Quality Assurance Systems in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

ENHANCEMENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN APEC MEMBER ECONOMIES
PAASCU's accreditation of medical schools has been recognised by the National Committee
on Foreign Medical Education Accreditation under the US Department of Education. In the
process of recognition, policies, standards and procedures of PAASCU have been scrutinised
to determine comparability with the medical education program being offered in the US. In
2004, PAASCU was given a 5-year accreditation by the US Department of Education,
Overall, there seems to be very little external formal benchmarking done by the QA bodies.
AUQA is currently benchmarking with agencies from Germany and Ireland. This is an area
that needs further attention.
8.4 Review
In general, QA systems constantly review their policies and standards and update their
procedures and guidelines. QA bodies of the APEC economies have these reviews as a part
of their internal monitoring mechanisms. Annual performance review, input from stakeholders
and suggestions from international scholars feed into the reviews. Some have added more
structure to self-reviews, although this is an internal exercise. HKCAA did a self-review in
2003 which it states that helped to find its position.
Some, such as CNAP, AUQA, and NZUAAU have taken up external reviews. The
predecessors of MQA have undergone Internal Quality Audits and ISO 9002:2000 audit. ITP-
Q is audited by the government body NZQA. NZQA in turn has undergone three reviews. The
Board commissioned an internal review in 2005, conducted by a Committee of the Board with
external advice provided. The major findings of this related to the governance of the
organisation and a new committee structure was established as a result. The second one was
by an external audit panel for the Approvals, Accreditation and Audit Group and ITP-Q which
has delegated authority from NZQA. The major findings of this audit were about strengthening
document and information management. An internal audit team is now monitoring this. Also,
the external audit identified some policy gap that was addressed by a major in-house project.
Thirdly, NZQA also has an internal audit function. As noted earlier, NZUAAU has been
reviewed in 1997 and 2001.
PAASCU underwent an external review in 2006 that resulted in improvements on the review
instrument, retraining of accreditors and review of the accreditation manual. NAA underwent
an external evaluation by a team of HEI representative, regional bodies and the heads of
Federal Service of Supervision in Education and Science in 2004.
8.5 Monitoring efficiency and effectiveness
The QA systems have a suite of measures to monitor their efficiency such as the following:
reviewing the outcomes of operation against the costs
organising site visits in such a way that travel costs are minimised
setting target regarding operating costs, and at the end of the fiscal year, reviewing
whether actual performance met the initial target
developing strategic plans and reviewing against them
monitoring against key performance indicators such as number of assessments handled
per assessor and staff, process cycle time, budget allocation and utilisation rate
monitoring against internal evaluations of operations
weekly management meetings
consistency checks and meetings at the operational level
adhering to INQAAHE Guidelines, Regional Convention in QA, ISO 9001:2000
evaluations made by clientele
discussion with the HEIs and the external reviewers after each external review
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