Press Release

Response to QAA report

11 May 2009

Following publication by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) of its final report on a series of enquiries undertaken in response to public concerns about academic standards and quality in higher education, raised during the summer of 2008,
Alice Hynes, Chief Executive of GuildHE, said,

'We appreciate the thoroughness with which the QAA has undertaken these enquiries. It is fair to say that the higher education sector is not always very good at explaining itself and the methods it uses to set and maintain standards and to assure quality. We agree that more should be done to explain how the systems work and what they mean.
We also wholeheartedly support the proposal that more needs to be done to explain to higher education students - whether home based or international - what they can expect of institutions and what, in turn, will be expected of them.’

David Baker, Principal of University College Plymouth St Mark and St John, and Chair of GuildHE, said,

‘GuildHE is a major advocate of diversity in higher education. We are proud of what our institutions provide. It goes without saying that we support anything that helps to make understandable to students the different educational experiences that are offered.’