QAA publishes Annual review
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has today launched its annual review for 2006-07. It marks the tenth anniversary since the founding of QAA, providing an opportunity to reflect on the increasing maturity and stability of quality assurance and enhancement in higher education and the well-founded national structure and organisation that underpins it.
Chief Executive, Peter Williams comments: “It is good to be able to report that, as in previous years, the overwhelming majority of higher education institutions and further education colleges that we have visited have effective systems in place to manage their academic activities and, as a result, are achieving appropriate standards and quality. This is no mean feat, given the increases in student numbers, the changing profile of students and the competing demands on academic staff time. Where we have discovered weaknesses, institutions have, almost without exception, acted quickly and willingly to remedy it.”
The report also highlights the importance of QAA’s role in maintaining the national Academic infrastructure, the organising framework which helps institutions to manage their academic activities, as the higher education landscape continues to change. Peter Williams says: “It is widely recognised that the UK's role in the globalisation of higher education has become ever more essential. As the expanding numbers of international quality assurance agencies look to build relations with QAA and benefit from our expertise, our future pivotal role in international developments, in relation to standards and quality, seems certain to grow.”
Looking forward he examines the challenges and sets out a number of priorities for the coming year: “ Implementation of our strategy for student engagement will be of particular importance. This will aim to encourage students to become more involved in activities designed to improve quality in their universities and colleges and in the work of QAA. We are actively involved in public policy initiatives designed to encourage greater employer engagement in higher education, and we will be looking in particular at the challenges for quality assurance that this will bring.”
He concludes: “We will continue to strengthen our support for institutions' enhancement work through our review methods and through the provision of intelligence-based information and advice, liaison, networking, dissemination and communication.”
The Annual review can be found on the QAA website at www.qaa.ac.uk/aboutus/annualReports from Wednesday 19 March 2008.
Ends
For further information please contact Susan Hogan, Communications, t: 01452 557074, e: s.hogan@qaa.ac.uk
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