Bill to establish Office for Students and reform English higher education published

The Higher Education and Research Bill, one of the first pieces of new legislation to be published after the 2016 Queen's Speech, had its first reading in the House of Commons on Thursday 19 May.

If passed in its current form, the bill would enact some of the reforms to higher education in England set out in the government's recent 'white paper'. Success as a Knowledge Economy. These include simplifying the processes through which new institutions may be given degree-awarding powers and university title, and providing prospective students with more information about teaching standards and job prospects up front.

Universities minister Jo Johnson said that the new regulator would "put student choice, teaching quality and social mobility at the top of the agenda in higher education".

"Our universities are engines of economic growth and social mobility, but if we are to remain competitive and ensure that a high-quality education remains open to all, we cannot stand still," he said. "Making it easier for high-quality challenger institutions to start offering their own degrees will help drive up teaching quality, boost the economy and extend aspiration and life chances for students from all backgrounds."

Once established, the OfS would take over responsibility from granting degree-awarding powers and university title for English institutions from the Privy Council. The existing multiple routes of entry to the higher education sector would be replaced with a single, simpler route, overseen by the OfS. The OfS would also have the power to require higher education institutions to publish detailed information about application, offer and progression rates, broken down by ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background, as set out in the white paper.

If passed in its current form, the bill would also give the OfS new powers to take "swift, effective regulatory action" in the event of failures to provide high quality education by higher education providers. These would include new powers to "enter and search" the campuses of higher education providers that are deemed to have breached the conditions of their registration, and the ability to revoke an institution's university title regardless of whether it was granted by the OfS or by Royal Charter.

The new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which the government has committed to introduce in order to help potential students compare universities and more closely link funding to quality of teaching, is not explicitly mentioned in the bill. Instead, it would give the OfS powers to "make arrangements for a scheme to give ratings to English higher education providers regarding the quality of, and standards applied to, the higher education that they provide where they apply for such a rating". The government has said that the best-performing universities against the TEF will be able to raise tuition fees in line with inflation from autumn 2017.

The bill would also place the dual support research funding system in England on a statutory footing, while bringing together the work of the seven Research Councils and the research functions currently performed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) into a new body, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The existing work of Innovate UK would also be integrated into the new body, although this will retain "its distinctive business focus and separate funding", the government has said.