The new tertiary quality arrangements are now in place and in late July 2024 SFC published Guidance on Quality for Colleges and Universities AY 2024-25 to AY 2030-31.
sparqs will continue to provide support to both universities and colleges, to help institutions and students' associations prepare for their reviews and engage students fully in the new processes. In doing so, we will continue to work very closely with QAA Scotland.
Previous to these new tertiary quality arrangements, college and university arrangements were separate. Below is a summary of the previous university review arrangements for reference.
Previous university review arrangements 2022-24
The university quality arrangements were comprehensively reviewed across 2022-24 (alongside the college arrangements) as part of the SFC Review of Coherent Provision and Sustainability. The review included moving towards the new tertiary approach to quality. More information on this can be found on our SFC Review webpage, which contains a number of briefing notes which were developed for both staff and student officers, including a briefing summarising the quality arrangements for universities for 2022-2024, which remained separate from the college arrangements for the two academic years during which the tertiary approach was developed.
The full SFC guidance to colleges and universities on quality for AY 2022-23 and AY 2023-24, sets out the quality arrangements for those periods.
Under these review arrangements QAA Scotland carried out two types of activities as part of the university quality arrangements: Quality Enhancement and Standards Reviews (QESR) and Institutional Liaison Meetings (ILM). Half of institutions underwent QESR and the other half engaged in ILM. Find out more in the sparqs briefing note linked to above.
Universities also continued to carry out internal Institution-led Reviews (ILRs), e.g. for subject areas, support services and cross-institutional themes. Further information on this can be found on our ILR webpage.
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Previous ELIR arrangements
ELIR (Enhancement-led Institutional Review) is one of the five pillars of the university sector's Quality Enhancement Framework (QEF) of 2003. It refers to external reviews of every university, undertaken every four years by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. ELIR cycle 4 ran between 2017-2022 and it is the final cycle under those quality arrangements. You can find out more about ELIR on the QAA Scotland website.
After the end of ELIR 4, transition arrangements were put in place during 2021-22, during which universities hosted two institutional liaison meetings with QAA, to provide assurance to SFC on the quality of learning provision. The first liaison meetings took place between October 2021 and February 2022; the second liaison meetings took place between March and June 2022, with students’ associations required to attend the meetings.
There was much that students - particularly senior student officers with education remits - could do before, during and after the liaison meetings, and sparqs offered support in this, offering bespoke session to student officers in universities that are preparing for the meetings, as well as more detailed consultancy support where required.
sparqs also provided support by delivering informative sessions during SESN and NEON meetings, keeping students’ associations up-to-date with any changes and news from QAA, and encouraging students' associations to get in touch with their quality teams. Among relevant materials to prepare for the liaison meetings, previous materials used for ELIR reviews are still relevant, such as QAA's ‘Preparing for Enhancement-led Institutional Review’ guidance, providing advice for institutions on how to approach ELIR, and the ELIR Cycle 4 practice guide for students' association reps and staff, published by sparqs.
There is more information about the review of the Quality Enhancement Framework and the current arrangements on our Quality Arrangements webpage.
For more information, please contact Gloria Laurini.
