The evidence for your next assessment is being generated this term, whether you collect it or not.
The OfS confirmed the revised TEF on 11 June 2026. Providers already at Bronze or Requires improvement are assessed first, and a Bronze award now carries student number controls for at least three years. The first cycle begins in 2027-28, so the students it will describe are on campus this term. StudentPulse is the continuous record of what they said and what changed.
Four pressures, all of them hinging on the same missing evidence
Quality, money, student success and reputation are being decided by the same thing: whether you can see the student experience early enough to change it.
Fee uplifts for 2026/27 and 2027/28 are unconditional. From 2028/29 the government proposes making them conditional on meeting the OfS quality regime. Evidence assembled in the term before an assessment reads exactly like what it is.
35.8% of providers reported a deficit in 2024-25, forecast to rise to 42.7% in 2025-26. With international fee income squeezed, every student who continues is money you do not have to find elsewhere.
Plans for 2027-28 went in this summer carrying numerical continuation and completion gap targets. The OfS says a variation that reduces ambition is unlikely to be accepted, and its own risk register names insufficient personalised academic and non-academic support as a sector risk. The gap has to close on the students already enrolled.
Continuation, completion and progression reach the board as historic metrics against fixed B3 thresholds. By then the cohort behind the numbers has graduated or gone.
The NSS reports. We catch.
The NSS is a good instrument. But it reports once a year, in July, on students who have already left. You can learn from it. You cannot act on it for the students it describes.
Comparable, benchmarked, externally credible, and the basis for published reporting. It describes the experience after it has finished, and it should keep running.
Short check-ins through the term, at programme and cohort level, read on arrival and routed to whoever can act this week. 88% of students complete one, against the 20 to 30% typical of course surveys, so the in-term record is not a fragment. Built to be acted on while the term is still running, and to log what changed.
Institutions keep both, and use the continuous layer to explain an NSS result: what happened between one survey and the next, not only where the score landed.
One platform, three teams, one UK evidence base
A UK buying decision is rarely one person. Quality, leadership and student services each need a different answer out of the same system, and each has its own page to make that case.
The trail from student voice to change, built through the term rather than assembled in the months before a review.
- Longitudinal student voice, segmented by cohort, programme and campus
- A documented chain from what students said to what changed, dated as it happened
- Your NSS result explained by what happened in the year behind it, not only reported
The student experience behind continuation, completion and progression, visible during the term rather than in a return that lands after the cohort has gone.
- Continuation risk by cohort and programme in week three, not in next year’s dashboard
- The student experience connected to funded places, income and reputation
- One institutional picture, the same one quality and wellbeing work from
Early signals of disengagement and low belonging, caught at the transitions where cohorts actually come apart rather than at the end of a module.
- Every reply read as it lands, not batched into an end-of-term report
- Check-ins timed to entry and to the second-year transition, not only to assessment
- Support resources surfaced inside the check-in, with opt-in follow-up for referrals
- The loop closed with students, so they can see that answering changed something
And behind all three, a named partner who stays with you through the year. Meet the partnership →
What you have after one term, after one year, and when the assessment arrives
The record builds while the year runs. Nothing here is assembled afterwards, which is the whole point.
Every course and cohort has answered three times, at 88% completion. You can see which cohorts are struggling, and on which of the 38 topics, while there is still term left to move resource.
One framework across every course, faculty and campus, so a weak signal in one course is read against the rest of the institution instead of in isolation. Every change you made sits against the feedback that prompted it.
What students said, what changed, and what happened next, course by course. Assembled as the years happened, not in the run-up to a submission.
The dates are set. You cannot start the evidence trail late.
The revised TEF has no overall rating. Providers hold two separate awards, one for student experience and one for student outcomes, and Bronze is explicitly redefined as meeting the minimum requirements rather than as high quality. Beyond the student number controls that come with Bronze, Requires improvement bars a provider from applying for new degree-awarding powers.
A trail that shows student voice leading to a documented change, term after term, cannot be assembled in the months before an assessment. It is either already there or it is not.
- 2026/27 Fee cap rises with forecast inflation Unconditional.
- Autumn 2026 Second OfS consultation opens on methodology, data and guidance How student outcomes and experience will actually be assessed.
- 2027/28 Fee cap rises with forecast inflation Unconditional.
- 2027-28 First cycle of the revised TEF expected to begin Bronze and Requires improvement providers assessed first.
- 2028/29 on Fee uplift proposed to become conditional on the OfS quality regime A White Paper proposal. The threshold is not yet defined.
These are the numbers your provision is measured against. Thresholds differ by mode and level of study. All three are shaped by what happens during the term.
The difference it makes, in institutions that have run it for years
"StudentPulse can identify those soft, hardly tangible feelings, doubts that lead to the dropout of a student."
"The ability to get real-time feedback from students has been transformative. We can now adjust courses in real time, improving student satisfaction and engagement."
"StudentPulse gives us a unified system and a shared language for quality work, making it easier to collaborate across the entire organization."
"Well-being is no longer a support function. We see it as a strategic driver of quality."
What is continuation actually worth to you?
Two numbers, no form. Put in your student numbers and your withdrawal rate to see the funded places at stake in a year, then open the full model.
What procurement asks for after the first conversation
The questions that come up first
No, and we would advise against using it that way. The NSS is a national instrument with a 71.8% response rate and external comparability, and it should keep running. StudentPulse sits in the year between one NSS and the next, catching what is happening while it is still happening, at programme and cohort level. Many institutions use it to explain their NSS results, and to show what they changed in the year that produced them.
See it against your own provision
Thirty minutes, your programmes and your continuation figures on screen. No preparation needed at your end.