Scotland’s Ambition for Student Partnership and its accompanying features and indicators is a resource which builds on sparqs’ previous work supporting the sector to explore partnership. Published in October 2024, the resource helps identify how partnership approaches can be built into the mechanisms and processes within the tertiary quality arrangements. The ambition statement is aspirational. It is recognised that, whilst there is significant good practice across Scotland, to achieve our ambition will require continued enhancement activity and this will be a journey for individual institutions and the sector as a whole.
The ambition statement is underpinned by 8 features. We will know that we have achieved a culture of student partnership when these features are embedded into institutions’ systems and processes.
Each feature of student partnership can be explored further through indicators of practice. These indicators are not designed to be a checklist – they are designed to be examples of practice which institutions and students’ associations can use to identify their current best practice and opportunities for development.
The ambition statement, features and indicators of practice are designed to be a practical tool for institutions to embed partnership working across their activities and processes. You might use the resource to carry out a high-level evaluation of your partnership activities or you might choose a specific feature and/or group of indicators you want to explore in more detail.
Background and context
The SFC commissioned sparqs to develop the ambition statement and its associated features and indicators of practice as part of the work developing Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (TQEF). ‘Student Engagement and Partnership’ is embedded in the TQEF as one of the six principles, reflecting the importance of this approach within the TQEF. Scotland’s Ambition for Student Partnership underpins this principle.
The TQEF places the student experience at the heart of its approach. Alongside ‘Student Engagement and Partnership’, the two principles ‘Excellence in Learning, Teaching and Assessment’ and ‘Supporting Student Success’ are key to achieving this. These two principles relate directly to the Student Learning Experience model, also developed by sparqs as part of the work commissioned by SFC to support the development of TQEF.
Read more about student engagement and partnership in the TQEF on our Quality Arrangements webpage.
Queries
For further information on any of the above, please contact Megan Brown.
