LONDON - Britain's university minister Monday launched a rating system for British universities by either gold, silver or bronze standards.

The aim of the initiative, announced by Sam Gyimah, is to reward excellent teaching and expose poor quality teaching with a new rating system for universities.

The universities will be held to account for the quality of their teaching, learning environment and graduate outcomes.

"Prospective students deserve to know which courses deliver great teaching and great outcomes, and which ones are lagging behind. In the age of the student, universities will no longer be able to hide if their teaching quality is not up to the world-class standard that we expect," Gyimah said.

Gyimah said the new Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) will give students more information than before, allowing them to compare universities by subject.

"This will level the international playing field to help applicants make better choices, and ensure that more students get the value-for-money they deserve from higher education," he added.

The Department for Education (DfE) launched a ten-week public consultation on Monday seeking views on a design for the new framework. Meanwhile, a pilot of the scheme is taking place at 50 universities and colleges, including the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), De Montfort University and the Open University.

The DfE said that by extending the TEF framework to include the subject level, the government aims to help prospective students compare the different courses on offer across institutions. It will also shine a light on course quality, revealing which universities are providing excellent teaching, and which are coasting or relying on their research reputation.

"This new framework recognizes that outcomes and teaching quality differ not just by university but also by course, and will allow students to look behind provider-level ratings and access information about teaching quality for a specific subject."

The new framework, to be fully introduced in the 2019-2020 academic year, will take into account student feedback, drop-out rates, and graduate outcomes to help deliver the objectives of Prime Minister Theresa May's post-18 education review launched last month.