The power of tertiary 

Author

Ciaran Donaghy

Lead Policy Officer (Devolved Nations), QAA

It's been an eventful few years for QAA in Scotland, as we've supported the development and implementation of the Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (TQEF), working with colleges and universities across the nation to introduce Scotland's Tertiary Enhancement Programme (STEP) alongside the processes of Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review (TQER).

QAA was commissioned by the Scottish Funding Council to develop TQER as part of TQEF – launched last year, to underpin further and higher education provision delivered by colleges and universities in Scotland. TQER was developed through an extensive consultation process involving Scotland's universities, colleges, students' associations, representative bodies and educational networks.

TQER applies a single review method to provision across tertiary education. Last academic year we completed the first two reviews under this new method – and by the end of this academic year, the QAA Scotland team will have completed ten of these reviews. Our learning from these will feed into our first TQER thematic analysis report – a report which will in turn go on to help drive further enhancement in the sector.

STEP stands alongside TQER as a key delivery mechanism of TQEF. Run in partnership between QAA Scotland and CDN (College Development Network), this programme of innovation brings together students and staff from across Scotland's colleges and universities to develop enhancement projects designed to benefit the entire tertiary sector.

Indeed, eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the proliferation of the letter 'T' in many of these acronyms and initialisms, and in this context that 'T' of course stands for 'Tertiary'.

Scotland's move towards an integrated tertiary system was advanced by the Education (Scotland) Act, which received royal assent this year, and this emphasis upon a tertiary approach is set to be cemented by the elegantly named Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, which is currently at the amendments stage as it passes through Holyrood.

These two pieces of key legislation are together bringing to life the recommendations of James Withers's 2023 review of Scotland's skills delivery landscape, designed to develop a post-school learning system to fuel the nation's economic transformation, by bringing dynamic cohesion to the provision of tertiary education. It also builds on the Scottish Funding Council’s review of coherence and sustainability in 2021 which really put tertiary on the map. 

Building on the provisions of the 2025 Act, the Tertiary Education and Training Bill proposes to place the funding and oversight of Scottish apprenticeships and work-based learning under the aegis of the Scottish Funding Council, which continues its work sustaining and overseeing Scotland's system of tertiary education, research and innovation.

These legislative tools are fostering the development of a coherent tertiary sector designed not only to support student participation, transition and success but also to facilitate stronger, more agile and more productive partnerships between further education and higher education providers, to link Scotland's apprenticeships framework into this system, to promote a greater responsiveness to local skills needs, and therefore to underpin Scotland's potential for industrial renewal and economic growth.

We all know that we're operating in a challenging fiscal and financial climate – and so, greater collaboration between providers can lead to more efficient and effective delivery targeted to address regional needs and ambitions, rather than perpetuating a situation in which institutions find themselves competing to secure diminishing units of resource.

Meanwhile, the Welsh government is in the process of embracing a similarly tertiary approach, as it moves towards the introduction of a standardised regulatory framework which retains a recognition and appreciation of the different needs and expectations of a richly diverse sector, and at the same time benefits from lessons learnt by the processes of provider registration now practised in England.

Based on extensive and open processes of consultation with their sectors and their stakeholders, these long-planned and deeply considered approaches are able to learn from each other without having to copy and paste their strategies – learning lessons from shared challenges and effective solutions whilst also forging their own ways – respecting sectoral, national and regional differences while also sharing best practice.

The emphases of the recent Post-16 Education & Skills White Paper have also highlighted the importance of collaborations between universities and colleges to promote the UK Government's priorities of student access and success, educational efficiencies, the aspirations of communities, and the skills needs of industries essential to economic prosperity.  

We might therefore hope that the initiatives to support tertiary-based approaches adopted in both Scotland and Wales may be seen to offer broader lessons to the UK, and well beyond.