The enhancement-led approach to managing quality: evolution, informing

values and practicesRowena Pelik, Director QAA Scotland

Visit by Deputy Vice-Chancellors from the Republic

of South Africa28 September 2015

Outline

• Context and history• Exploring enhancement • Looking ahead: prospects and concerns

Context and history

Scotland• Devolved responsibility

for education • 19 university-sector

institutors • Historically different• Fundamental belief in

the value of education

Quality Assurance• Pre-2003 ‘dual’ system

of QA• Little evidence of

problem • Divergence possible

within a UK-wide set of reference points

Quality Assurance in the UK

• Autonomous institutions – with responsibility for academic standards

• Co-regulation (external QA body and HE sector)

• QA independent of government and of funding

• Peer review / independent externality

• Agreed quality framework (UK Quality Code)

• Public reporting and information

• External validation and recognition

Enhancement-led quality assurance in Scotland

Developed in partnership with the key stakeholders – and delivered in partnership

Introduced in 2003 as a creative and radical response consciously moving the focus

Developed, matured and evolved over three cycles – significant distance travelled

A quality framework – not only a ‘quality assurance’ system

The QEF partnership

http://www.universities-scotland

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/about-us/scotland/development-and-enhancement

http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/home

http://www.sfc.ac.uk/

NUS Scotland

The Quality Enhancement Framework

ELIRInstitution-led quality review

Student engagement

Public information

Enhancement Themes

What do we mean by enhancement?

Taking deliberate steps to bring about improvement in the effectiveness of the learning

experiences of students• Aims to enhance the student learning experience and

encourages student engagement and participation in learning and in quality processes

• Emphasis is the quality of the student experience of learning rather than on QA systems and processes themselves

What does our enhancement-led approach involve?

• A way of working – a system living by its own values

• The commitment to improve – and acceptance that wherever you are you can always improve, or enhance, what you do

• A planned and strategic approach to enhancement (vision + purpose + process)

• Being outward looking, open, seeking to learn and willing to share

Quality Enhancement involves…

• Working in partnership

• Focusing on learning and teaching and supporting students as learners

• Willingness to be critically self-reflective and to evaluate what you do

• Change – a restless striving to be always better

Quality Enhancement should….

• Provide the information that academics and students need to enhance practice at local level as well as institution and sector levels

• Have in-built feedback loops – as all key players are involved

• Involve challenge by critical friends and be willing to act ‘without fear or favour’

• Encourage risk and innovation in a supportive environment

QE v QAQuality Enhancement is the journey…

• towards student centred learning

• towards partnership and collaboration

• towards critical self-evaluation

• towards future-oriented improvement

• towards permeating the system

• towards fundamental cultural change in learning practices

• towards excellence

It involves resisting and moving

• away from top-down compliance processes

• away from audit and inspection

• away surface checking of HE processes and the past

• away from mechanistic models based on inputs and targets

… always maintaining rigor and challenge

QE is a fragile beast

• It is an attitude and a mind-set• Balances institutional autonomy and external

oversight• Contains assurance without being assurance

driven• Enables an open dialogue alongside public

reporting• Threatened by marketization, reduction to

numbers...

Some of the counter forces

• Market-driven and consumerist models of HE• Casting of quality as ‘burden’ or as unnecessary

(rather than as a part valuable the endeavour of effective HE providers)

• Managerial use of QA and PIs within institutions• Target chasing • Compliance and checking approaches• Complaint and compensation cultures

Some of the counter forces

• Rise of metrics and performance measures• Past performance not future practice• Deregulation• The dangling ‘carrot’ of ending cyclical external

review• Available metrics or what is countable being used as

proxies for quality • Thinking student learning can be reduced to a

number

A reminder: enhancement in Scotland

We have a mature Quality Enhancement Framework built around values:• Societal benefit of education• Commitment to improve (‘restless striving’)• Critical self-evaluation• Collegiate and collaborative working• Partnership with students/student engagement• Future focused• Practice over process

With enhancement there is a willingness to re-think, to share, to question and

to listen.

Any questions?

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