QAA keynotes at key quality event

QAA's Director of Regulatory Services Debra Macfarlane last Friday chaired and spoke at a national event exploring the next steps for quality and standards in UK higher education.

The online symposium was organised by the Westminster Higher Education Forum, and also featured keynote addresses from Professor Nic Beech, Chair of the Quality Council for UK Higher Education, and Dr Charlotte Snelling, Head of Regulation Policy at Universities UK.

The extensive line-up of speakers included HEPI's Josh Freeman, Portsmouth SU's Marija Solic, York SU's Fenella Johnson, the CMI's Dr Elly Philpott, Nottingham Trent's Miley Lewis, UEA's Karen Blackney, KCL's Professor Alison Wolf, Quality Strategy Network Chair Maureen McLaughlin, and Professor Nick Braisby, Vice-Chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University.

The event featured panel discussions on strategies for the development of high-quality academic courses and the impacts of franchising and TNE on quality and standards, as well as an in-depth discussion on the new edition of the UK Quality Code for Higher Education and its implementation across the sector.

While Professor Beech commended QAA's leadership in the field of student engagement, the University of Sheffield Students' Union president Daisy Watson highlighted the Quality Code's expectation that students should be at the heart of the practices and mission of higher education.

"We're making human beings who will be leading the future," she said.

Emma Connolly – the Organisational Quality Assurance Manager at Belfast Metropolitan College – stressed the importance of the Code in ensuring international alignment and its value as a sector-led set of principles which offers a flexible framework to support the work of quality assurance and enhancement.

And Andy McGill – the Higher Technical Education Manager at the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity – observed that this discussion had reminded him how often he'd turned to the Quality Code for a "sense-check" throughout his career.

"You almost forget how much you use it," he said.

The event concluded with Debra Macfarlane's own keynote address.

"QAA has had a role in quality enhancement for over quarter of a century, and as such we are well positioned to support the sector in moving forwards," she said. "This is as essential now as it always has been, because the external environment we’re operating in will not wait for us to catch-up, and we must continue to be at the forefront of driving improvement."

Debra emphasised that the current challenges faced by the sector make a focus on quality more important than it's ever been.

"In a financially constrained environment, quality is at the crux of what the sector delivers, and we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done," she explained. "It's not just the funder-regulators picking up on this. Students know what high quality looks like and know when they’re not getting what they deserve – and it’s our job to ensure academic standards and the quality of the student learning experience are protected, and that our priorities mirror these objectives."