Lancaster University has been given the TEF Gold award for outstanding teaching, an outstanding learning environment and delivering excellent employment outcomes for its students. This is the highest possible rating a university can achieve.
This result puts Lancaster in a small group of newly emerging universities who can claim to be genuinely elite – ranked highly for both research and for excellent teaching.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark E. Smith welcomed the result:
“The Gold award reflects our success in offering students a first class experience and underlines Lancaster’s distinctiveness in the UK in being a highly rated research intensive university which is also excellent at teaching. As well as recruiting the best staff from across the world, we offer outstanding student facilities and excellent teaching which will equip graduates well for their future careers.”
Lancaster is also ranked among the elite top ten in all major UK leagues tables – the Complete University Guide, The Guardian and the Times and Sunday Times.
The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) panel is an independently appointed panel which has evaluated teaching and learning at UK universities to better inform students’ choices about what and where to study.
Feedback from the panel said that students from all backgrounds, studying at Lancaster, achieve consistently outstanding outcomes. Very high proportions continue with their studies and progress to employment, notably exceeding Lancaster’s benchmarks.
There are also outstanding levels of student satisfaction with teaching (which also exceed Lancaster’s benchmark) and very high levels of satisfaction with academic support and student feedback.
Lancaster was also endorsed for:
– strategic student engagement, making students feel valued, supported and academically stretched
– a culture of research-stimulated learning, ensuring that all students are significantly challenged and acquire knowledge, skills and understanding that are most highly valued by employers
– an institutional culture that places emphasis on teaching excellence alongside research
– outstanding digital and physical resources, actively used by students
– a strong infrastructure for careers support, including a range of co-curricular opportunities, ensuring outstanding employment outcomes.
The TEF assessed three areas – the quality of teaching; the learning environment; and, student outcomes and learning gain – with Gold requiring evidence of outstanding provision in all three. The assessment was based on key metrics and a supporting written narrative.
