Quality Assurance Framework

The Quality Assurance (QA) is a means by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced. QA involves all activities in the institute that are necessary for fulfilling the purposes of sustaining high quality education and educational services. The framework uses generic principles and statements of good practice. The framework is not prescriptive; its purpose is to promote good practices of internal and external quality assurance.

The quality assurance framework is based on:

• Internal Quality Assurance (IQA)
• External Quality Assurance (EQA)
• Quality Assessment Audit (QAA)

Internal QA refers to intra-institutional practices and policies used to monitor and improve quality of processes at institution and program level – it is the responsibility of the academic department / faculty or the institution. Internal quality assurance has been identified as concentrating on teaching quality improvements, whereas external quality assurance is concerned with the different stakeholders for quality enhancements and the responsibility to the society.

External QA refers to inter- or supra-institutional policies and schemes of assessing, maintaining and improving quality of institution and/or programs which are the responsibility of specialised agencies with authority and legitimacy to engage in this activity.

Academic Audits (sometimes referred to as a 'review') are a means of checking that relevant systems and structures in an institution support its key teaching mission and ensure that provision is at or beyond a satisfactory level of quality. In other words, audits demonstrate how an institution satisfies itself (and thereby external stakeholders) that the academic standards it has set (or which are set by an accreditation bodies) and its own explicit and implicit objectives, are being achieved.

Standards for Internal Quality Assurance

To unlock the full potential, IARE formulated Nine Internal QA parameters to measure and track progress, to optimize performance and deliver outstanding education outcomes. These parameters are as follows:

Standards for External Quality Assurance

External quality assurance is a synergistic relationship of NBA, NAAC, Rankings and ISO 21001:2018 to Quality Assurance.

The parameters identified for External Quality Assurance (EQA) are:

National Board of Accreditation (NBA), National Assessment and Accreditation Counsel (NAAC), National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ensure meaningful external quality assurance for public trust. They evaluate, review, audit, assess, accreditate at program or institutional level.

Quality Assurance Audit

A quality assurance audit can be conducted either internally or externally and is usually administered at the whole-of-institution level, or at the program level. This include external evaluation, quality audits involve the auditee conducting a critical self-analysis, and an external review team verifying the self-report, making recommendations for improvement, and monitoring progress.

The QA audits make no attempt to comprehensively review an institution’s or program’s resources and activities, nor to directly assess the quality of teaching or student learning, although they help to place improvement of teaching and learning. Instead, they focus on those processes by which institution exercise their responsibility to assure academic standards and improve the quality of their teaching and learning.

The output of such an audit is a description of the extent to which the claims are correct. Audits also serve to aid dean of IQAC and provide system-wide information on best practices. This highlights further strengths of the Quality Audit including providing a sense of ownership through self-analysis, encouraging continuous improvement and self learning, in comparison with their stated strategic objectives and mission. Audits normally involve both qualitative and quantitative assessments.