Papers and prizes

The OfS releases papers and we ask whether higher and further education can be friends

A common trope of old TV game shows was to show contestants who had failed in the final round of questions a set of enticing prizes, which were then whisked away with the words: “This is what you could have had.”

Reading Office for Students board papers reminds us of this experience. According to the papers, released yesterday and covering meetings on 3 February and in early December, we could have had updates on proposals for a new approach to the Teaching Excellence Framework, on the review of the National Student Survey, on the designated quality body and on the OfS’s strategy. We could have had all this and more, were it not all “exempt from publication” for being commercial in confidence, being policy in development or being “locally sensitive”.