TEF Gold for student experience and Silver for student outcomes

The Office for Students (OfS) has awarded York St John University an overall Silver in the Teaching Excellence Framework 2023.

The TEF is a national scheme run by the OfS that aims to encourage higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning, support and resources, and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.  

The Silver overall rating indicates that the student experience and student outcomes are typically very high quality. A Gold rating for student experience signifies that this aspect is typically outstanding. The TEF panel found outstanding features across both student experience and student outcomes. 

Ahead of the submission deadline in January this year, colleagues from across the University contributed to submit individual examples of excellent practice, work on data sets, and pull together the final written submission. The Students’ Union also submitted their own 10-page statement reflecting student views.  

Professor Karen Bryan, Vice Chancellor said: 

“Gold for student experience within an overall silver award acknowledges our focus on continually improving our students’ experience and reflects the effective partnership between the University and the Students’ Union to support learning.  

I am pleased that the TEF process recognises our institution-wide culture to facilitate and deliver excellent teaching and learning, and I know that we will continue efforts to sustain and enhance our ratings. A huge thank you to all colleagues involved in the submission process for their hard work in securing this fantastic outcome”.   

The full TEF 2023 outcomes are published on the OfS website, where students are encouraged to use the ratings as useful context to the range of more detailed information they will want to consider when deciding what and where to study. The information published for each participating provider includes:  

• the ratings awarded  
• the evidence informing the assessment  
• the summary panel statement setting out the panel's reasoning for the outcome.  

TEF ratings will also be published on the OfS Register, Discover Uni and UCAS.