Preparing for the Higher Education Review

Preparations are underway for UCL’s upcoming Higher Education Review by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in May 2016.

The QAA is the UK-wide agency responsible for monitoring and advising on the standards and quality of UK higher education. As part of a common framework for quality assurance, all universities agree to be subject to an independent review by QAA every six years – it could be said that this process is the equivalent of the REF for teaching.

This is a great opportunity to showcase UCL’s achievements but also provides a space to think realistically about what we do and how we could do it better in order to benefit our students and other stakeholders.

Dame Nicola Brewer, Vice Provost (International) comments, “The HER can help us deliver our Global Engagement Strategy even more effectively. At the core of our strategy is global academic partnerships, which may include dual or joint degrees as well as student and staff mobility. It’s vital we get these right. The HER will enable us to test the robust nature and high quality of our partnership provision.”

The review is peer-led and takes place in two stages: there is a desk-based analysis of our review documentation which will start in February 2016; this will be followed by a visit of the review team in May 2016.

Over the summer, key UCL colleagues have been working on the Self-Evaluation Document (SED) that forms the basis of the review documentation.  The next stage over the coming weeks is to work with colleagues across UCL for their input on the SED and to provide examples of evidence for the review documentation.