OfS escalates oversight of subcontracted provision, and why student feedback evidence matters

Updated Sep 07, 2026

On 5 February 2026, the Office for Students (OfS) announced additional requirements for RTC Education Ltd, trading as Regent College London, and the University of Greater Manchester. The decision followed assessment of subcontracted Business Management courses. OfS announcement.

What the regulator decided

RTC entered enhanced monitoring, including progress information and further quality assessment. The University of Greater Manchester received a specific ongoing condition, BB, concerning its management of subcontractual arrangements. OfS found breaches of conditions B1, B2 and B4 at both providers.

The case report describes concerns about teaching capacity, access to core texts and assessment, including feedback arriving outside expected timescales. These assessment concerns and the regulator’s subsequent findings should not be treated as identical lists: the report did not make a further B2 non-compliance finding on its support-staffing concern after considering corrective action. Regulatory case report, pages 2–9.

Condition BB required Greater Manchester to report its implementation plans and progress by 14 July 2026, with the specified measures implemented by 14 January 2027. These were case-specific requirements, not new deadlines for every university. Condition BB, pages 12–14.

A practical response for quality teams

Our interpretation is that providers can use this case to examine how concerns move from collection to action across partner provision. It does not establish that comment analysis alone prevents regulatory breaches.

For an internal review, choose a concern such as feedback timeliness and follow its evidence trail. Record the affected course or site, the source and date of the concern, the responsible team and the action agreed. Check operational records alongside student accounts; a survey response is evidence of an experience, not proof of every underlying cause.

Where comments are compared across partners, document differences in questions, collection periods and response coverage. Protect confidentiality and avoid drawing conclusions from small groups. A later change in survey sentiment may justify investigation, but cannot on its own establish that an intervention caused improvement.

The student comment analysis governance checklist offers a starting point for documenting access, interpretation and review responsibilities.

Review note, 7 September 2026: corrected the source link, clarified the distinction between assessment concerns and regulatory findings, and separated our practical suggestions from the case-specific requirements.