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 50:50 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

4. 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

6. 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

7. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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