Annual report and financial summary 2001-2002

Mission 1997-2002

The Agency's mission is to promote public confidence that quality of provision and standards of awards in higher education are being safeguarded and enhanced.

The Agency does this by:

working with higher education institutions to promote and support continuous improvement in the quality and standards of provision;
providing clear and accurate information to students, employers and others about the quality and standards of higher education provision;
working with higher education institutions to develop and manage the qualifications framework;
advising on the grant of degree awarding powers and university title;
facilitating the development of benchmark information to guide subject standards;
promulgating codes of practice and examples of good practice;
operating programmes of review of performance at institutional and programme levels.

Achievements

225 subject reviews in England and Northern Ireland
more than 120 reviews of subject provision in England, Scotland and Wales
17 reviews of institutions, and audits of collaborative provision in five countries
seven reviews of Access to HE Authorised Validating Agencies
development of four new methods of review in England
1. institutional audit
2. developmental engagements
3. health-related professional areas
4. foundation degree programmes
over 460 reports published
maintaining the Academic Infrastructure
1. 36 benchmark statements published
2. completion of the planned 10 sections of the Code of practice
3. round table meetings
two recommendations on degree awarding powers applications and one on university title accepted by the DfES

Chairman's Foreword

The fifth year of the Agency's evolution turned out to be a transitional one in more ways than we could have anticipated when it began. The Chief Executive's introduction to this Annual Report gives you a frank account of how much has been achieved in circumstances which have not been easy.

It is good that the main business of the Agency has at last been able to move on, with the previous extensive programme of subject reviews and quality audits successfully completed. Our efforts can now be largely focused on the new audit-based approaches to the assurance of standards and quality. It is critically important that all those involved in managing their institutions should understand and act upon the full implications of the responsibility they carry for their own quality assurance systems and for maintaining the standards of their own academic awards.

The Agency is here to provide the necessary external assessment of each institution's performance and thereby to offer reassurance about standards and quality to the whole range of stakeholders, and especially to students and employers. The Agency is also well placed to provide well-informed advice and professional support to the higher education sector throughout the UK in its quest for quality enhancement.

I welcome the fact that the Agency is being asked by each of the funding councils to vary, to a certain extent, the model for external quality assurance and quality enhancement. This is a proper response to the diversity of provision and delivery within the UK. However, I am equally pleased to note that there remains a strong consensus in favour of maintaining a consistent approach across the UK in relation to the standards of all academic awards in higher education. This is surely of paramount importance.

Let us not overlook the international dimension. The UK has always been a major player in higher education world-wide, but this should not be taken for granted. As far as quality assurance is concerned, the Agency has established a respected and influential reputation internationally and is in a position to play a significant supporting role in this area.

It is a pleasure each year to pay tribute to all those who have worked so well to make such notable progress. To all Board members and to all members of our committees I express my sincere gratitude. I thank those many hundreds of reviewers, auditors, advisers and supporters without whom we could not do our work. On behalf of the Board, I offer a special vote of thanks to our new Chief Executive and to each and every member of our devoted staff. The sudden death of Peter Milton was an enormous shock to all of us who knew and valued him, far and wide, and I believe that he, himself, would have been pleased with the way in which we have all got on with the job.

Christopher Kenyon

Introduction by the Chief Executive

The year 2001-02 was particularly busy for the Agency. This Annual Report describes the achievements of the year, which were many. For those who experienced it, the year will also be remembered for the remarkable number of hurdles that were encountered and overcome. These also should be recorded.

As the year began we were confronted with a full programme of reviews and other work, the requirement to devise a complex new quality assurance system for England, uncertainty about intentions for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the resignation of the Chief Executive, John Randall. During the course of the year we lost all but one of the senior management staff. Two directors, Julie Swan and Stuart Bushell, went on to develop their careers further at the Law Society, while in February 2002 we suffered the devastating blow of the sudden and unexpected death of Peter Milton, Director of Programme Review. For one week in February the Agency had no directors in post. Further, the year saw the departure to pastures new of the Head of Communications and the Head of Finance, both key positions.

In the face of these major setbacks, the staff of the Agency reacted in a resolute and unwavering manner. Responsibilities were redistributed and taken up, our programme of work continued unaffected, and everyone took up the challenge, showing a level of dedication and professionalism which would carry us through. That we did achieve all of our objectives and meet all of the demands placed upon us was the result of outstanding teamwork and personal commitment. But a particular debt is owed to Nicola Channon and Gillian Hayes, Heads of Operations in Institutional Review and Programme Review respectively, and to Nick Harris, at the time Assistant Director in the Development Directorate. These three colleagues assisted most ably with the general management of the Agency, and helped in the development of new strategies and methods of review.

The departure of senior staff, and the need to respond to the new requirements of our various stakeholders, provided the opportunity to review and revise the internal organisation of the Agency. The existing structure reflected the inheritance from our predecessor bodies and was clearly becoming less and less relevant to our future needs. A new structure was needed and has now been put in place. The previous Institutional Review, Programme Review, Development, and Administration directorates have been replaced by four groups, covering Reviews, Development and Enhancement, Administration and the Chief Executive's activities. The groups are task-centred not staff-centred, and staff, although based in one group, are encouraged to work in other groups as well, thereby making their skills and experience more widely available across the Agency. A new Information Unit has been created within the Reviews Group, to provide assistance for the institutional audits, and more effective internal communications strategy and information exchange are further features of the new organisation.

These structural changes were reflected in the appointment of new directors and other senior staff who replaced those who had departed. Douglas Blackstock joined us as Director of Administration and Company Secretary in March 2002 from the University of Warwick, where he was the General Manager of the Students' Union. In July, Nick Harris was appointed as Director of Development and Enhancement. Stephen Jackson, Director of Partnerships, Liverpool John Moores University, was appointed as Director of Reviews, joining the Agency in October 2002 and so completing the Executive team. Jean Lawton took up her post as Head of Communications in March 2002, Liz Rosser joined us as Head of Finance a month later, and Mandy Nelson was appointed Head of the Information Unit in February.

The new structure reflects an explicit set of purposes, values and standards, linked to a revised mission statement, which were under development during the year and approved by the Board in January 2003. These state clearly what the Agency exists to achieve, what it believes in, and the level of service it intends to provide, and are set out in the Strategic plan 2003-05. This is particularly important as we move from a single UK approach to quality assurance to one where each country seeks to meet its needs in its own distinctive way, involving us in the development and implementation of a number of review methods.

In the previous Annual Report I described the events surrounding the move in England, led by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Universities UK (UUK), away from the UK-wide method approved in 2000 to a new audit-based approach focusing on institutional responsibilities to assure quality and standards, augmented by discipline audit trails, institutional publication of specified information about quality and standards, and a transitional period in which developmental engagements would be undertaken. At the time of writing that Annual Report (January 2002) we were awaiting agreement by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to the Operational Description of the audit method, and further details of the information requirements, in order that the Handbook, containing details of how the process would be run, could be produced.

Agreement on this was not forthcoming until April 2002. The requirement that the new process should be introduced during 2002-03 was not changed, however, leaving us only limited time to undertake the large amount of work involved in setting up what is probably the most logistically complex quality assurance review method for higher education yet seen anywhere in the world. Between April and July 2002 we produced and consulted on the institutional audit Handbook, began the process of recruiting and training auditors, agreed a schedule of audits with institutions, started to brief institutions on the new arrangements, undertook internal staff briefings and development sessions, and mirrored all these activities in the parallel operation of preparing to run a separate programme of developmental engagements as part of the transitional arrangements. Fortunately, we have been given a remarkable level of help by the higher education community, which nominated considerable numbers of auditors and audit secretaries, and which has shown not only great goodwill towards us but also occasional forbearance as we have begun the new institutional audits. Our gratitude to the sector is unbounded.

We have had, perforce, to work within a truncated timescale in order to undertake the first audit visits in February 2003. This has not been easy for us, or for the institutions involved, but all concerned have demonstrated a willingness to co-operate and make the new process work. This augurs well for the future relationship between institutions and the Agency and for the establishment of a new understanding based on mutual respect and shared values.

In addition to the institutional audit and associated developments, we were asked to create a method and undertake a series of reviews of foundation degrees; complete the series of English subject reviews for HEFCE; continue with the HE in FE academice reviews in England; run subject 'engagements' in Wales; complete the programme of academic reviews in Scotland; develop and run prototype subject reviews of health-related HE programmes for the Department of Health; and engage in discussions with bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on their requirements for the future. We also continued with our existing responsibilities for the Access Courses Recognition Scheme and for providing advice to government departments on applications for degree-awarding powers and university title. This burgeoning of expectations and requirements for external quality assurance reviews has led to the Agency undertaking the development and/or implementation of no fewer than 16 different review methods in 2002-03. Although this number should reduce in the next three years, it remains a fact that the UK faces a continuing plurality of external quality assurance procedures which may well baffle those whom they are intended to inform.

During the course of the first half of 2002, the Government's Better Regulation Task Force was studying the scale and impact of regulatory requirements on higher education. The report, which was published in July, questioned the need for the intensity of review of the regime inherited by the Agency; and acknowledged the intention of the new procedures being introduced in England to reduce this. Taking into account our commitment to reduce the burden of external quality assurance on institutions, we were generally satisfied with the recommendations made in the report, to the extent that they had not already been overtaken by events, and so far as they showed an adequate understanding of the matters in hand.

During the year we took the opportunity, created by the completion of the academic infrastructure (qualifications frameworks, subject benchmark statements, programme specifications and the Code of practice), to review our development and enhancement strategy. In the course of this we identified three main focuses that would give the Agency a distinctive activity of value to the higher education community: first, maintenance of the academic infrastructure, including revisions to sections of the Code of practice, responsiveness to calls for new or revised subject benchmark statements, and further development of the concept of programme specifications; secondly, a greater effort to communicate to higher education the findings of our reviews and other work, identifying good and not so good practices and disseminating them more effectively; and thirdly, a better degree of communication with, and understanding of, the higher education environment and the context in which institutions are working. These objectives will be achieved through publications; conferences, seminars and meetings; and the establishment of a liaison officer arrangement which will encourage closer ties between the Agency and individual institutions. This approach to development and enhancement is different from that being elaborated by the Teaching Quality Enhancement Committee set up by UUK and HEFCE: the Agency's work will concentrate on the enhancement of quality management and the assurance of standards.

This introduction has focused on changes within the Agency and on the programme of work generated by changes in the landscape of quality assurance across the UK. We have, though, also been keeping a careful watch on the fast moving international scene. It is easy to believe that quality assurance is a national pursuit, that agendas are established for internal purposes and that the outside world has little to say to us or reason to concern itself with what is going on in the UK. This view would be entirely mistaken: the UK is a major player on the international higher education scene, one of three biggest exporters of higher education, as well as a leading exponent of quality assurance systems. During 2001-02 we actively participated in a number of international projects, attended and spoke at several conferences and seminars around the world, and made major contributions to initiatives resulting from the Bologna process, such as the Tuning Project, the Dutch Joint Quality Initiative and the work of the European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies (ENQA). The impact of international developments on the UK will undoubtedly increase in the coming years and it is important that the Agency should play a leading role in ensuring that they are compatible with a philosophy of institutional responsibility and continuous improvement.

In the pages that follow, readers will find more detailed accounts of our work in 2001-02. I believe these show not only the range of activities the Agency is asked to undertake, but also the considerable volume and quality of our work. We finished the year a little tired but in good heart and ready for the next set of challenges to appear.

On a personal note, I wish to thank all those who helped me to guide the Agency during the year. I was grateful to the Chairman and Board for the opportunity to serve as the Acting Chief Executive between September 2001 and March 2002 and for their unfailing support and assistance during that particularly difficult time. The Board in March appointed me as Chief Executive until 2008 and I am very conscious of the trust they have placed in me to lead the Agency in the next phase of its development.

Peter Williams

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