Overview of the Act
This Act includes a range of measures which:
create a new regulatory body overseeing the English higher education sector, the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS has explicit duties focused on choice, quality and value for money, and in performing its functions, the OfS must also have regard to the need to protect the institutional autonomy of English higher education providers;
place a duty on the OfS to focus on equality of opportunity in connection with access to and participation in higher education;
seek to bring greater transparency to the data held by the higher education sector;
put in place risk-based regulation with the aim that the higher education sector serves its stakeholders: students, employers and taxpayers;
seek to facilitate new high-quality providers to start up and achieve degree awarding powers, and subsequently secure university title;
give the OfS the power to operate a Teaching Excellence Framework to recognise and reward high-quality teaching;
create a single research and innovation funding body, United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), enshrining the Haldane principle and protections for the dual support system of research funding.