Programme Excellence Project (PEP): developing frameworks for excellence in education

A reminder of our earlier briefings can be found here:  

• PEP: Why we are doing it and how does it link to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)?

• Programme Excellence Project (PEP) governance and partnership with faculties and departments

A shared framework, developed with the UCL community

The UCL Curriculum Design Principles were developed collaboratively with staff and students across the university. We carried out extensive consultation on the development of the principles from June to December 2024. Colleagues from faculties and departments, our Higher Education Development and Support Institute (HEDS), Education Committee, PEP governance groups and the Students’ Union contributed via roundtables, focus groups, senior leadership discussions and written submissions to a formal open consultation. You can read a detailed summary of the feedback received during the consultation period in the Curriculum Design Principles Consultation and Feedback Report. 

Feedback received during the consultation directly shaped the development of the principles, including the addition of enhanced descriptions, stronger articulation of equality, inclusion and accessibility, clearer alignment with excellence ambitions, and consistent use of agreed curriculum terminology (e.g. the change from ‘programme’ to ‘course’).

The final principles were approved by UCL Education Committee in January 2025 as a framework to help us deliver our ambitions for Excellence in Education consistently through our course curricula, facilitated by the PEP2 Curriculum Review process. 

Curriculum Design Principles: supporting excellence in education

UCL’s Curriculum Design Principles underpin the design and delivery of our courses and articulate what curriculum excellence looks like at UCL. The principles help ensure that our courses remain academically challenging and coherent for students, are attractive to future applicants, and optimise UCL staff expertise and student potential. The principles are designed to strike a careful balance between greater alignment of our curricula and flexibility of interpretation in different disciplines and contexts. 

Equality, inclusion, diversity, respect and care for our global community of students and staff are essential components of UCL’s Curriculum Design Principles. The principles support our mission to ‘educate future citizens, leaders and innovators who will make positive impacts in the world’. 

The principles will enable us to clearly demonstrate how we have decisively and strategically responded to 2023 TEF panel feedback by providing a framework for consistency of educational quality to improve student experiences and outcomes. This will support our goal to achieve TEF Silver in the next TEF exercise, and excellence in education for all our students.  

The Curriculum Design Principles are:  

1. Cutting-Edge Content - Content and pedagogy are research-led, relevant, and up-to-date, providing students with a future-focused and academically challenging curriculum that is aligned with sector benchmarks and meets the needs of a diverse and changing global society. 

2. Coherent Choice - Courses are designed to provide academically coherent, informed, and realistic choices, enabling students to explore their academic and career interests. 

3. Structured Progression - The course design supports student learning progression by appropriate ordering of core, optional and elective modules and assessment activities at each course stage in alignment with UCL’s credit and levels framework. 

4. Aligned Assessment - There is a clear course assessment strategy that supports progression, tests learning outcomes, and ensures academic integrity in line with UCL’s ambitions for effective feedback and assessment. 

5. Optimised Engagement - The course creates community belonging and engagement through rich and rewarding learning opportunities and high-quality learning resources and academic support that help students to make the most of their time at university. 

Curriculum Definitions: a common language for curriculum design 

Alongside the principles, we have developed a set of UCL Curriculum Definitions to standardise key curriculum terminology used as part of PEP implementation, approved by UCL Education Committee in February 2025.

The Curriculum Definitions: 

• clarify how programmes, courses, modules and collections are structured and governed 

• support improved curriculum data quality and decision making 

• help to enable curriculum coherence, realistic student choice, and effective timetabling and systems implementation. 

To support the third and final phase of the Programme Excellence Project, PEP3: Module Review, Education Committee approved enhanced module and collection definitions in February 2026, including clearer distinctions between: 

• core, optional and elective modules 

• module collections (course, department, faculty, and cross-faculty-owned) 

• module statuses and requisites. 

These definitions help to provide the structural underpinning for sustainable module portfolios and will support staff through upcoming module‑focused review activity. 

Supporting flexible student pathways: post‑enrolment specialisms

A key feature of the PEP curriculum model is the introduction of post‑enrolment specialisms. As part of and in parallel to PEP, these new curriculum structures were clearly defined as part of the Curriculum Definitions.

Post‑enrolment specialisms: 

• allow students to select a named specialism after enrolment 

• require shared curricula in the early stages of courses, with differentiation and branching enabled later on 

• replace minors and many existing pathways 

• require a minimum of 90 distinct credits in the specialism from the parent course. 

This approach simplifies portfolio structures while enabling coherent student choice and clearer progression. 

Staff perspectives

Hear from colleagues about how the framework developed through PEP and the principles has helped to shape curriculum design and student opportunities: 

Dr Francesca Scott, Director of Education & Student Experience, Faculty of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, shared with us: “The Curriculum Design Principles and the PEP framework have provided a valuable structure for departments in MAPS to undertake a genuinely reflective, evidence-informed review of their courses and programmes. In particular, the use of PEP data enabled academic teams to interrogate their provision in greater depth, especially in relation to employability, assessment strategy, and the alignment of learning outcomes, supporting more coherent and purposeful curriculum design. This has strengthened both recent PEP2 review activity and is shaping future enhancements across the faculty through PEP3 and beyond.” 

Sally Mackenzie, Associate Director, Office of the Vice-Provost (Education & Student Experience), added: “The PEP Curriculum Principles have provided a framework for ExtendED Learning opportunities, moving them from extra-curricular ‘nice to haves’, which sit on the periphery of a student’s experience, to valuable structured features of an excellent education. The Optimised Engagement principle has helped to signal and embed learning opportunities, ensuring students get the most out of their education.

“Last year we saw firsthand the difference it makes when a recognisable person, such as a Module Lead, makes the link between curriculum content and a relevant ExtendED Learning activity, by signposting students to the programme and highlighting the relevance and value. Ahead of the 2026 ExtendED Learning launch later this month, we’ve been focusing on how we can support staff to tailor and communicate the most relevant activities within the programme to different groups of students. As a result we’ve seen numbers grow to almost 4,000 bookings this year. That’s a huge number of students who can take elements of what they’ve learned in their degree, practice it in a new context and then take back newfound confidence into their studies.”

Final thoughts

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the development of the Curriculum Design Principles and Curriculum Definitions which will provide a framework for UCL to deliver its ambitions for excellence in education during the 2027 TEF and beyond, improving student experience and the future curriculum. 

In next week’s article, we will highlight key findings from the Module Landscape Study, and how these insights will support improvements to students’ experience of their educational journey at UCL. We will also share more in coming weeks about the most recent example of the principles in action –  the Module Operating Model – approved by Education Committee in April 2026.