Major new report on TNE published

The British Council, in partnership with Education Insight and The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, has published a major new report presenting ‘A global framework for transnational education engagement’.

This extensive and detailed report offers a framework whose purpose is to underpin TNE strategy by analysing and describing national environments for TNE. 

The report emphasises that this framework aims to facilitate TNE engagement globally, and further the understanding of local contexts and educational priorities. 

This project has been developed to support the British Council's TNE Strategy, and has been designed to promote and support a greater shared understanding of TNE by developing a consistency of language and data in this field.

'This is the product of a huge amount of work from our colleagues across the sector and across the world,' says QAA's Shannon Stowers, one of the authors of the report. 'We very much hope that it will be of real value to international higher education and help progress the development and promotion of high-quality, sustainable and impactful TNE.'

The project was discussed during a three-day event hosted earlier this month in Manchester by the British Council, focusing on transnational education and organised in partnership with QAA and Education Insight. 

This major international conference offered expert insight into the regulatory and policy environments of TNE as part of the British Council's series of Deep Dialogues engagement events.

The event recognised the need to continue a global conversation focused on developing a stronger understanding of TNE. It provided a forum for regulators, TNE leaders and practitioners from around the world to share their visions and aspirations, and their experiences of the challenges they have faced when developing and evaluating TNE.

The organisers intend that an international group of experts in this field will continue to support the evolution of this framework.

Speaking at that event in Manchester, QAA Chief Executive Vicki Stott said: 'In a world with rapidly changing policy landscapes, more than ever international educators need to work together and reach out to each other with an open mind. Both in my capacity as Chief Executive of QAA and as the President of The International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE), I’ve made it an absolute priority to create the appropriate conditions to enhance international collaboration.' 

Last month, QAA announced that it had been awarded grant funding from the Department for Business and Trade's Regulatory Partnership for Growth Fund to deliver a set of international interventions designed to address barriers to UK higher education in priority nations. Work on these projects will be delivered during this academic year. It will draw upon expertise and relationships developed by QAA through its extensive engagements overseas in terms of both its International Quality Review activities for the formal accreditation of courses and institutions, and its engagement activities with regulators, quality agencies and education authorities through bilateral partnerships and quality assurance networks.

In 2024 alone, QAA has delivered workshops at British Council events in Kuwait, Malaysia, Viet Nam and Kazakhstan, has hosted a meeting of western Balkan quality agencies, and has signed memoranda of understanding with higher education quality agencies and governmental bodies based in Armenia, Tunisia, Montenegro, Cyprus, Romania, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Chile and Slovakia. QAA currently has such MoUs in place with 31 quality agencies around the world, including China, Japan and Ireland. 

In August, QAA published the midpoint report of its Quality Evaluation and Enhancement of UK Transnational Higher Education (QE-TNE) Scheme. The QE-TNE Scheme was commissioned by Universities UK and GuildHE and launched in 2021 for an initial five-year duration. The scheme produces regular case studies, country guides, evaluations and themed reports on UK TNE provision, and has so far evaluated such provision across nine countries – Germany, Egypt, UAE, China, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Greece and Cyprus – and will, next year, focus on Malaysia, India and Oman. More than 70 UK higher education institutions currently participate in the QE-TNE Scheme, representing about 70% of the sector's entire TNE student population – more than 400,000 students. The Scheme's membership is currently in the process of further expansion.

In addition to these activities, QAA runs institutional and programme reviews for the accreditation of higher education provision overseas.