Positive response to trial

Work is already underway to implement key findings from the independent report into NZQA's trial of the planned new quality assurance system for tertiary providers.

The trial of self-assessment and external evaluation and review involved eight tertiary education organisations and took place between April and October last year.

Independent consultants Martin Jenkins said the participating TEOs "were unanimous in their view that the self-assessment was a valuable process". The report of the trial is now available on the NZQA website.

"The most significant value of the trial self-assessment was that it offered TEOs a framework and an anchor for their self-review and assessment," the report states.

NZQA Deputy Chief Executive, Quality Assurance, Tim Fowler said the report indicated the foundations were in place for the new quality assurance framework, at the same time indicating where work was required.

External evaluation and review is due to commence in September this year and Mr Fowler said the report highlighted the need for:

• further refinement of the self-assessment resources
• further development of the external evaluation and review tools
• building evaluator capability especially in the areas of reaching judgements, using evaluative processes and dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty
• developing the capability of TEOs to use evaluative processes in their self-assessment.

"The report is good news for us," Tim said. "It has confirmed we are concentrating on the right things - building capability within NZQA in terms of moving from an audit to an evaluative approach, and further developing self-assessment resources for providers.

"It's clear the new approach has had a positive response from the trial participants but we need to remember that providers are at a range of starting points and we need to, therefore, provide a range of resources to help them make the transition to the new quality assurance focus."

A restructuring of the Quality Assurance Division at NZQA has focused on the move to evaluation, and Tim said this would enable emphasis on another aspect of the report - building the capability of external evaluators.

"We are working hard as an organisation to ensure we provide value both in supporting providers to carry out self-assessment, and managing external evaluation and review."