QAA announces new review method for England and Northern Ireland (31 March 2011)
Following extensive consultation, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has announced a new method of institutional review in England and NI.
We support the way in which this new method puts students at the heart of the process. Every review team will have a student as a full member, and review teams will meet and gather information from more students and in more depth.
There will be four judgments from 2012-13- an increase from two in the current method. Judgments will be made on standards, quality, enhancement and (from 2012-13) public information.
Judgments will also be more finely grained. Quality and enhancement will be graded against four possible outcomes: ‘is commended’, ‘meets UK expectations’, ‘requires improvement to meet UK expectations’ and ‘does not meet UK expectations’.
The system will also be more flexible, with the opportunity to investigate a special theme in detail each year. Following discussion with the NUS, UUK, HEFCE, QAA and others, the theme for 2011-12 will be “the first year student experience”.
UUK, with its partners, has agreed a protocol setting out how future flexibility in the quality assurance method will be handled, so that the system can always be up to date.
The aim of the new system is to create a quality assurance system for higher education in England and Northern Ireland that is accountable, rigorous, transparent, responsive, and public facing. UUK strongly supports these principles.
For more information about the new method please see Institutional review: England and Northern Ireland (opens in new window) .
The review process
In addition to their own systems for safeguarding standards and enhancing the quality of their provision, universities are also subject to a rigorous external review process conducted by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) (opens in new window).
The QAA reviews focus on a university's internal quality assurance systems, and assesses and reports publicly on the level of confidence that can be placed in them.
These reports have enormous implications for a university, as the funding councils have the right to remove funding should failures go unaddressed.
Further information
See the HEFCE policy on unsatisfactory quality (opens in new window).