Universities Scotland has responded to a consultation on the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF). Research England consulted on the proposed design and implementation of the first iteration of the KEF, focused on metrics. This particularly focuses on the clustering of institutions for fair comparison, the metrics used to underpin the assessment and how the metrics are visualised. This is currently intended as an England-only exercise.

We responded to highlight the potential ramifications of the approach for Scottish HEIs, particularly the relative ease by which third parties could create and include Scottish HEIs in simple league tables; to highlight the importance of some narrative to contextualise metrics; the need to ensure that local economic context is factored into any clustering to enable fair comparison and to reiterate our concerns with some of the HEBCI data (especially in the context of a review of this survey due to run alongside the phase one implementation of KEF).

Read our submission here.