Bloomsbury Institute has won its appeal against the Office for Student’s decision to keep them off its higher education register - potentially opening the door for colleges who lost out on the same grounds to reconsider their position.
The institute had been rejected by the OfS because of condition B3, a condition for registration that says the provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students, which are recognised and valued by employers and/or enable further study.
Read more: Office for Students ‘getting it wrong’ about HE in FE
More news: Fewer colleges plan to charge £9k tuition fees
Background: Colleges told to improve access for HE students by 2038
Reconsider application
The Court of Appeal quashed the OfS’s decision and it must now reconsider Bloomsbury Institute’s application. In its judgement, the court said the OfS staff who set the thresholds for continuation rates and progression into professional and managerial employment that were applied to decide whether institutions should be registered did not have the delegated authority to do so. It added that the methodology should have been published and consulted upon.
Since 2017, any institution offering higher education in England can apply for a place on the OfS register. Institutions that are not registered cannot access OfS or UK Research and Innovation public grant funding or charge above the basic fee amount. Registration also affects the levels of support that students can receive. Rejection by the OfS therefore effectively halts HE provision at an institution.
Tes analysis in January showed that at that point, eight institutions had their applications to join the OfS register rejected - half of them further education colleges. Barking and Dagenham College, Waltham Forest College, Lancaster and Morecambe College and Newham College all failed to meet the OfS criteria.
All four of the above-listed colleges were also rejected under clause B3. Experts told Tes in January that cohorts of HE students in FE institutions are much smaller than those who choose to study HE at a university. This means that if, for example, five students in a cohort of 15 at an FE college don’t continue to the second year of study, it has a much bigger impact than the same number of students leaving a university course with a traditionally much larger cohort.
Yvonne Kelly, principal and chief executive of Barking & Dagenham College said: “We welcome this decision and will be looking in detail at the implications for Barking & Dagenham College.”
A spokesperson for the OfS said: “The judgement raises important public interest issues for the OfS and other regulators and public bodies. We are considering the implications of the judgement and our next steps.”
