Our Gold Award in the Teaching Excellence Framework
Keele University has been awarded the highest rating of Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023, maintaining the Gold standard that we achieved in the previous exercise in 2017.
Double Gold
Keele is one of only 15 broad-based universities in England – out of over 100 – to have been awarded Gold in both the 2017 and 2023 TEF exercises, demonstrating our consistent teaching excellence.
Why are we Gold?
The overall Gold rating, which Keele will hold for the next four years, signifies that the student experience and student outcomes at Keele are typically outstanding for all students and across all subjects and courses.
Outstanding quality features identified by the TEF panel include:
🏆 Teaching, feedback and assessment practices are highly effective and tailored
🏆 Course content and delivery inspire students
🏆 Excellent academic practice is embedded across Keele
🏆 Keele offers a supportive learning environment
🏆 Approaches to supporting students are highly effective and tailored
"We are delighted that the education we offer has been recognised as being of the highest standard in the sector.
"Gold TEF is a crucial hallmark of excellence. This achievement for Keele gives students confidence that the education they receive with us is of the highest quality, which will set them on a good course for their future careers, all delivered by staff at the forefront of their respective fields."
- Professor Kristyan Spelman Miller, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education at Keele
What is TEF?
The TEF is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS) that aims to encourage universities and colleges to improve and deliver excellent teaching, learning, and student outcomes. 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.
Why is TEF important?
It is important that all students, whatever their background, can have confidence that they will receive a high-quality higher education and positive outcomes. The TEF encourages universities and colleges to deliver excellent teaching and learning for all their students.
The OfS encourage students to use TEF ratings – which provide a clear signal of a provider's excellence – as useful context when deciding what and where to study.
Typically, the experience students have at Keele and the outcomes it leads to are outstanding, and have been rated Gold overall.
Outstanding quality features identified by the TEF panel including:
- teaching, feedback and assessment practices are highly effective and tailored to supporting students’ learning, progression, and attainment
- course content and delivery inspire students to actively engage in and commit to their learning, and stretch students to their fullest potential
- support for staff professional development, with excellent academic practice embedded across Keele
- a supportive learning environment, where students have access to a wide and readily available range of outstanding quality academic support tailored to their needs
- engagement with students that is embedded, leading to improvements to their experiences and outcomes.
There are also two very high quality features:
- use of research in relevant disciplines, innovation, scholarship professional practice and/or employer engagement contribute to a very high quality academic experience for students
- physical and virtual learning resources that are tailored and used effectively to support outstanding teaching and learning.
Student outcomes are typically very high quality, with significant pockets of outstanding quality. Very high quality features include:
- rates of continuation and completion for students and courses
- rates of successful progression for students and courses
- articulation of the educational gains the university intends its students to achieve, and why these are relevant to its students
- evaluation of the gains made by students.
There are also some outstanding quality features including:
- tailored approaches that are highly effective in ensuring students succeed in and progress beyond their studies
- approaches to supporting students to achieve educational gains that are evidence-based, highly effective and tailored to students and their different starting points.