Medr/2025/02: Consultation on a new regulatory system including conditions of registration and funding

Background

1. The Tertiary Education and Research Wales Act 2022 (‘The Act’) sets out the requirements for a new regulatory system for tertiary education and training providers in Wales. This consultation has been published to satisfy the following requirements in the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022:

• 27 (5) Initial Registration Conditions;
• 28 (7) General Ongoing Registration Conditions;
• 50 (4) Quality Assurance Frameworks, and;
• 81 (3) Statement on Intervention Functions.

Overview

2. This consultation seeks views on Medr’s proposed:

• Regulatory Approach, which sets out how we propose to act as a proportionate and risk-based regulator, and Intervention Powers, which provides a statement of our intervention powers and how those powers may be deployed (Annex A).
• Regulatory Framework which includes a first part of the draft Conditions of Registration and Conditions of Funding; guidance on the requirements for compliance; information on arrangements for ongoing monitoring; and the process for how, and what type of, incidents and events must be reported to Medr (Annex B).
• Quality Framework, which underpins the condition requirements and monitoring arrangements in respect of quality (Annex C).

Consultation Method

3. Responses to the consultation are invited through our online survey. The questions outlined in consultation document (publication Medr/2025/02) provide an outline of the broad structure of the survey. Some aspects of the survey will be more applicable to different types of provider within the tertiary sector – the questions will guide you through this, and users will have the ability the save and return to their responses.

Events

4. During the consultation period we will be hosting two online events that will provide an opportunity to hear from our staff about the development of the new system and the key questions that we are asking of all providers and stakeholders in our consultation. Each event will provide a broad overview of the developments, but will have a separate focus:

• Event 1: 03 June 2025 (Regulatory approach and intervention powers – understanding our approach to our regulatory activities and how we might intervene when things go wrong; and our Quality framework – a quality and continuous improvement framework for the whole of the tertiary sector.) Watch the first consultation event.
• Event 2: 10 June 2025 (Regulatory framework – exploring our regulatory conditions of registration and conditions of funding). Watch the second consultation event.

To confirm your attendance, please register through our Eventbrite page.

Timetable

5. Stakeholders are invited to submit consultation responses via our survey by 5pm on 18 July 2025.

6. Further consultation will take place later in 2025 on the whole of the new regulatory system including those elements not included in this consultation that are currently under development.

7. For further information, contact [email protected].