About the ANU EFS
The ANU Educational Fellowship Scheme (EFS) provides educators, including academic and professional staff who support learning, with internationally accredited professional recognition of their experience and expertise in university education. ANU is able to offer EFS to its staff by being a subscriber to Advance HE, previously the Higher Education Academy (HEA), an independent, non-profit organisation committed to world-class teaching in higher education.
The Teaching Support and Recognition team will help you throughout the application process. We support and award three categories of fellowship: Associate Fellow of the HEA (AFHEA), Fellow of the HEA (FHEA) and Senior Fellow of the HEA (SFHEA). In addition, we support applicants for the Principal Fellow of the HEA (PFHEA) category to apply directly to Advance HE. Whichever category you choose, you will be asked to reflect on your practice, values and philosophies as an educator, your accumulated experience in higher education, and different kinds of education-related expertise.
Visit our Apply for EFS page to learn more about the program.
What are our aims?
Aim 1: To support individual members of academic or professional staff at ANU to gain internationally endorsed professional recognition through an appropriate category of Advance HE fellowship. Fellowship award requires applicants to describe, reflect on and evidence past practice that includes experience in, and knowledge of, teaching and learning at tertiary level and/or student learning support; engagement with relevant professional development; and commitment to professional values and professionalism as a university educator.
Aim 2: To develop and support a community of fellows across ANU to share effective practice and engage in ongoing educational professional development.
Aim 3: To broaden the approach to professional development and professional recognition of teaching and learning activities at ANU by providing staff with a reflective framework of standards that gives ANU staff involved in teaching and learning a clear understanding of what they do, how they do it, and why they do it that way; a recognition structure linked to professional learning programs run by the Teaching Support and Recognition team; an externally benchmarked measure of esteem for promotion cases, performance reviews and job applications; and opportunities for ongoing peer engagement, networking, and intra- and cross-institutional benchmarking.
Aim 4: To support ANU in demonstrating national leadership in the sector through engagement with the effective professionalisation of ANU teaching and learning.
Professional Standards Framework
Advance HE, previously the Higher Education Academy (HEA), is an independent, non-profit organisation committed to world-class teaching in higher education. It works in partnership with institutions and individuals in higher education to support student success. Advance HE brings the sector together to collaborate and share teaching strategies and practice. It currently has more than 180,000 fellows around the world, with more than 6,000 in Australia. Since being introduced to ANU in late 2013, EFS has awarded more than 600 HEA fellowships to ANU staff and more than 250 to staff from external universities.
As of 2026, the Professional Standards Framework 2023 (PSF 2023) is the latest version of Advance HE’s globally recognised framework for benchmarking excellence in higher education teaching and learning support. Advance HE, the custodian of the framework, has phased out PSF 2011, and ANU is now transitioning to PSF 2023. All applicants starting from August 2024 onwards will use PSF 2023.
PSF 2023 builds on the strengths of PSF 2011 while placing more overt emphasis on the effectiveness and impact of teaching and/or learning support; the context in which teaching and/or learning support takes place; and inclusivity, both in terms of the wider range of staff able to engage with PSF and the inclusive approaches that ensure all learners feel respected, valued and able to succeed.
To learn more about PSF 2023, download and read the PSF 2023 guide on the Advance HE website.