10 October 2007 Pete Zacharias Acting Vice Chancellor Campus Forum Report to the University Community on progress with the Institutional Audit 10 October 2007 Pete Zacharias Acting Vice Chancellor

Purpose of audits to allow the Council for Higher Education (CHE) to gauge standards of quality in HE to provide a structured process for SELF evaluation managed by the HEQC determine areas of best practice within universities and across the sector to allow for constant improvements gives us an opportunity to improve our systems

Purpose of audits (2) audits are not PUNITIVE and they are not for accreditation we have more to learn than the CHE does this is not an opportunity for constituencies within the University to argue for more resources! the Audit Panel is of peers (also outside SA) and have no operational jurisdiction so they can't close us down

Purpose of audits (3) however, failure to respond with an improvement plan will not be wise

Process CHE identifies when the audit will take place this is negotiated with the institution members of the University attended workshops at CHE to prepare us for the audit and a lot of guidance is available networks are formed of institutions already audited to allow peers to guide us several meetings are held with the University and the CHE about 15 months before the visit a self evaluation report is produced before the visit we must agree on the Audit Panel

Process (2) we prepare the Self Evaluation Report (SER) over 15 months and submit this three months before the visit The HEQC sends us their analysis a month before the audit panel then determine their ‘lines of enquiry’ ALL sectors of the university are under review in the process, but it concentrates on teaching, learning and research process and practice in all areas are viewed in terms of how they contribute to the core business of teaching, learning and research

Process (3) the visit lasts a week they interview about 800 people across the University! they review and study all policy, processes and practices and cross reference this to the interviews they visit areas of special interest to them we can not control their approach in any way they evaluate against 19 criteria

Who is doing it? we have an Institutional Audit Coordinating Committee (IACC) chaired by the VC it has seven task teams covering the entire University they match our seven strategic goals they have been working for nearly a year the TTs, Faculties and Schools have all done self reflection reports or are in this process a draft SER will be produced by the IACC workshops will be used to get inputs from all of us where necessary

So what should we all do? there is no doubt that this is to our benefit we should all learn as much as we can about it we should all participate in events that contribute however minor these may seem please pay attention to the regular bulletins put out by the VC about the audit we should all be familiar with the self evaluation report (SER) we should have expert knowledge of the SER for the areas we are responsible for in our work place respond positively by changing our practice in those areas we learn we need to improve

So how do we respond? take the exercise very seriously do not get anxious about it learn as much about ourselves as we can be proud of what we have achieved and fix those things we are not doing well respond to things we must fix before the panel gets here be realistic!

Where to get more details? We have an Audit Website at: http://iaudit.ukzn.ac.za/

Thank you for listening We will know where we stand on: Audit visit: 20-24 October 2008