A bimonthly publication of AQU Catalunya

37

July 2008

Five years after AQU Catalunya organised a seminar in Sitges laying the foundations for establishing European guidelines and standards for quality agencies, AQU Catalunya brought us together again in Barcelona to expand on the issue of internal quality of agencies and European guidelines. This time round it wasn't a case of convincing the managers of agencies that it is necessary to take a dose of our own medicine —as the title of the first seminar suggested— and establish internal quality systems within agencies, nor was it a case of discussing whether agencies should undergo evaluation by external assessors in the same way as higher education institutions; rather, the event entailed comparing the various systems that agencies all over Europe have been implementing in recent years to ensure the quality of their work and thereby build trust among users and society with respect to the assessment reports and accreditations they issue. Consequently, this seminar was to enable experts to present and exchange best practices as you would expect from a seminar promoted by a working group focussed on improving internal quality assurance of agencies.

Initially AQU Catalunya presented a well-established internal quality system based on the ISO standard. The presentation was given in conjunction with ANECA (the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain), which has also chosen this model to design its internal quality system. Both agencies highlighted the usefulness of combining the ISO model, which is primarily based on management, with European standards that focus on the more technical aspects of work carried out by the agencies. NVAO (the educational accreditation organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders) and ASIIN (the German accreditation agency for degree programmes in engineering) presented their systems based on the European model of excellence for quality management. All the agencies in this group, regardless of the model employed, have been assessed externally by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and have attested to the effectiveness of their systems. The Norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (NOKUT) proved that it is not necessary to base your system on any of the previous models in order to comply with European standards and it presented a system relating to a diagram of their organisation and the various units that make up the agency. The system was prepared in line with European standards. Recently NOKUT has also undergone external assessment with a positive outcome.

The discussion that followed on from the presentations touched on the ghost of bureaucracy characteristic of newcomers to the world of quality where, at times, a mass of documents is confused with having many written procedures to ensure everybody is familiar with the various processes on which an agency works and how they are implemented. One general conclusion drawn from the discussion was that, although several approaches were presented, they all seemed sufficiently valid and no particular one was better than another. The most important element is for all agencies to have an internal system, for such systems to encompass all processes and for agencies to publish the outcomes of that internal system.

One of the prominent aspects of the seminar was the organisation of discussion workshops, making it possible for various topics to be addressed and for opinions and information to be shared among people with differing perspectives. It was interesting to see how members of the participating agencies placed varying degrees of value on certain aspects of the quality system. For instance, being in possession of a public declaration regarding the quality policy was considered by some as ineffectual, while others deemed it a cornerstone of their agency constituting an affirmation, in both internal and external terms, as to the endeavours made by an agency in order to maintain and improve its quality system and the importance of doing so.

These heightened, lively discussions, along with the interesting presentations given in the various sessions, clearly show that the quality systems of our agencies show a clean bill of health. AQU Catalunya branded the organisation of the seminar a success.