Medr and Course Evaluation in Wales: One Tertiary Regulator, Every Learner

Bottom line up front: On 1 August 2024, Wales did something no other UK nation has done: it placed higher education, further education, school sixth forms, apprenticeships, adult community learning and research under a single statutory regulator, Medr — the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research. Crucially, the founding Act gives Medr a statutory duty to secure the learner voice across every one of those provider types. That turns student feedback from an institutional courtesy into part of a statutory system, and it forces a single evidence bar to work across radically different kinds of learning. For anyone running course evaluation in a Welsh university, that is a change in what feedback is for.

What Medr is, and why it is different

Medr — the operating name of the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (in Welsh, Y Comisiwn Addysg Drydyddol ac Ymchwil; "Medr" means skill or ability) — was created by the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022, which received Royal Assent on 8 September 2022. It became operational on 1 August 2024, the day after the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) was dissolved, taking over HEFCW's functions plus a range of Welsh Government tertiary-education responsibilities (GOV.WALES written statement, September 2024).

The distinctive move is scope. Medr describes itself as "the first ever national steward for the whole tertiary education and research sector," overseeing further education, higher education, apprenticeships, school sixth forms, adult community learning, and government-funded research and innovation — all in one place. Where England splits these functions across the Office for Students, Ofsted, and others, Wales has one body with a single strategic remit and, for 2025–26, a budget of £961.8 million (Medr Annual Report and Accounts 2024–25). This is a different model from the national teaching-evaluation and audit bodies we have profiled elsewhere — Finland's FINEEC, Scotland's enhancement-led ELIR and Spain's DOCENTIA — because Medr's remit crosses the boundary between higher and further education rather than sitting inside one of them.

The load-bearing fact: learner voice is now statutory

The Act sets out eleven strategic duties for Medr (sections 2 to 12), including a duty to "promote continuous improvement in the quality of Welsh tertiary education" and to promote increased participation and retention of under-represented groups. But the provision that matters most for course evaluation is the requirement that Medr prepare and publish a Learner Engagement Code. The Code requires that learners have the opportunity to give their views to providers and are able to participate in their providers' decision-making — and, critically, it binds all provider types, from universities to colleges to sixth forms to apprenticeship and adult-learning providers, with governing bodies under a statutory duty to comply.

That is a meaningful shift. In most systems, "we run a survey" is an institutional habit that can be thin, tokenistic or ignored. Under Medr, hearing the learner voice — and being able to show that learners influenced decisions — becomes a compliance expectation Medr monitors and reports on. Course evaluation stops being about producing a number for an internal dashboard and starts being about producing evidence of engagement and its effect.

One evidence bar, very different learners

The harder implication is comparability across an unusually wide span. A single regulator that funds and oversees a research-intensive university, a further-education college, a school sixth form and a work-based apprenticeship provider needs signals that mean something across all of them — yet an 18-year-old A-level student, a mature returner in adult community learning, and a degree apprentice splitting time between employer and campus do not experience "a course" in remotely the same way. A satisfaction mean that is comparable only because it flattens those differences is not comparability; it is noise dressed as a number. The task Medr's architecture sets is to hear each learner in terms that fit their context while still rolling up to something a national steward can act on. That is exactly the tension between depth and comparability that a static, one-size survey handles worst.

But isn't this just another single regulator?

The obvious objection is that a single tertiary regulator is not unique — Scotland has the Scottish Funding Council spanning colleges and universities, and plenty of countries fund post-school education through one agency. Two things make the Welsh case worth attention rather than a shrug. First, the statutory learner-engagement duty binding every provider type is stronger than a funding-council convention; it is written into the Act and monitored, not left to institutional discretion. Second, Wales is deliberately integrating quality across the HE/FE divide rather than merely co-funding either side of it. During the transition Medr is maintaining HEFCW's quality-assessment arrangements — including QAA Quality Enhancement Review for higher education under the Quality Assessment Framework for Wales — but the direction of travel is a single tertiary quality architecture. Whether that fully materialises is a fair question; the point is that the incentives now push toward comparable, cross-sector learner evidence, and institutions that can already produce it will be ahead. It is the same lesson we drew from treating student outcomes as a leading indicator under the Office for Students' Condition B3: the regulator is redefining what counts as evidence, and satisfaction is not it.

What Welsh institutions should do now

Treat feedback as evidence of engagement, not just a rating. Medr will look for whether learners influenced decisions — so capture the loop, not only the score.
Design for context, not uniformity. A method that can hear a mature adult learner, a sixth-former and a degree apprentice in their own terms will survive a cross-sector regulator better than a single flattened survey.
Make the closing of the loop visible. Under a statutory Learner Engagement Code, "you said, we did" stops being marketing and becomes auditable evidence.
Align bilingually. In a system with a statutory duty to grow Welsh-medium tertiary education, feedback instruments that work in both languages are not optional.

Where Koji fits

A statutory learner-voice duty across wildly different provider types is precisely the kind of demand a legacy Likert survey cannot meet. Koji for Education uses AI-moderated conversational interviews that adapt to context — hearing a mature adult learner, a sixth-former or a degree apprentice in terms that fit their experience — while its standardized, bias-aware moderation keeps the questioning consistent enough to roll up into comparable, cross-cohort reporting. Its automatic thematic analysis turns open-text feedback into the evidence-of-engagement a regulator now expects, and its action-tracking makes the closing of the loop visible and auditable rather than anecdotal. This aligns with the European quality-assurance direction we have written about under the ESG and ENQA. Koji mitigates and surfaces; it does not replace the professional judgement Medr still expects institutions to exercise. The same AI interview engine powers general user and customer research on the main koji.so platform.

Wales has made hearing learners a statutory obligation across the whole of tertiary education. The institutions that thrive under Medr will be the ones that can prove they listened — and acted — across every kind of learner they serve.

Frequently asked questions

What is Medr? Medr is the operating name of the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, the single statutory regulator for tertiary education in Wales. Created by the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022, it became operational on 1 August 2024 and replaced the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW).

Why does Medr matter for course evaluation? Because the Act requires Medr to publish a statutory Learner Engagement Code obliging all provider types to hear the learner voice and let learners participate in decision-making. That turns student feedback from an institutional habit into a compliance expectation Medr monitors — course evaluation becomes evidence of engagement and its effect, not just a rating.

What does Medr regulate? Higher education, further education, apprenticeships, school sixth forms, adult community learning, and government-funded research and innovation — all under one body. It is described as the first national steward for the whole tertiary education and research sector in Wales.

How is this different from other national quality models? Bodies like Finland's FINEEC, Scotland's ELIR and Spain's DOCENTIA operate within higher education. Medr's remit crosses the higher/further-education boundary and beyond, so a single evidence bar has to work across very different kinds of learner — a much wider comparability challenge.

Isn't a single tertiary regulator common already? Funding councils spanning colleges and universities exist elsewhere, but Medr pairs that breadth with a statutory, monitored learner-engagement duty binding every provider type, and is integrating quality across the HE/FE divide rather than merely co-funding both. That combination is what makes the model notable.

How does Koji help institutions respond to Medr? By using AI-moderated interviews that adapt to each learner's context while staying consistent enough for comparable reporting, turning open text into evidence of engagement through thematic analysis, and making the closing of the loop auditable through action-tracking — all framed as mitigating and surfacing, not replacing institutional judgement.

Preparing your Welsh institution's evaluation for the Medr era? See how Koji for Education works.