Rui Zhou, an expert studying abroad in the British Education Union, said that this system includes four levels: the Higher Education Fund Committee, which carries out higher education evaluation on behalf of the government; Higher Education Quality Committee, which conducts quality audit on behalf of the University Presidents Committee; University self-evaluation; Social evaluation.
Higher education quality assurance bureau
1997, in order to better provide comprehensive quality assurance services for the quality of British higher education, the British Higher Education Fund Committee and the Higher Education Quality Committee merged into the British Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency? QAA (Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency).
QAA is an independent higher education evaluation institution with more than 65,438,000 full-time employees and more than 800 part-time employees. This institution is supervised by a board of directors composed of 14 people, of which 4 directors are appointed by the Higher Education Quality Committee, 4 directors are appointed by the Higher Education Fund Committee, and the other 6 directors are independent individuals with rich practical experience in industry, commerce, finance or other industries.
There are two main sources of institutional funds: one is donations from universities (according to the number of students in each school), and the other is funds allocated by higher education funding institutions according to contracts. These two funds support QAA's assessment activities and operating expenses. The mission of QAA is to provide complete quality assurance services for British universities, so as to ensure and improve the quality of higher education and promote the continuous reform of quality management of higher education.
According to this requirement, QAA is divided into four functional departments: Administration Department? Responsible for institutional affairs, personnel, cooperation and exchange, information systems and other affairs; Development department? Responsible for strategy and policy formulation, including national quality management framework, discipline benchmark and implementation plan; School evaluation department? Responsible for the management and operation of the school level, the right to confer degrees and the evaluation of higher education access; Curriculum evaluation department? Responsible for the management and operation of subject-level assessment. The quality evaluation results of QAA directly affect the reputation and funds of colleges and universities.
The goal is to ensure the quality of higher education.
In order to effectively carry out the quality evaluation of higher education, QAA has organized relevant experts to do a lot of basic work on the quality evaluation of education, including defining the related concepts of quality evaluation, describing in detail the academic standards and the conditions required for awarding degrees at different levels, formulating the description of discipline quality, providing professional regulations, and determining accurate and expected teaching standards. , and provide reference for evaluation activities. Moreover, in order to ensure the quality of higher education and the credibility of evaluation results to the greatest extent, QAA has formulated its own evaluation criteria: fairness? Any conclusions made are based on facts and are not interfered by any factors; Authority? The members of the jury are mostly experts and scholars in colleges and universities, who have in-depth research on higher education; Openness adheres to the principle of openness, ensures the transparency of evaluation work and evaluation methods, and keeps in touch with the outside world; Explanatory? Be responsible for those who use their information resources and ensure that users can make full use of the information they provide.
The main job of QAA is to evaluate the teaching quality at school level and subject level. The number of schools evaluated each year is about 40, and the number of disciplines is about 350. Taking the evaluation in Britain as an example, this paper briefly introduces the process of QAA evaluation activities.
School quality evaluation level: The purpose of QAA's evaluation at this level is to provide quality standards for higher education and test the implementation of the right to confer degrees in colleges and universities. For this reason, QAA consists of 4 ~ 7 experts (experts are required to have the latest experience related to the nature of their work, of which at least 65,438+0 experts should make an overall evaluation of information) and 65,438+0 secretaries to evaluate the internal quality assurance system and detailed academic research of specific disciplines. The evaluation process includes the self-evaluation of the school and the external evaluation of the school practice by the evaluation team. Due to the tradition of university autonomy, universities should be highly responsible for their academic quality and degree awarding behavior. Therefore, the self-evaluation of colleges and universities is an important part of this level and the basis of external evaluation, but the teaching objectives and academic standards of colleges and universities must be consistent with the latest national standards formulated by QAA to ensure that students can acquire similar knowledge and complete similar courses. The school self-evaluation should be formed before the evaluation team's evaluation and inspection, and it is the main reference material for the on-site inspection of the evaluation team. Students are the center of school quality evaluation. Therefore, during the evaluation process, student representatives will attend major evaluation meetings and submit students' opinions to the evaluation team. And the evaluation team will use it after the evaluation? Excellent? 、? Need improvement? 、? Must be improved? Evaluate the quality of colleges and universities. Finally, the evaluation team will publish the evaluation results in the form of an evaluation report, which contains the evaluation team's judgments and suggestions on the future development of the school.
Grade of discipline and specialty quality evaluation: The purpose of this grade evaluation is to make an academic evaluation of degree-granting disciplines in universities all over the UK. The whole evaluation activity lasted for 6 weeks. During the evaluation, the evaluation team will visit the school and collect evidence to test the results of the school's self-evaluation. To this end, the evaluation team can directly attend lectures, or interview current and past student representatives, and talk with representatives of employers in related majors. After the evaluation, the evaluation team will use? Is it trustworthy? Limited trust? 、? Not credible? Three grades to evaluate the academic level and learning environment of the school. Finally, the evaluation results will be published in the form of an evaluation report, which also includes the evaluation opinions of the evaluation team and expresses confidence in the sustainable development of the school discipline.
Five characteristics of evaluation
From the above introduction to the organization and evaluation process of QAA, we can sum up some characteristics of higher education evaluation in Britain. Independent? The evaluation work is presided over by non-government personnel, and the government does not interfere in the evaluation work, but indirectly intervenes and controls higher education through QAA, an evaluation intermediary. The government is only responsible for specifying the overall scientific research policy and controlling the total funding.
Comprehensive? Evaluation combines the government, schools, students and society to evaluate and supervise the quality of teaching and scientific research in colleges and universities from all angles.
Strong? The scientific research level of a school directly affects the amount of funding it receives, which makes colleges and universities have to strive to improve their discipline quality and scientific research level.
The open final evaluation results are publicly released, which is convenient for other social units and the general public, such as students and parents, to grasp the information of colleges and universities in time.
Humanism? Attach importance to students' participation and really put students in an important position to consider. The survey objects include not only current students, but also previous students and employers, which truly reflects colleges and universities? People-oriented? Humanistic spirit.
The quality evaluation of higher education plays an important role in ensuring and improving the quality of higher education and safeguarding the interests of schools and students. The quality of British higher education has always been among the first-class universities in the world, attracting worldwide attention, which is not unrelated to its perfect quality evaluation system.