KEF will not reach the parts that other frameworks cannot

As proposed, the KEF is unlikely to tell us much that’s new. It’s a distraction universities can do without, says Gemma Derrick.

After months and months of worrying about and planning for Brexit, the last thing UK higher education institutions need is another framework. And yet, here it is: the Knowledge Exchange Framework, the shape of which began to emerge more clearly in a consultation launched by Research England on 9 January.

The shift to ‘exchange’ from the ‘excellence’ evaluated in the existing research and teaching frameworks is worth noting. But how the KEF will add to our understanding of what universities do is still unclear.