5.14 Our aims for higher education are to achieve wider access and high standards. We have already provided £125 million for 1998-99 to preserve and enhance quality, and an additional £40 million to improve access. The Dearing Committee set out a new emphasis on quality and standards, designed to ensure that students who commit themselves to higher education are well taught and helped to succeed, and emerge with awards whose value is known and undisputed in the market places of the UK and the world. Our new funding system gives students the right to demand better quality of teaching and greater attention to their needs.

5.15 The higher education sector has responded positively to Dearing's recommendations and will be pursuing them. We attach great importance to the continued drive to improve standards and quality across teaching, research, and qualifications in higher education. The Government will monitor progress made in this area to assure the quality of teaching, the maintenance and raising of standards and the way that institutions respond to national policy.

5.16 We also think there should be a more direct link between institutions' funding and the quality and standards of teaching and learning. We believe that teaching in higher education deserves a higher profile in relation to research than it has had in the past. We welcome the Higher Education Funding Councils' consultation on the criticism there has been of the research assessment exercise. The Government would like to see a process for assessing the quality of research which enhances quality and innovation and which is open to a greater number of influences than peer review, drawing on research expertise from outside UK universities where this is appropriate and can be done in a cost-effective way.

5.17 The funding bodies should identify ways of rewarding the best in teaching and learning and successful outreach to the disadvantaged or under-represented. We also see the need to build up the standards and professional status of teachers in higher education. Central to achieving these changes will be the new Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education recommended by Dearing, which the Government expects to be established as soon as possible. This will complement the work of the General Teaching Council for teachers in schools and the proposed NTO for Further Education.

5.18 The quality of teaching can be improved by making more widely available the work of outstanding teachers, and students should have the chance of hearing outstanding lecturers on film, video or via broadcasting. We will invite the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, when it is established, to consider how this can be done.

5.19 Governing bodies have an important role in ensuring that universities and higher education colleges are accountable and effective. The Dearing Committee's view was that universities and higher education colleges have responded to stakeholders' expectations of increased transparency, probity, accountability and efficiency, but that further action was needed. We expect to see sustained progress and will monitor the situation in order to assess whether the Dearing Committee's recommendations should be revisited.