In opening up higher education to the market and introducing the Office for Students, the Higher Education and Research Act (2017) (HERA) has created a quality assurance system in England which diverges from the rest of the UK and Europe. This qualitative study explores the enactment of policy change and its implications for the quality assurance of teaching and learning. It uses social practice theory (SPT) as the theoretical framework. Methodologically, 20 interviews were conducted with quality assurance professionals (QPs) from 20 higher education institutions and analysed thematically.
The key findings related to the changing roles of QPs and the variations in their responses to the HERA. The majority claimed to occupy a third space between administration and academia, which shaped their professional identities and contributed to membership of a strong community of practice centred around the Quality Assurance Agency’s Quality Code (2013-2017) and the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Two principal issues emerged as a consequence of the HERA: the authoritarian approach of the Office for Students (OfS), and the replacement of cyclical peer review and enhancement with metricised accountability. Responses ranged from the acceptance and implementation of outcomes-based internal monitoring to the operation of a dual system, designed to meet the data requirements of the OfS while maintaining existing enhancement activity. Many were however reconstructing policy, bringing internal monitoring and data management together to enhance provision by changing institutional structures, systems, staff and skills. In most cases, policy was being enacted in a constructivist way, demonstrating that change needs time, support, and differentiated approaches to the socialisation of institutional microcultures. The capacity to effect change varied, indicating that quality practices may become increasingly diverse under the revised Quality Code (2018), with the potential to fragment the community and obfuscate the meaning of quality and the purpose of quality assurance. Rather than dismantling the structures underpinning sustainable change, the OfS should harness the expertise of the whole QP community to co-construct quality assurance practices in new and more creative ways which unite enhancement and accountability.
The study has brought new knowledge to the mechanisms of policy enactment in quality assurance at the under-researched meso level of the institution, giving expression to a voice which remains under-represented in higher education. It has also extended the usefulness of SPT into another area of higher education research, offering a framework for policy enactment at a critical juncture in the development of higher education quality assurance.