England will not take part in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s project to measure learning outcomes of graduates around the world, delivering a blow to the plan.
The OECD had described the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project, seen as a potential university-level equivalent of the organisation’s Pisa tests in schools, as having the potential to transform the hierarchy of world higher education.
Earlier this year, the OECD asked member nations to indicate whether they wished to take part in a full “main study”, following a pilot of the project.
But the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has declined the chance of taking part and will instead prioritise work in England to develop measures of learning gain, likely to figure in the teaching excellence framework.
David Willetts, the former universities and science minister, had previously suggested that Ahelo could potentially be used by government as a metric to help judge teaching quality at universities.
A BIS spokesman said: “We have responded [to the OECD] and won’t be taking part in the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project.