QAA

About the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher EducationOur mission is to safeguard the public interest in sound standards of higher education qualifications and to inform and encourage continuous improvement in the management of the quality of higher education.

We do this by working with higher education institutions to define academic standards and quality, and we carry out and publish reviews against these standards.

We were established in 1997 and are an independent body funded by subscriptions from UK universities and colleges of higher education, and through contracts with the main UK higher education funding bodies.

An overview of our work can be found at: QAA: an introduction.

QAA work in the UK

As a UK-wide agency, our work covers a variety of areas. We work at a devolved level with the respective government bodies, UK-wide and with our international partners to ensure that higher education in the UK maintains the highest standards.

Our UK-wide work includes the Academic Infrastructure and applications for degree awarding powers and university title.

Working in a devolved context means that our work can be tailored towards the specific needs of the higher education sector. If you are interested in finding out about the work in a specific part of the UK please select your area of interest below.

England

Scotland

Wales/Cymru

Northern Ireland

英國高等教育質量保證機構作為英國一個工作範圍廣泛的組織，我們的工作包括很多領域，工作在政府轉交下放的各個組織，英國的廣泛知名組織以及和我們的國際合作夥伴確保了在英國主流的最高標準。我們工作對象的範圍包括英格蘭，蘇格蘭，威爾士和北愛爾蘭地區的學院教育組織和申請授予學位授予的權利以及大學的名稱。

QAA aims to help institutions enhance the management of their quality and standards by sharing our learning.

We do this by highlighting themes, questions, good practice and recommendations and disseminating the information that we gain in the process of our work. This includes providing collective and sector-wide intelligence obtained from our reviews and audits, institutional liaison and other developmental work within the sector.

Thematic briefings

Quality matters

Quality matters is a series of occasional briefing papers from QAA. Like all QAA publications, the papers are evidence-based, but are designed to do more than simply report – they promote discussion and debate about topical and important issues concerned with the management of quality assurance, and particularly with its interrelationships with ‘enhancement’.

Outcomes from institutional audit

A series of thematic briefings based on analysis of reports as they appear during the course of a review programme giving us timely information on emerging issues and areas of good practice. Outcomes from institutional audit is based on the first 70 institutional audits published by November 2004. They cover areas such as external examining, assessment of students, learning support resources and collaborative provision.

Outcomes from collaborative provision audit

This series of papers will be published from autumn 2007. It is based on the collaborative provision audits conducted by QAA in England and Northern Ireland between 2004 and 2007 and papers will broadly follow the approach taken in the Outcomes from institutional audit series.

Enhancement Themes

Managed by QAA - a programme of themes designed to support institutions in a process of continuous improvement in Scotland. Recent themes: Assessment, Responding to Student Needs, Flexible Delivery and Employability.

Sharing good practice

In our good practice series, we publish sector-wide overview reports. They draw together the main findings from a programme of reviews.

Overview reports for AVA review, continuation audit, developmental engagements, Foundation Degrees, higher education in further education colleges, and subject review.

Major Review Annual Trends in reviews of NHS-funded higher education.