Going for Gold
The University of Greenwich has been awarded Gold in a national scheme run by the Office for Students.
We are thrilled to have received Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework 2023. This recognises our outstanding performance in student experience and outcomes. This is great news for us and great news for our students. Less than a quarter of the universities and colleges that were assessed attained this top rating overall.
What is the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)?
The TEF is a national scheme to encourage universities and colleges to improve and deliver excellence in education. It focuses on undergraduate students and the areas they care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.
The institutions that took part in the 2023 exercise were given an overall rating plus two underpinning ratings. The University of Greenwich was awarded Gold overall and Gold for student experience. We received Silver for our student outcomes, which were judged to be ‘typically very high quality’.
The outcomes from TEF 2023 last for four years from September 2023. You can read more about the TEF on the Office for Students website.
"This is a fantastic achievement. TEF is a rigorous review across a range of metrics. To achieve the gold standard is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our staff. It is also a clear indicator to our students that their experience and outcomes with us at Greenwich meet the highest standards."
Vice-Chancellor and CEO, Professor Jane Harrington
Why we're rated Gold
Many aspects of our teaching and learning are rated as outstanding, including:
- Course content and delivery
- Student engagement in learning
- Research and innovation
- Employer engagement
- Learning environment and academic support
- Student engagement in improvement
- Approaches to supporting student success
- Approaches to supporting educational gains.
Student support
Here are just a few ways we give our students the best opportunities. All of these initiatives were recognised by the TEF assessment panel:
- The award-winning STAART project, which supports students with a disability or health condition
- A career mentoring scheme run in partnership with JP Morgan and local alumni that has supported more than 900 student mentees
- GREFest, an induction event offering wellbeing, study skills and online support, with 4,500 students taking part each year
- The Wellbeing and Retention Project, where trained student staff contacted new undergraduates to check if they needed support.
The University of Greenwich apply expertise to real-world solutions
Academics at the University of Greenwich have a long-standing reputation for undertaking research with purpose, engaging with our stakeholders and providing impactful outcomes to communities.
Delivery of 'impact-driven research and knowledge exchange that makes a difference in the modern world' is outlined as a priority in our 2030 strategy. With this as a clear focus, Greenwich have excelled in metrics used in the Higher Education sector to measure performance – namely the Research Excellence framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework.
Knowledge Excellence Framework (KEF)
The KEF provides a range of information on the knowledge exchange activities of higher education institutions in England. ‘Knowledge exchange’ is what we call the wide range of activities we undertake with partners.
You can use the KEF to explore the different ways we work with external partners, from businesses to community groups, for the benefit of the economy and society.
The latest KEF results were published in September 2024 and saw the University of Greenwich once again excelling in the Research Partnerships perspective.
We are keen to continue building our knowledge exchange and research partnerships and are seeking organisations that could benefit from our academic’s expertise.
Research Excellence Framework (REF)
The REF is the UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions based on expert review.
For each submission, three distinct elements are assessed: the quality of outputs (e.g. publications, performances, and exhibitions), their impact beyond academia, and the environment that supports research.
The University of Greenwich performed extremely well in the last REF (2021), significantly improving our research quality and research volume across all subject areas. We are currently working towards the next submission (2029) developing impact case studies to further highlight our intention to deliver real-world change.
Can we support you?
Starting in the New Year, we will be holding quarterly events: Series to Highlight Academic Research Expertise (SHARE). If your organisation could benefit from academic insight, we would love to hear from you to provide a real-world example for our experts to explore during a SHARE session.
Ideally, this would be an ‘issue’ that cannot be solved in-house, or with short-term consultant input. We would look to work in collaboration with you to find the best long-term solution to ensure your organisation thrives into the future. Please email Minh for further information.
