Recommendations: 24, 25, 26, 69

Recommendation 24: We recommend that the representative bodies and Funding Bodies amend the remit of the Quality Assurance Agency to include: quality assurance and public information; standards verification; the maintenance of the qualifications framework; a requirement that the arrangements for these are encompassed in a code of practice which every institution should be required formally to adopt, by 2001/02, as a condition of public funding.

4.3 The higher education representative bodies have agreed that the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)’s remit will extend to quality assurance, the provision of public information to students, parents and employers, verifying standards and maintaining the qualifications framework. The Agency intends to develop codes of practice on a number of aspects of quality and standards.

Recommendation 25: We recommend to the Quality Assurance Agency that its early work should include: to work with institutions to establish small, expert teams to provide benchmark information on standards, in particular threshold standards, operating within the framework of qualifications, and completing the task by 2000; to work with universities and other degree-awarding institutions to create, within three years, a UK-wide pool of academic staff recognised by the Quality Assurance Agency, from which institutions must select external examiners; to develop a fair and robust system for complaints relating to educational provision; to review the arrangements in place for granting degree-awarding powers.

4.4 Among the QAA’s early priorities will be working with academic subject groups - including employer and other stakeholder representatives - to define standards, including threshold standards, and provide benchmark information. The QAA will also be consulting on plans to create a pool of recognised external examiners, with an extended role in assuring standards. The QAA intends to follow up serious problems over educational provision or standards, though the primary responsibility for acting on individual complaints should continue to rest with the institution concerned. (See also response to Recommendation 60, Chapter 9, para 9.8.) 4.5 The Funding Councils will retain a statutory duty to ensure that public funds are well spent, and that the quality of teaching and learning is maintained and improved. The future quality assurance regime must allow this duty to be discharged, and must provide public information about the quality of teaching and learning to students, employers and other stakeholders. Trials of the new system are due to begin in Scotland and Wales in 1998. 4.6 The Government agrees that the early work of the QAA should include a review of the arrangements for granting degree-awarding powers. These also have implications for the criteria for awarding university status, which is discussed in the response to Recommendation 63 (Chapter 9, para 9.11).

Recommendation 26: We recommend to the representative bodies and the Funding Bodies that the Board of the Quality Assurance Agency should, as soon as possible, include a student and an international member.

4.7 The Government welcomes the intention of the representative bodies and Funding Councils to take action on this recommendation.

Recommendation 69: We recommend to the Quality Assurance Agency that, as it develops its arrangements, it ensures that these arrangements do not discourage collaboration between institutions.

4.8 The QAA has said that it will ensure that it takes account of the effects of its arrangements on collaboration between institutions, including in developing codes of practice. The Committee’s recommendation on collaborative franchising arrangements is addressed below.

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