Awarded Silver for teaching excellence

The University ranked Silver overall and Silver in both student experience and student outcomes.

According to the Panel’s statement of findings, there is clear evidence at Canterbury Christ Church University of:

• Very high quality in teaching, assessment and feedback.

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

• Student experience features of very high quality for all groups of students and courses and most student outcomes features to be of very high quality for all the provider’s groups of students, including students from underrepresented groups, and courses. The panel also found there to be some outstanding quality student outcomes features.

• Recognition for progression and completion rates in particular our work improving progression rates for underrepresented groups.
• Recognition of significant investment in learning resources including physical and digital resources, redevelopment of facilities and new buildings, and use of online learning environments to support flexible, accessible and personalised learning.

View the University's submission to TEF.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS) that aims to encourage higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.

The TEF does this by assessing and rating universities and colleges for excellence above a set of minimum requirements for quality and standards.

Universities and colleges that take part in the TEF receive an overall rating as well as two underpinning ratings – one for the student experience and one for student outcomes.

The ratings reflect the extent to which a university or college delivers an excellent experience and outcomes for its mix of undergraduate students and across the range of its undergraduate courses and subjects.

It is important that all students, whatever their background, can have confidence that they will receive a high-quality higher education and positive outcomes.

Students are encouraged to use TEF ratings – which provide a clear signal of a provider's excellence – as useful context to the range of more detailed information they will want to consider when deciding what and where to study.

There are three ratings categories signifying increasing degrees of excellence above our minimum quality requirements – Bronze, Silver and Gold.

• Gold - the student experience and student outcomes are typically outstanding.
• Silver - the student experience and student outcomes are typically very high quality.
• Bronze - the student experience and student outcomes are typically very high quality.

A university or college receives a lower category of 'requires improvement' if it has not shown enough evidence of excellence above our minimum quality requirements.

• Requires improvement - the provider was assessed in the TEF and no rating was awarded. Improvement is required for a TEF rating.

In TEF 2023, Canterbury Christ Church University achieved a Silver rating.

The TEF is a desk-based, expert review exercise. The TEF panel, which is made up of independent academics and students who are experts in learning and teaching, conducted the assessments and made the decisions about ratings.

The panel considered a combination of evidence sources: evidence submitted by the university or college, evidence submitted by its students (where available), and numerical indicators we produce from national datasets.

The indicators are benchmarked to show how well the university or college performs for its particular mix of students and courses.

When assessing each ‘aspect’ of the TEF (the student experience aspect and the student outcomes aspect), the TEF panel looked for specific things. We call these ‘features of excellence’.

After awarding a rating for each aspect, the panel then decided the overall rating.

Canterbury Christ Church University would like to acknowledge the Office for Students (OFS) support in preparing this information. For more information, please visit the OFS website.