QAA receives commission to review pre-entry courses for international students

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has received the commission from Universities UK (UUK) to conduct a review regarding programmes designed for international students to support their entry into UK higher education courses.

This review will compare the admissions requirements between foundation programmes for domestic students and international students, assess the standards of the courses being offered to international students as both foundation programmes and international year one programmes, and assess whether these standards are being achieved and maintained in practice.

QAA will publish the findings of this review by the end of Spring 2024.

In order to maintain the integrity of this process, QAA will not comment on the review before the publication of that report.

The work of review teams is isolated from the rest of QAA’s work to ensure the integrity of the review process and outcome. QAA's findings will not be influenced by UUK nor by any other party. QAA will publish its report in full.

QAA is an internationally recognised expert quality agency that has over 25 years’ experience of delivering regulatory quality assurance and collaborative quality enhancement in the UK and internationally. Independence and impartiality are fundamental to the work of a quality body and QAA holds itself to the highest professional standards in this regard.

By agreement with UUK, QAA has published the commissioning letter and the scoping document for this review.

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On 4 March, QAA published an addendum to the scoping document that provides up-to-date detail on the recruitment approach. This has been reflected in an updated commissioning letter.