provider can prepare, to put forward additional evidence of teaching excellence. An optional submission which the provider can prepare can be up to 15 pages.

The metrics and submission will be accompanied by standard data about the context of the provider and the make-up of its students, so that the assessment can take account of the diversity of higher education providers.

Providers will be awarded a rating of ‘Bronze’, ‘Silver’, or ‘Gold’. These outcomes will be published online and included in Unistats and other major sources of student information.