Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance is central to the National Framework of Qualifications. Quality assurance means that your education and training programme, and the organisation providing it, are reviewed on a regular basis. Quality Assurance arrangements are in place for:
- Qualifications (awards) included in the NFQ,
- Education and training providers of programmes leading to NFQ awards, and
- The bodies that make these awards,
The rest of this page outlines the arrangements in place within Ireland. Similar arrangements are in place for awarding bodies from other countries whose qualifications are recognised through the NFQ.
The role of the Awarding Bodies
FETAC (The Further Education and Training Awards Council) and HETAC (The Higher Education and Training Awards Council) have specific functions relating to quality assurance. These include:
- Agreeing quality assurance procedures with providers delivering programmes that lead to their awards
- Reviewing the effectiveness of these procedures
- Reviewing how findings of these procedures have been dealt with
Universities are required to establish quality assurance procedures, to carry out evaluations, to review the effectiveness of their quality assurance procedures and to review the implementation of findings of these procedures. The Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB) has been delegated authority by the universities to organise periodic reviews of the effectiveness of the quality assurance procedures in place in the universities.
The role of the Qualifications Authority
The Qualifications Authority is responsible for the review of the Awards Councils' performance of their functions (i.e., HETAC and FETAC) and the review of the effectiveness of the quality assurance procedures of the Dublin Institute of Technology. Further details of the reviews of FETAC, HETAC and DIT are available on the Qualifications Authority website.
Quality Assurance in Europe
Quality assurance procedures in use in Ireland follow European guidelines and recommendations.
In higher education, Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area were adopted by Ministers of Education across Europe in 2005. They set out the standards for internal and external quality assurance arrangements for higher education institutions and the internal quality assurance standards for quality assurance agencies.
In further education, the European Network on Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training (ENQA-VET) was established in 2005 by the European Commission. The Network's overall aim is to give appropriate follow-up to the European Council conclusions of May and October 2004 on quality assurance in VET and in particular by promoting the use of the Common Quality Assurance Framework on a voluntary basis and fostering cooperative, inclusive and voluntary networks, at all levels.
The IHEQN
The Irish Higher Education Quality Network (IHEQN) was established in 2003. It provides a forum for the principal national stakeholders in the quality assurance of higher education and training (including HETAC, the Qualifications Authority, the DIT and the IUQB) to discuss quality in a national context, to work towards the development of a common national position on key quality assurance issues and to inform the debate on those same issues at a European level.
