External measures of success for Regent College

External measures of success, on sector-wide and nationally-based platforms, have provided us with the opportunity to promote the College in a positive way to a wider audience. The outcome of the UK Quality Assurance Agency’s Review for Educational Oversight confirmed that the College reaches nationally prescribed benchmarks for educational delivery, pronouncing judgements of ‘Confidence’ in Regent College’s management of academic standards for which it is responsible, ‘Confidence’ in in Regent College’s management and enhancement of the quality of learning opportunities  academic standards, and that ‘Reliance’ can be placed on the accuracy and completeness of the information that Regent College is responsible for publishing about itself and the programmes it delivers. These outcomes ensure that our reputation is reported as of the highest calibre to the higher education sector as a whole, and also to the public at large; there are no concerns about the ways in which we are operating, and in academic terms we reach, and at times exceed, required standards.

Regent College is also a UKVI Tier 4 Sponsor and we have just heard that our Tier 4 sponsorship will be renewed for yet another year. We have also very recently achieved excellent outcomes from both the Annual Monitoring Review, in which we were given the highest category of judgement for all eight review areas and the Standards Verification process, of our awarding body Pearson/Edexcel. Comments within these reports included, ‘This is a very well-run college with very effective systems in place,’ and, ‘It has a highly motivated and well qualified team and is supported by good resources.’ Both of these measures further enhance our growing reputation as a reliable and consistent provider of higher education to a varied and growing student constituency. We have been buoyed by these successes, and are considering expanding the provision into new subject areas and are also moving into further education opportunities.

This external confirmation of our commitment to standards seems especially relevant at a time when so-called ‘alternative providers,’ i.e. the private providers within the higher education sector, are undoubtedly under the spotlight as the government asks questions of the standard of provision in institutions such as ours and the amount of public funds directed towards alternative providers, and cases of alleged mis-use of these funds come to light. We responded to market requirements and achieved high standards in a very difficult market.

Further, Regent College does its best to not only meet but to surpass governmental requirements. One such example, is our corporate governance where we are taking measures such as an internal audit function, establishing audit committees and remuneration committees,, a practice usually carried out by blue-chip companies as a corporate governance initiative.

When we were visited by our Edexcel Regional Quality Manager, he decided he would randomly sound out some of the students about their experiences at the College; he came back a little later and told us, ‘I had a good chat with a number of your students and I asked them what the worst thing about the College was. They told me that the thing that bothered them the most here was the lack of student parking. If your students are telling you that’s the worst thing about the College, then you know you’re doing a pretty good job’ and that, for us, sums it up.