Introduction

External Quality Assurance (IQA)

External quality assurance refers to a range of quality monitoring activities and procedures undertaken by bodies outside a higher education institution (professional bodies or quality assurance agencies) to determine whether the institutionconcerned is meeting agreed-upon or predetermined quality standards. EQA serves several purposes, i.e., assisting the institution in developing & streamlining IQA mechanisms, enhancing comparability among institutions or programmes & external accountability. In addition, EQA mechanisms help build and establish public trust in programmes or institutions. Many aspects of IQA are intertwined with elements of EQA mechanisms, and these two are considered aspects within the quality assurance framework or an organisation.

Reviews by external QA agencies such as programme/institutional reviews by the Quality Assurance Council of the UGC, accreditation by professional organisations, obtaining standardisation certifications such as ISO standards or licensing and mechanisms such as extremal auditing can be considered as EQA measures. Each of these complements the other and ensures IQA with different emphasises.

Figure 5: The QA framework showing the connection between IQA and EQA

In EQAs, it is a practice that the University/Programme/entity asks for the intervention/review/recognition/accreditation by the external EQA body. Then the University/programme/entity submits a self-assessment (Check), usually known as a Self Evaluation Report (SER), with evidence of proof (figure 6). Next, the external agency conducts a desk review of the SER, a series of meetings and probably a site visit to verify evidence. Following the completion of the review, the reviewers would submit a preliminary report for verification by the University to avoid factual errors. Then the reviewing agency would submit the final report for the consumption of the University. Finally, the University/ programme/entity should develop an action plan to address the recommendations. The actions should be merged into the Annual Action Plan of the following year (within several years) of the entity for seeking funds and implementation through the normal QA cycle.

Figure 6: The EQA process connected to IQA. The programme reviews/Institutional reviews conducted by the UGC as an example of an EQA measure

In that sense, if a programme review has been conducted in a particular year, the actions decided based on the recommendations must be built into the Annual Action Plan for the subsequent year or as soon as possible.