Investigation shows private London college taught students by showing videos | Higher education

Students at a private college which charges £9,250 a year were taught by staff who read out bullet points and showed videos. This was revealed by an investigation that found a tutor was delivering an online course while appearing to be traveling on public transport.

The students at Regent College London told investigators from England's higher education regulator that teaching staff changed frequently, including a substitute lecturer who “arrived almost half an hour late” to deliver an online course and was “apparently traveling or attending a public course.” Place” was.

The Office for Students (OfS) reported that when challenged by students, the deputy tutor “appeared to have left the session and the students had not heard from them since”.

In a second-year module in 2023, “the tutor limited himself to reading bullet points from PowerPoint slides and playing videos to the class without appearing to explain the ideas and concepts being raised. The videos played took up the majority of the lesson time observed.

“In a course that lasted 45 minutes, the videos played for about 35 minutes while the tutor spent most of the time reading from the slides.”

The OfS investigation into business courses found a number of complaints from students, including broken chairs, poor support and inadequate teaching materials.

It concluded that the college's courses “were often not up to date, were not consistently delivered effectively, often lacked pedagogical rigor and coherence and often failed to teach relevant skills”.

Regent College London is a private college and the trading name of RTC Education Limited, whose advisory board is chaired by Conservative MP and former education secretary Gavin Williamson. The panel also lists James Wharton, the Conservative peer who was chairman of the OfS until July, as a special adviser.

Regent College London or RTC Education did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Selva Pankaj, director of RTC Education, told Times Higher Education that the college was confident that many of the concerns had been addressed.

“We have already made improvements during the OfS visit and implemented an additional action and monitoring plan in response to the draft report we received from the OfS,” Pankaj said.

“Since the OfS visits, we have improved our student-staff relationships to better meet the needs of our students and our partners. We are pleased that this year’s nationwide student survey showed that 93% of our students were satisfied with the quality of teaching.”

OfS deputy director of quality Jean Arnold said the report raised “significant concerns” in several areas.

“Before making any regulatory decisions, the OfS will closely examine the assessment team’s findings and consider the next steps of the investigation, including considering whether regulatory action is appropriate,” Arnold said.

Investigators said some staff received a bonus if more than 85% of their students passed, and that up to five weeks of a 15-week module were spent on revisions or exam preparation. Investigators found several courses with a 100% pass rate and reported that a tutor told students to “try for everyone to pass.”

In a BSc economics module in 2022, the OfS found that repetition, duplicate lessons and repeated material meant that less than a third of the course was spent studying new content.

Classes were also reported to start late and end early, with one tutor spending 30 minutes logging the attendance of 13 students. A student who asked staff how to report a future absence was told to search online.