Monitoring
As a regulator, OFFA has a responsibility to ensure that universities and colleges are meeting their commitments to individual students and are making progress towards the milestones and targets set out in their access agreements. We do this by monitoring access agreements on an annual basis.
To reduce bureaucracy for universities and colleges, and to enable us to gain a broader understanding of access agreement activity in the context of sector-wide investment in widening participation, our monitoring process is carried out jointly with the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE’s) monitoring of its Student Opportunity allocation and the National Scholarship Programme (NSP). There is further information about HEFCE’s Student Opportunity allocation monitoring and NSP monitoring on HEFCE’s website or contact Anju Kataria, Higher Education Policy Adviser at HEFCE on 0117 931 7153, or e-mail a.kataria@hefce.ac.uk.
Monitoring for 2014-15
Our most recent monitoring data is in our 2014-15 monitoring outcomes report. This report includes the progress made by universities and colleges against the targets they set for themselves and their levels of investment, plus our commentary on those outcomes. We have also published each higher education institution’s own assessment of its progress against the individual milestones and targets it set itself in its 2014-15 access agreement together with its explanatory commentary.
See institutions’ self-assessments and commentaries and our guide to interpreting the self-assessments and commentaries.
For the first time, we have published a second monitoring outcomes report, focusing on how institutions are evaluating their access, student success and progression measures, and the equality and diversity work undertaken. This report is intended to increase the sector’s understanding of evaluation and equality and diversity work currently being carried out, support institutions in their development of future evaluation and equality and diversity activity, and provide insights into how institutions have made a difference. For further information on OFFA’s work in this area, please see the research, analysis and evaluation section of our website.
Latest monitoring guidance
Monitoring for 2014-15 is now complete. Monitoring guidance for 2015-16 access agreements will be published in Autumn 2016.