European Quality AssuranceRegister for Higher Education

EQAR's function in the EHEA &possible tools to facilitate recognition

ENIC-NARIC Networks Annual Meeting20 June 2016, Amsterdam

Colin Tück

EHEA framework forquality assurance

European Standards andGuidelines (ESG) Modernised and improved 2015

version Common ground for QA in

Europe

European Quality AssuranceRegister (EQAR) Agencies that comply

substantially with the ESG – athome and abroad

Processes for substantivechanges and complaints

43 registered QAAs

Governmental memberswithout registered agency

European Quality Assurance Registerfor Higher Education (EQAR)

Established by E4 Group (ENQA, ESU,EUA, EURASHE) at Ministers' request,jointly governed by stakeholders andgovernments

Non-profit and independent, acting inthe public interest

Mission: Transparency and trust Recognition Confidence in EHEA

Responsibility: manage register ofQAAs that comply with the ESG

Stakeholderorganisations

Governments

Observers

Register CommitteeIndependent QA experts,

nominated by stakeholders

approves

EQAR in practice

Registration based on external review of agency

Annual updates on reviews and countries

Substantive change reports

Third-party complaints

Periodic renewal every 5 years

Yerevan Communiqué(2015)

“By 2020 we are determined to achieve an EHEA[European Higher Education Area] where our commongoals are implemented in all member countries toensure trust in each other’s higher educationsystems; where automatic recognition ofqualifications has become a reality so that studentsand graduates can move easily throughout it [...]”

Policy measures adopted: the revised Standards andGuidelines for Quality Assurance in the EuropeanHigher Education Area (ESG 2015)

Automatic Recognition

Ambitious or obvious goal? Challenges for EHEA tools

Need to work better together From non-binding transparency tools to real and

direct consequences Non-implementation issues

Role of QA Common standards Basis for systematic trust EQAR: importance of monitoring

Vision for QA, Trust and(Automatic) Recognition

QA NQF A

QF- EHEA

NQF B

ESG & EQAR self-certification

Qualification in country A

Level in country Bmap & recognise

EQAR website: systeminformation

Database of EQA Reports

Quality assurance results (decisions + reports): ESG 2.6: reports published by the agency … but on which agency's website to look for them?

EQAR Self-Evaluation Report 2016 Explore possibility of a database of higher education

institutions and programmes Goals:

Identify whether a higher education institution (or itsprogrammes) went through external qualityassurance by an EQAR-registered agency

Easy access to the corresponding report

Database: functionality

Using the higher education institution (HEI) asthe starting point Search for a specific HEI Not a catalogue of programmes/study opportunities

All types of external QA covered by the ESG Evaluation, accreditation, audit, review, etc. Institutional or at programme level Obligatory and voluntary procedures

Database: how it might look

Database: your voice

ENIC-NARIC centres are main target group Survey of potential users (until 22 July 2016)

https://eqar.eu/surveys/database-users.html

(and see your email)