Transcript No Slide Title

UK higher education: quality
assurance at home and abroad
Carolyn Campbell
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher
Education
Overview
• Context
• The higher education system
• The quality assurance of UK higher education
• The work of the Quality Assurance Agency
• The academic infrastructure for quality
• The quality assurance of collaborative provision
• The Code of Practice
• The audit of overseas partnership links
• Future developments
The UK higher education
system
• 170 universities and colleges of higher
education
• higher education corporations with legal
power to award degrees
• >2 million students, >12% of who are
international
• characterised by increasing diversity and
innovation in the delivery of learning and
teaching
Quality assurance in UK
higher education
• External QA is largely a phenomenon of the last ten
years
• Politically driven
• Accountability led
• Twin track: audit/assessment
• Audit – institutional management of quality and
standards
• Assessment – reviews of subjects
• New processes moving focus to institutional audit
/review
The quality assurance of UK
higher education: principles
• Put responsibility for assuring quality
and standards clearly within institutions
• Place certain specific obligations on
institutions
• Require institutions to publish full,
accurate and verifiable information
about quality and standards for students
and others
The quality assurance of higher
education in the UK: the landscape
• Implementation of the ‘academic
infrastructure’ for quality and standards
• Published information about quality and
standards in individual institutions
• Student surveys
• New QAA processes:
• Institutional audit in England and Northern Ireland
• Enhancement led institutional review in Scotland
• Institutional review in Wales
The Quality Assurance Agency
(QAA): some facts
• Founded in 1997
• A not-for-profit company owned by the ‘representative
bodies’ (RBs) – Universitiesuk and the Standing
Conference of Principals
• A Board of Directors: 6 independent, 4RB nominees,
4 Funding Council nominees; independent Chairman
• Two offices: Gloucester (HQ) and Glasgow (Scottish
Office)
• 130 staff organised into four groups
• Budget c £9M, from institutional subscriptions and
funding councils’ contracts
What does QAA do?
• Develops and maintains the ‘academic
infrastructure’
• Reviews institutions and programmes through
audits and subject reviews (including
overseas and collaborative activities)
• Advises government on applications for
degree awarding powers and university title
• Offers advice on academic quality and
standards matters
What is the academic
infrastructure?
• In 1996, the National Committee of Inquiry into
Higher Education recommended an explicit
framework within which UK higher education would
deal with quality and standards. Has resulted in:
• Two qualifications frameworks (England, Wales and
Northern Ireland; Scotland – a credit and
qualifications framework);
• Subject benchmark statements – currently 65;
• Code of Practice for Quality Assurance: 10 sections;
• Programme specifications (produced by institutions).
The Code of Practice…..
• is concerned with an institution’s
management of quality and standards
• is based on widely agreed good practice
• comprises a series of sections (10 in
total), each with
• a set of precepts (principles)
• associated guidance
Code of Practice: section 2:
collaborative provision
• Is concerned with the wide range of partnership
arrangements which UK higher education institutions
enter into with other institutions or organisations at
home or overseas
• Is based on the key principles that
• collaborative arrangements should widen learning
opportunities without prejudice to the standard of the award
(qualification) or the quality of what is offered to the student
• arrangements for assuring quality and standards should be
as rigorous and open to scrutiny as those for programmes
provided wholly within the responsibility of a single
institution.
Implementing the Code of
Practice
• From August 2000, institutions were expected to be
able to demonstrate broad adherence to the precepts
in Section 2.
• Since 1997, QAA audit teams visit overseas partners
of UK institutions to make enquiries about how the
quality and standards of UK awards and programmes
offered to students outside the UK are safeguarded.
• More than 100 links have been reported on and
overseas audit visits have been made to more than
20 countries.
QAA overseas audits: features
• Voluntary participation of UK higher education
institutions and with agreement of partner
organisations
• Focus is the partnership – not a review or
audit of the overseas partner
• Cover a range of programmes and subjects,
levels of awards, types of partnership and mix
of partners
• Result in published overseas audit reports
QAA overseas audits : the
process (1)
• Request to UK institutions for information on
collaborative provision in a range of countries
• Selection of country destinations and partnerships for
audit
• Provision of a Commentary by the higher education
institution:
• Describing the way in which the partnership operates
• Discussing the effectiveness of the means by which the institution
assures quality and standards in the link
• Indicating the extent to which the particular link is representative of
its procedures and practice in all its collaborative provision
• Referring to the way their arrangements meet the expectations of
the Code
QAA overseas audits: the
process (2)
• Visit by audit team members to the UK institution to
discuss its arrangements in the light of its
Commentary
• Visit to the overseas partner
• to gain further insight into the experience of staff and students
• to supplement the view formed by the audit team from the
Commentary and from the UK visit.
• QAA overseas audit report covering
•
•
•
•
The establishment and management of the collaborative provision
The quality of learning opportunities and student support
The assurance of the standards of awards (qualifications)
Conclusions
Future developments
• The experience of institutions’ use of the Code, the
findings from overseas audits and the increase in the
use of flexible learning arrangements have
contributed to the current review of Section 2 of the
Code and of the QAA Guidelines for the Quality
Assurance of Distance Learning
• A revised version of Section 2 of the Code, with a
separate section on flexible and distributed learning,
is in the process of development has been circulated
for public comment
• In parallel, the process for the audit of collaborative
provision (at home and abroad) is also under review
For further information……
including the outcome of the consultation
on the revised Code and overseas audits
keep watching……….at……..
www.qaa.ac.uk
• Key findings of the first new institutional
audits in England have indicated the
importance of continued attention to the
robustness of the quality assurance of
partnership arrangements