Quality career education and technikons have been synonymous for years. The technikon sector is also the only sub-sector in South African higher education that has been exposed to regular external quality evaluation and accreditation on a continuous basis for more than the past decade.

In response to the CTP’s objective that technikons become first choice higher education institutions, its Committee for Tutorial Matters established a Quality Assurance Work Group in August 1999 to promote quality on an ongoing basis. The CTM gave this Work Group the mandate to compile a Quality Assurance Guideline document to assist technikons in developing their own quality assurance policies, systems, structures, mechanisms and procedures against the background of a changing education and training environment in South Africa. Particular national legislation, such as the SAQA Act (1995), Higher Education Act (1997) and Skills Development Act (1998), but also international trends and practices, form the backdrop to this series on quality assurance.

This publication reflects the research of the Work Group on quality system development only, and is the first in a series of CTM publications on quality assurance.

I want to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the QA Work Group for their important contribution towards quality promotion in South African higher education.

Nick J Kok

Chair: Quality Assurance Work Group

The nature and standard of teaching and learning offered by a higher education institution is a function of its system design and operational management. Quality assurance is one of the fundamental facets of a system’s design and management, and critical to the quality of teaching and learning outputs of education institutions. The planning, maintenance and continuous improvement of a quality management system should be part of an explicit institutional strategy for achieving its stated mission, aims and goals relevant to academic quality and standards.

Debates on quality terminology and concepts, and the diversity of quality assurance arrangements currently operational in higher education institutions are some of the reasons for developing a guideline. This guideline document offers advice on developing a system for assuring the quality of education offered by an institution. It addresses terminology and concepts, and quality assurance system development within the framework of the South African context. As a synoptic introduction to quality assurance in higher education it should not in any way be regarded as prescriptive and definitive.

The aim of the guideline document is to assist institutions in evaluating the soundness of their quality assurance arrangements for maintaining teaching and learning standards, and also promote continuous quality improvement of the education provision.

Whilst providing a common reference point for higher education and training (HET) institutions, it is hoped that this guideline document will encourage those directly and indirectly involved in quality assurance (QA) to further explore this stimulating and challenging field through available QA literature, relevant web sites, and academic discourse. All staff within an HET institution are therefore regarded as prospective users of these guidelines, and are encouraged to survey the HET and quality environments with the object of establishing or reviewing their own QA policies, strategies, systems and procedures.

It should be noted that no particular approach, structures, models, mechanisms or procedures are being advocated in this document. Every institution should apply the guidelines appropriately to their own contexts, taking into account the vision, mission and objectives of the individual institution, and drawing from the available information. We trust it will assist institutions to chart their own QA course through a shared understanding of quality system development and management.

The guidelines are arranged in terms of the following facets of quality assurance.

• A quality assurance approach
• Commitment to quality
• Quality system design and development

Each section refers to some principles relevant to the guideline and provides outline guidance on what an institution could reasonably be expected to demonstrate in terms of quality system development and management. Information pertinent to the outline guidance and principles is provided to support interpretation.

The glossary provides definitions and concept descriptions to enhance interpretation of the guidelines.

The guidelines are written as if a quality assurance system does not yet exist in the institution. In reality, most institutions already have particular quality assurance arrangements. The guidelines could therefore be used as a framework for checking an individual institution's system and extracting those aspects from the guidelines that could facilitate improvement of current arrangements.

THE GUIDELINES

Quality is created through the processes performed and maintained in the institution.

The approach to quality assurance can be pro-active or re-active.

Accountability and improvement are both facets of quality assurance.

• An institution should plan for quality assurance.

• Pro-active and re-active quality assurance

Most quality assurance approaches are re-active. They are based on observation, measurement and judgement of processes, and aimed at detecting and correcting problems. It is not uncommon to find extensive self-evaluation questionnaires and procedures in HET, the results of which inform the education and training practices. What is identified in such evaluations is what is not performed correctly or adequately to deliver the kind of quality the institution aims at. The corrective actions following such evaluations typically lead to improvement. It is of course easy to justify a course of action once it has been determined what is wrong with a process. For this reason, re-active quality assurance is prevalent.

Pro-active quality assurance is informed by knowledge of cause and effect. It is aimed at problem prevention, and thus centres around planning. The planning of a quality management system, with all the leadership, training, and managerial structures implied, is a pro-active approach to quality assurance. Because it is based on judgement of what may be appropriate, it involves more risk. The risk can, however, be minimised through pilot implementation, or by providing for tolerances in design parameters. As an approach it is recognisable in education and training in the piloting of new programmes, methodologies or modes of education provision.

In practice both pro- and re-active quality assurance have a place. While we attempt to design effective quality management systems, applying known principles, criteria and practices, we also evaluate the effectiveness of such systems, and react to deficiencies by identifying and initiating improvements.

A first step is therefore to decide what the approach will be. A system can be designed to assure quality in the organisation (pro-active), or facets of the education and training process could be evaluated to determine what aspects of current quality assurance should be changed or improved (re-active).

The Certification Council for Technikon Education Act, 1986 (Act 88 of 1986) previously provided for quality assurance in technikon education. The Certification Council (SERTEC) set minimum standards for teaching, examination and moderation, and ensured that the nationally approved qualifications and their curricula were offered in accordance with SERTEC norms. It assured programme quality through programme evaluation by external panels of peers, professional bodies, alumni and stakeholders from relevant business and industry sectors, and accredited those programmes that complied with the minimum quality requirements.

A new dispensation in South Africa has introduced new approaches and bodies for the quality assurance of all education and training provision. In future, new external policies, criteria and bodies will guide QA in the HET band. Two Acts have a definitive role in the new approach. The promulgation of the South African Qualifications Authority Act, 1995 (Act 58 of 1995) introduced the concepts of an integrated and quality approach to qualifications and the learning that leads to qualifications. The approach, policy, organisation, and structures for external quality assurance are firmly established by the Act. The Regulations to the Act provide a regulatory framework for the implementation of quality assurance systems and processes. The National Qualifications Framework (NQF), which is the unifying structure for the registration of all qualifications offered by both public and private education and training providers, clearly identifies the enhancement of the quality of education and training as one of its objectives (Section 2(c)). To attain this objective, the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) provides the policy and criteria for the establishment and functioning of quality assurance bodies, the so-called Education and Training Quality Authorities (ETQAs). It defines the requirements and mechanisms for moderation, which have to be applied across all ETQAs. Each of the bands in the NQF has its own ETQA, but, in time, a whole range of ETQAs may be established in the various fields of learning represented on the NQF.

The functioning of the bodies responsible for the identification and registration of standards in the various fields of learning has direct implications for quality assurance in HET institutions. The standards generated by Standards Generating Bodies (SGBs) and recommended for registration on the NQF by National Standards Bodies (NSBs), will be relevant to the nature and quality of qualifications and learning programmes.

The Skills Development Act, 1998 (Act 97 of 1998) also has quality assurance implications for HET institutions. The establishment of Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) for each of the national economic sectors identified in that Act, are aimed at the development, implementation, and monitoring of skills programmes and learnerships for workplace skill development. Skills programmes will be registered on the NQF, as credit carrying learning toward registered qualifications. SETAs may apply to SAQA to be the accredited ETQA for a particular sector. Where learnerships and skills programmes are implemented in partnership with HET institutions, the implication is that SETAs may be the external quality assurance bodies that evaluate and ultimately accredit a range of learning programmes in higher education.

For the HET band, the functions, policy and criteria of its own ETQA, the HEQC, and those specialist ETQAs which may be relevant to specific career-oriented qualifications, are critical to internal institutional quality assurance. The Higher Education Act, 1997 (Act 101 of 1997) established the Council on Higher Education (CHE) as the statutory body, which advises the Minister of Education on all matters pertaining to higher education. The CHE has the responsibility to establish a Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) to perform quality promotion and assurance in accordance with the policies and criteria of SAQA. The HEQC, together with any other ETQA it may choose to delegate to, will be responsible for the auditing of institutional and learning programme quality. The HEQC will certify that an institution has the capacity to fulfil its education and training function, that is, accredit institutions.

Diagram 1 illustrates the relationship between bodies responsible for the monitoring of standards in the HET band.

The lack of final criteria from national quality assurance bodies does not preclude the development and improvement of quality assurance within institutions. From technikons’ exposure to and experience with SERTEC, and also from general and international literature on quality assurance, the typical requirements for quality assurance can be gleaned.

A major prerequisite for accreditation is the establishment and functioning of an effective internal quality assurance system in an education and training institution. This requires demonstration of effective and sustained quality management and assurance, through appropriate structures and mechanisms, to effect the provision of teaching and learning to a high standard. It is not only the education and training process that is subject to quality assurance, but the management of quality across the functions of the HET institution. Support processes such as the provision of infrastructure, adequately qualified and experienced staff, equipment, learning resources, and technology, all contribute to the success of the education and training provision, and therefore require just as much attention to quality assurance.

Public visibility of external quality assurance in HET has a relatively short history in South Africa. SERTEC and the Quality Promotion Unit (QPU) of universities have been performing quality assurance functions for just over a decade. This does not mean that quality assurance did not take place within HET institutions before then, but only that formal accreditation became established practice in HET, and particularly technikons, over the past decade. Elsewhere in the world, external quality assurance (EQA) has a somewhat longer history, providing us with a backdrop from which we may learn how to organise quality in our institutions.

The concepts and interpretation of quality, and how best to manage it, form part of the international experience with, and debate on, quality assurance. The use of terminology, and general approach to quality assurance, is, for instance, quite different in universities and technikons or polytechnics. Customer satisfaction has not traditionally been the point of departure in universities, while this more corporate or business approach is fairly wide-spread in polytechnics internationally, and technikons locally.

Increasing public pressure for accountability has been instrumental in changing the approach to quality in higher education world-wide. In Europe (United Kingdom, Netherlands and Belgium, to name a few), as well as the United States, the call for greater accountability regarding the spending of public funds, and criticism about the usefulness of achieved learning for employment, have led to the establishment of statutory bodies to monitor HET provision. The discrepancy between public expectations and what HET institutions consider reasonable, has given rise to debate on the merits of accountability versus an improvement approach. Universities have traditionally had the approach that quality should be promoted and improvement encouraged, rather than focus on the accountability for learning outputs. In South Africa, because of government control over the number and nature of qualifications offered by technikons, and the norms and standards of their accreditation body SERTEC, accountability has been a strong focus. Improvement was not excluded in this approach, as the recommendations by SERTEC were aimed at improvement. Vroeijenstijn (1995) is convinced that accountability and improvement are not opposing and mutually exclusive concepts and that both concepts have a place and can be balanced in internal and external quality assurance.

How an EQA body views accountability and improvement is of course fundamental to its policies and procedures. Where accountability and improvement are balanced, the EQA body will focus on promoting the development of internal quality management systems, and particularly mechanisms such as self-evaluation. Evaluation of institutions would not be limited to the mechanistic measuring of quality system outputs to test compliance and accountability in such a model, but would be balanced by the promotion of improvement practices, processes and mechanisms. Many writers (e.g Kells, Harvey, Massaro) agree that quality in institutions is best brought about or maintained where the ‘improvement’ paradigm is uppermost, and where the system is "owned" by the institutions themselves. A survey of 48 institutions in 23 countries (Massaro, 1997) indicated that the trend is towards a greater emphasis on self-evaluation, followed by validation of self-evaluation by peer review. It has also been argued that institution-wide assessments have a larger impact in terms of shifting institutional culture, within which learning programmes can be developed and improved. In the UK, the Quality Assurance Authority now promotes an institutional focus on internal processes, and self-regulation.

In view of these trends, what then are the implications for a HET institution in South Africa? It may be useful for every institution to reflect on where they stand on an accountability-improvement continuum and which of these require attention.

Identifying the aspects for which accountability will be assumed will include at least those required by the external policies and regulations pertaining to relevant national acts and EQA body requirements, as well as requirements of relevant institutional policies.

An institution may also wish to be accountable to both internal and external customers or clients. Technikons, with their focus on career orientation, typically consult commerce and industry regarding the nature of qualifications and competence required. It would be logical to determine whom exactly the market and customers are, what their needs and expectations are, and to what extent the institution is meeting these.

This should ideally be balanced by an improvement approach. New institutions, or those introducing quality assurance for the first time, probably initially focus more on accountability issues, in order to obtain accreditation or to gain a share of the market. Once the quality system is functioning, evaluation followed by improvement, is a logical next step.

Assertive leadership determines effective quality assurance.

Quality is driven by a clear and consistent vision of where the institution will stand in future.

A shared vision of, and commitment to quality assures the quality of the education processes and outputs.

Evidence of Management’s commitment to quality should be visible in

• the quality policy statement

• the provision of adequate and appropriate resources to enable the organisation to achieve their quality goals

• the motivation of staff to provide the education service to the highest standard.

• The role of senior management in the organisation

For quality plans to succeed, quality leadership is required (Covey, 1992). Any model for a quality system will, in some way, focus on leadership and people. Covey points out that many organisations purporting to have implemented Total Quality Management (TQM), have failed. The underlying problem has been the lack of a foundation for the implementation of total quality. This foundation is Principle-Centred-Leadership, as the infrastructure on which quality is built.

The leaders of institutions have a significant role to play in establishing a unity of purpose and creating and maintaining the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the institutions’ strategic goals. The development and clear communication of a vision and mission for the institution is a first step in creating an environment that fosters quality. The vision must be based on shared values and input from all levels within the organisation. It should be clear what the institution stands for and what it aims to achieve. This forms the basis for a quality policy, which clearly states the commitment of senior management, as well as the institution’s quality goals.

The declarations of leadership typically address both the present and the future. These declarations are typically developed on three levels, namely, philosophy, mission and policy.

The leadership and management philosophy of the institution is also the quality philosophy. It is typically widely distributed within the organisation, but not to the external environment.

The mission statement typically declares explicitly what products, service, and customer needs and satisfaction it aims at. It is generally brief so that both internal and external customers can remember it.

The quality policy statement is explicit about the nature of the service and product, e.g. consistently in terms of customer expectation; doing things right the first time; continuously improving the quality, etc. The highest operating manager, e.g., a deputy vice-chancellor, typically endorses the policy.

While senior managers need to demonstrate leadership in terms of the commitment to quality and the activities to achieve it, leadership is not the exclusive preserve of the most senior managers. It is important at all levels within the institution, and applies equally to individuals at lower levels within the organisation.

Managing for quality requires cognisance of contextual realities. Middlehurst, (1997 in Newton, 2000) observes that the existence and the experience of a turbulent environment creates both a psychological and a practical need for leadership. In South Africa, the quality system at national level confronts HET with a complex situation. Managers have to motivate and lead HET institutions in a situation where almost everything familiar, such as approaches to teaching, the nature, value and esteem of qualifications, are changing. To this may be added issues such as the size, stage of development, strategic priorities, blend of organisational politics, vulnerabilities, and competing priorities, within the institution. Defining a clear vision, mission and quality policy, which takes the external and internal environment into account, is thus a challenge.

The development of the mission and strategic goals should be an inclusive process. Working together on where the organisation is going and how it plans to get there, is an important way of establishing commitment from the outset. Implied in this process is that communication between leadership and all levels within the institution is effective. This is essential to attaining a shared vision of, and commitment to, quality.

An understanding of what quality is and how customers experience quality, precedes pro-action and reaction.

Effective quality systems are pro-actively designed rather than just allowed to evolve.

Planned quality systems create quality.

The institution should develop a shared interpretation of quality towards which processes can be directed. The interpretation should account for customer needs and expectations.

Strategic planning, and the setting of strategic goals should drive actions in the institution.

Actions should be managed through defined organisational structures.

The responsibilities and authorities for quality that the staff in the various structures will have, must be clearly defined.

• Clarifying the concept ‘quality’

Coming to grips with quality concepts is often the first hurdle in establishing and implementing a quality system in an institution. While most of us have our own view of what constitutes quality in the work, home or social environments, it is not so easy to define quality for the educational context.

In exploring ways in which an individual, a department/faculty or even the whole organization can approach, develop and improve the quality of education, it is essential to remember that the concept of quality in the organisation must a a clear and shared view. No quality system model, or quality assurance framework, or definitions of quality can just be imported and applied in your context. They have to be conceptualised, adapted and defined in a way that best suits the particular institution. This discussion therefore draws your attention to the diverse possibilities available, but does not suggest preferences.

There is no single, generally accepted definition of quality. Before taking any existing definition of quality on board, it may be useful to note that quality may refer to concrete/tangible characteristics that can be defined and measured, as well as non-physical/intangible characteristics that draw more on our personal views of what constitutes quality, such as a brand name or what constitutes good design or style. Shewart (1980) identifies this duality of what quality is as follows:

There are two common aspects of quality, one of these has to do with the consideration of a thing as an objective reality independent of the existence of man. The other has to do with what we think, feel, or sense as a result of the objective reality – this subjective side of quality is closely linked to value

 

Some interpretations of quality that are used and accepted in higher education institutions are the following.

‘Fitness for purpose’ of a service or product. This refers to the degree to which the service or product conforms to the pre-specification defined or required by the user or purchaser. In industry, this ‘fitness for use or purpose’ (Juran, 1989), also known as ‘conformance to requirements’ (Crosby, 1979), or ‘meeting the needs of customers’ (Deming,1986), is arguably the most common interpretation of quality. This interpretation is linked to the notion that a product, as well as the processes used to deliver a product or service, meets some specified need or requirement of a customer. Quality here is thus firmly established in relation to customer satisfaction. You should, however, be aware of the debate around the concept ‘customer’ in HET. Apart from the preference for the term ‘client’ there is the perception that learners are not customers because they participate in the process of learning, and are thus part of the process and contribute to the result of the process, the product. Whether or not you choose to work with the customer concept, be aware that there are requirements or specifications that have to be met. The consultation process that technikons typically conduct to determine what qualifications, and what competences relevant to the qualifications, industry and commerce prefer, supports the use of this interpretation of quality. When learners achieve the specified competences, industry will experience the education provision as quality education and training.

Another interpretation of quality concerns ‘fitness of purpose’, which relates to the degree to which the service and/or product responds to the purpose (mission) and strategic goals of an organization. In HET, this interpretation is currently considered important, since the type, modes and levels of education provided by a provider is embedded in its mission and strategic goal statements.

For the public and learners, the value that is obtained from education may form an intrinsic part of their interpretation of quality. This relates to both the kinds of knowledge that is gained, which has a transforming effect on learners, as well as the concept of the cost of learning, or value for money. Increasingly, the public and government require education providers to be cost-effective, to provide qualifications that constitute value for money, and to deliver learners that can contribute to economic development and wealth creation.

In view of the unique interpretation of quality by individuals and organizations, it is important to arrive at some common, shared understanding of what is meant by ‘quality’ in an institution. Without such a shared interpretation of quality, assessment, recommendations for improvement, and reporting on the quality of inputs, processes or outputs in the education environment would be open to many interpretations and misunderstanding

• Planning for quality: strategic planning

Institutional quality management is dependent on the institution’s commitment to quality, its vision and mission and strategic goals. The leadership of senior management in the development of a vision, mission and strategic goals, and their inclusion of quality in these strategic plans, are fundamental requirements for quality management. Rowley et al (1997:14) views strategic planning as the "formal process designed to help an institution identify and maintain an optional alignment with the most important elements of the environment within which the institution resides." The environment of an institution includes the external and internal political, social, economic, technological and educational systems.

Diagram two depicts the planning process.

Diagram 2: The planning process

Mackenzie (1969)

 

In HET institutions, strategic goals and objectives address teaching and learning practices, as the core business, as well as relevant support structures. The development of an annual Learning and Teaching strategy or plan, which responds to the objectives of the institution, typically reflects the basis for academic planning at the level of the department as well as the individual. Planned actions to achieve the strategic goals are related to timeframes and benchmarks, against which progress toward the strategic goals and objectives may be judged.

• Planning the deployment of quality management

Planning for quality takes into account how quality management will be deployed, who will be responsible and accountable, and how the quality of outputs will be determined. An individual or department (Quality function or strategic planning function) is typically made responsible for the overall planning, co-ordination of implementation, monitoring and measurement of quality initiatives and outputs. Maintenance and improvement of quality, however, are the shared responsibilities of every person in the institution. Although every person in the institution is responsible for quality, clear delineation of roles, responsibilities and authority underpins successful quality system deployment. Poor quality can often be traced to the delegation of responsibility to individuals who do not have the necessary authority required for the task to be successfully completed. In planning for quality, it is also important to take a development view. The achievement of quality is seldom the result of one big, concerted effort. More typically, initiatives are planned and implemented incrementally.

A quality management system comprises all the practices, actions, processes, and procedures that are performed by individuals and groups of people. It therefore also addresses all the organising structures within which processes, actions, practices and procedures are performed. A common way of establishing a quality management structure is to utilize existing management structures in the organisation. In the education environment, typical structures in the academic function are senate, a management committee/council/board, faculty boards with their executive committees, and departmental committees. Added to these may be programme, discipline, and subject committees. Organising quality management therefore requires you to identify the structures that can be utilized, and then defining the responsibilities and accountabilities of the different structures.

Because leadership, and thus, management, plays a pivotal role in assuring, and promoting quality, it is common to have a hierarchical quality management system. At the highest level some management structure such as a council/board/committee serves as the body to which quality is reported at least annually, who reviews progress, and ratifies recommendations for improvement. Reporting to this structure may be a faculty committee/board/executive for each faculty, who in turn may have departmental committees reporting to them. Many HET institutions are now also making provision for a quality function, which may be a single person, a unit or a department. How this function is placed within the quality management structure may also vary. In some cases this function reports directly to senior management, and is the focal point for quality reporting. In this scenario, faculty does not report individually to top management, but the quality function summarises the faculty reports, extracting trends, and making general recommendations about improvements. In other instances, the quality function and faculty serve on a central quality management structure, all contributing to the review of academic quality. In yet another scenario, the quality function reviews all quality across the institution, reporting on teaching well as all non-teaching processes and procedures.

Diagram three reflects one possible way of organising quality management structures, and should not be interpreted as the model.

Once the structures have been identified and agreed upon in the institution, the next step would be to agree on and clarify the scope and levels of responsibility and accountability for persons in each of the structures, and communicate these throughout the institution. The following description is an example, and should not be considered complete or as a model.

The examples clearly do not address all issues. The quality manager, for instance, is not addressed. Should your institute have such a function, the responsibilities and accountability, and also the level at which the particular staff would function and report, has to be clarified.

• Communicating the quality management system

The quality management system, which includes the plan for assuring the quality of processes and procedures, the training of staff in quality assurance techniques and methods, and instruments for measuring performance, satisfaction and progress, all have to be communicated clearly to all stakeholders in the institution.

One way of affecting this is through a Quality Manual that clearly sets out the roles, responsibilities, policies, strategies, goals, processes, procedures, instruments, etc. for managing quality in the institution. The quality unit may be the custodian of the corporate manual, with every faculty, department or section developing and maintaining its own manual. Again, there is no ideal manual or hard rule as to what it should comprise, and at which levels it should be developed and maintained (unless you are working to a specific quality assurance model such a ISO 9000, in which case there are definite guidelines). The culture and goals of your organisation will determine how you will document your system. The only clear guideline is that you should document your system. Without this documented basis, it would be difficult to show how you are monitoring progress and improvement, and how you are continuously improving your practices and outputs.

• Quality system models

A quality system reflects the philosophy of an institution, and for this reason quality systems vary widely, with most systems in practice reflecting characteristics of more than one quality paradigm. For many practitioners it is important to work to some accepted and respected model, particularly when benchmarking is important to the institution. In choosing a model, if this is the route the institution wants to go, it is important to remember that where customer satisfaction is not part of the institution’s approach, TQM models may be inappropriate.

Interaction with customers and the market may require compatibility between the quality systems of the education institution and those of industry. For this reason, some institutions draw on models that are familiar to the business community, such as the Baldridge Award, the European Foundation Quality Management model (and its South African version, the Business Excellence Model) and the ISO 9000 series. The ISO 9000 series provides guidance on quality system structure and operation for both service and manufacturing industries. Many educationists consider this model inappropriate to education, but it has been implemented successfully in a number of large universities in the UK, Sweden, and some polytechnics in Europe. ISO 9000 is based on functional requirements, addressing the structure and functioning of the quality system. Results from the operation of the quality system are not a focus. The Baldridge Award, in contrast, is performance assessment based, consisting of criteria that comprehensively address short-term customer satisfaction, human resources development and financial activities and results. The Award is essentially results driven. Where the Baldridge Award focuses on customer satisfaction relative to marketplace competition, ISO 9000 focuses on international trade, with the view to expediting quality assurance linkages between suppliers and purchasers. The models are often attractive to technikons, because their markets typically apply them.

The models from industry obviously do not focus on teaching and learning, but can be adapted to the education environment, provided the approach in the education institution is that it is also a business. In universities, self-evaluation frameworks mostly form the basis for quality assurance. Different frameworks for self-evaluation have been developed in different countries, and you can draw on models from the Netherlands, UK, Australia and New Zealand. They focus mostly on teaching and learning and therefore have typical elements of the teaching and learning processes in common, differing perhaps only in terms of layout and comprehensiveness.

As a process, self-evaluation is not unique to education institutions. All the business models require self-evaluation at some point, as a basis for interrogating conformance, performance or improvement. A generalisation from the various models would be that they address how management takes responsibility for quality, how processes are deployed, maintained and improved, how customers’ needs are considered and satisfied, how staff satisfaction is attained, and what quality products and services are rendered.

In planning quality management in your institution, you may choose to implement one of these models, or you may want to utilize their concepts and elements in designing your own quality assurance framework. The culture of your organisation, the EQA body’s requirements, as well as the market you serve, will determine which road you take.

• Developing the quality system

Reaching agreement on the interpretation of quality, the structures for quality management, and a possible model for the system, is only the beginning of the comprehensive task of preparing for quality management. Before implementation, planning for monitoring and auditing of progress is also advisable. Agreement within the organisation of what kinds of monitoring and audits will be performed, at what intervals, to provide a profile of progress or improvement, is essential.

A typical way of determining where exactly the institution stands with respects to quality management is to conduct an audit. The nature and scope of the audit will depend on what exactly needs to be determined. An audit could, for instance, be used to determine whether there is a quality management system and what it comprises. Alternatively, the audit could aim at establishing how well the quality system is functioning at that moment, or whether the quality system supports the quality policy and goals of the institution, or even what mechanisms are used for quality assurance and how well they are performing. The first step is therefore to have clarity of what exactly you want to know. The audit framework has then to be prepared accordingly. It may be useful to draw on the frameworks used by EQA (external quality assurance) bodies, but to include the policy and strategic goals of your institution in this framework.

Preparing and agreeing on the schedules for audits and the reporting on progress is an essential facet of preparing for quality assurance. The size of the institution and the number and type of programmes offered would influence decisions on the frequency of audits.

A next activity would be to prepare the actual frameworks for the evaluation of performance. The development of audit frameworks should ideally be a cooperative action between the quality manager and the people who perform the processes to be evaluated. In that way, ownership of the quality system is established.

In a similar vein, the quality manager and the specific function for which the audit is intended should jointly develop self-evaluation frameworks and schedules for the different functions in the institution. The frameworks of EQA bodies on institutional and academic programme evaluation would be useful. The aim, however, should always be to make the instrument or framework fit you context. For instance, the development of self-evaluation frameworks for learning programmes in your organisation could broadly follow the evaluation frameworks of the EQA body, but not be limited to it. Other self-evaluation frameworks, such as learner evaluation of learning facilitation and assessment, registration, examination scheduling, provision of examination results, graduation ceremonies, accounts, etc., would address the spectrum of processes that affect the quality of the learning process and environment from a user or client perspective. Operational Departments could have their own self-evaluation frameworks, which focus on the administrative or financial functions performed, extended or supported by client satisfaction surveys. All of these instruments have to be prepared, and the quality function could play a valuable facilitating and directional role in these developments.

The vision, mission, strategic goals and quality policy should always form the broad framework for quality management. Quality outputs are not aimed at pleasing the external bodies. They are first and foremost a reflection of the ethos and approach to service and product delivery of an institution, and the degree to which institutions are committed to providing quality to their users, purchasers, clients and markets.

In the next volume of this Quality Assurance Series, guidance on the formats for audits and self-evaluation, and the processes for performing these, will be provided.

The Work Group is committed to improvement and welcomes your input and feedback.

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