Institutional Audit

1
Institutional Audit

• Who runs it?
• What is it and how often does it occur?
• How will it affect us?
• What do we need to do?
• What will the outcome be and does it matter?

2
Institutional Audit - who runs it?

• Audit is carried out by the QAA - Quality
  Assurance Agency for Higher Education
• HEFCE - the Higher Education Funding Council for
  England - delegates to QAA its statutory
  responsibility to assure the quality of education
  provided for students in HE
• The QAA is funded 5050 by UK funding councils
  and subscriptions from universities

3
Institutional Audit - what is it? (1)

• It is an educational, not a financial audit
• The new system combines university-level with
  subject-level review - the old Subject Review
  system no longer exists - and takes place every 6
  years
• Bristol is one of the first universities to be
  audited under the new system
• A team of 5 or 6 external academic staff will
  visit us for a week
• The purpose of the visit is for the team to
  verify the quality and standards of our education
  by meeting groups of staff and students and
  reading documents

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Institutional Audit - what is it? (2)

• In advance, the team will identify
  university-level themes they wish to pursue,
  such as
• external examining procedures
• programme approval and review
• staff review and development
• The team will also select 5 discipline trails
  to enable them to look in detail at a few
  subjects and to explore the extent to which
  institutional policy and practices are adopted at
  subject level

5
Institutional Audit - what is it ? (3)

• We provide an institutional self-evaluation of
  our management of learning and teaching
  activities (30-40 pages)
• This will include analytical comment on
• institutional context (size, style, etc)
• developments since last audit (1993)
• action arising from previous subject reviews
• key features, strengths and limitations of
  internal quality assurance processes (e.g.
  Faculty Quality Assurance Teams)
• strategies for improving quality and standards

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Institutional Audit - what is it? (4)

• We provide a self-evaluation for each of the
  five discipline trails (3,000 words)
• These will comment on
• educational aims of programmes
• student learning outcomes
• curriculum and assessment of students
• quality of learning opportunities
• how standards and quality are maintained/enhanced
• programme specifications will be attached to each
  self-evaluation

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Institutional Audit - how will it affect us?

• Potentially the audit could have little effect on
  many academic staff
• But, subjects chosen as discipline audit trails
  will have a short visit during the audit
• We will know in advance what the five discipline
  trails will be
• Some subjects are already drafting
  self-evaluations, based on our informed guess
  about which discipline trails will be chosen

8
Institutional Audit - what do we need to do?

• For subjects chosen as discipline trails, we need
  to
• finalize the self-evaluations
• select some staff who will meet the audit team,
  guided by their requirements
• collect a small amount of documents to enable the
  team to decide whether quality and academic
  standards are being maintained in the relevant
  subjects

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Institutional Audit - what will the outcome be
and does it matter? (1)

• The audit will result in a published report
• There are two overall categories of judgement but
  NO numerical scores
• The first judgement concerns the teams
  confidence in the universitys management of
  quality and academic standards
• broad confidence
• limited confidence
• no confidence

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Institutional Audit - what will the outcome be
and does it matter? (2)

• The second judgement is about the reliability and
  accuracy of the information the University
  publishes about itself
• Overall judgements are supported by specific
  recommendations for action, each categorised as
• essential
• advisable or
• desirable
• The University will be aiming for a judgement of
  broad confidence, with few or no essential
  recommendations

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Institutional Audit - what will the outcome be
and does it matter? (3)

• If we have a positive report, we will receive
  less attention from the QAA in subsequent years,
  as long as we take action where advised
• The audit offers an opportunity for the
  University to put the record straight in areas
  where it has previously been criticised (Subject
  Review reports and other)
• In the new HE environment, external validation
  and benchmarking are important in assessing
  institutional quality - published reports are
  widely available and have a high profile

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Useful web addresses

• To view the QAA Handbook for institutional audit
  England, go to
• www.qaa.ac.uk/public/inst_audit_hbook/
• institutional_audit.htm
• To see notes of guidance on discipline audit
  trails, go to
• www.bris.ac.uk/tsu/ext_quality/qaa/
• guidedisptrail.doc