16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

Operational Issues 15
and long-term objective which could only be materialized with the continuing support
of both the national placement and supervising agencies and the fellows. A Quality Assurance
System still needed to be conceptualized and fine-tuned. During the period under
review agencies such as IAEA, the World Bank, ITTO and WHO had conducted
surveys or evaluations and had come up with some findings and parameters which could
be used as benchmarks toward the ultimate goal of a Quality Assurance System. Quality
assurance models used similar key methodologies such as self-evaluation, peer review,
performance indicators and quality audit. Such methodologies were also used in the
evaluation process by United Nations system agencies even though a common quality
assurance model still remained a project in the making. In the age of globalization, there
was a gradual convergence of the international quality assurance systems, which mirrored
in essence the intertwined nature of world educational systems. Apart from that global
trend, the international dimension of education was also gaining ground in the national
and institutional quality assurance systems, even though quality assurance approached in
many countries of the developed world were still too much confined to national contexts.
In the United Nations system context, the approach would have its own peculiarities and
variations. It would entail such functions as commitment to continuous learning and
research; accountability; client orientation, market transparency, planning and resources.
The first function – learning–was focused on the personal level of the trainees whereas
the rest were centered on the external responsibilities of the UN agencies in relation to
governments, donors and other stakeholders. A working group would be required to
elaborate and come up with a draft inter-agency Quality Assurance Policy.
Recommendation 4:
Training Institutions Should Be Encouraged to Establish Mechanisms for Evaluation of
their Fellowships and Training Programmes.
57. Mr. Rudi reminded the participants that the 15th Meeting had expressed the desire for
UN agencies to encourage training institutions to establish mechanisms for evaluation of
their training programmes. That required the monitoring of the programmes, the progress
of the fellows and the reporting to the agencies concerned. The Focal Point had
sought the advice of some national placement and supervising agencies on the evaluation
systems, which the training institutions in their home countries had in place. In
the Netherlands, for example, all the high education institutions had an internal system
of evaluating their standard, national and international study programmes. They were
also subject to international benchmarking organized every four years. As to the tailormade
programmes, it was presumed that they might have either a standardized or an ad
hoc evaluating system. The Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in
Higher Education (NUFFIC) provided the training institutions with monitoring and
evaluation formats for programmes funded by or through it. NUFFIC was also ready to
evaluate the courses or training programmes of the UN fellows, if requested by the UN
agencies. In Canada, the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) provided
the fellows with an information kit which included, among others, two evaluation forms