The Academic Quality Handbook

Enhancing Higher Education in Universities and Further Education Colleges

Patrick Mcghee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000159158
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Universities and further education colleges are under increasing pressure to provide 'quality' for their students. Quality assurance and development issues affect the staff, resources, administration and culture of an academic institution, yet there is often a lack of clear guidance available to those responsible for implementing best practice. This book provides practical guidelines for managing academic quality assurance and quality enhancement, outlining best practice from both the UK and the rest of the world. Each chapter addresses the key points, risks and good practice across a wide range of quality issues, drawing explicitly and in detail from the QAA guidance on the Code of Practice, Subject Benchmarks, Qualifications Framework and Institutional Audit. The material is presented in an accessible and straightforward style, incorporating useful features such as development questions for individual or team review. A maintained website accompanying this book (www.academicquality.com) contains further useful resources, with updates and supplementary material in this constantly changing area.

Part 1

The quality infrastructure

1

The Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003071426-3

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

1. Describe the functions of the FHEQ
2. Summarize the relations between the levels
3. Outline its contribution to the ‘quality infrastructure’
4. Explain its relation to programme specifications

The definitive framework for qualifications that applies to courses and programmes of study in higher education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is that published by the QAA in January 2001: the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ). The framework for Scotland is slightly different, reflecting historical traditions in naming awards, particularly the MA, which refers to undergraduate degrees of four years’ duration.

The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE, 1997 – the Dearing report) and the Scottish equivalent (the Garrick report) both recommended the establishment of a qualifications framework.

Students need to be clear about the requirements of the programmes to which they are committed, and about the levels of achievement expected of them. Employers want higher education to be more explicit about what they can expect from candidates for jobs, whether they have worked at sub-degree, degree, or postgraduate level. Existing arrangements for safeguarding standards are insufficiently clear to carry conviction with those who perceive present quality and standards to be unsatisfactory. We believe there is much to be gained by greater explicitness and clarity about standards and the levels of achievement required for different awards. (NCIHE, 1997: S10.2)

The aims of the FHEQ are to promote transparency and consistency in awards and facilitate greater public understanding of the distinctions between different levels of award. It attempts to do this by providing a structure for understanding higher education and making the outcomes of individual awards more explicit. Additionally, the existence of a framework in principle supports public confidence in awards across the UK and enables comparability with qualification schemes across Europe and beyond. Some specific issues addressed by the FHEQ include the idea that postgraduate programmes should in some way ‘build on’ undergraduate programmes (in terms of curricular challenge and skill development) rather than simply ‘follow on’ from them. The FHEQ is an outcomes-based qualifications framework, which defines qualifications in terms of the end product rather than inputs, processes or increments in learning. The FHEQ is expected to be in place in relevant HEIs by the start of the academic year 2003–04.

The descriptors for each award comprise two parts: a statement of outcomes (what students need to achieve for the award) and a statement of skills and abilities that a typical student should be able to demonstrate if he or she possesses such an award. This outcomes-based approach means that the framework provides a context for subject benchmark statements (SBSs – see Chapter 2) which in turn inform programme specifications. It is in this way that the QAA seeks to develop a quality infrastructure for the higher education sector nationally.

The FHEQ is distinguished from a credit framework. The former is a statement of the characteristics of achievement at different levels; the latter is a statement of how units of learning effort build up through credit accumulation into an award associated with a programme of study. The FHEQ does not seek to directly map skills or knowledge highlighted in SBSs onto qualifications, nor was it intended to. It can be noted however that we see here the significance of the lack of articulation between learning outcomes and degree classification, something which remains an unresolved issue in the quality infrastructure (see Jackson, 2002). The FHEQ does reflect this issue indirectly when it states: ‘The outcomes associated with a qualification should be understood in an holistic way, and their achievement should be demonstrated directly.’

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE POINT

Consider the distinctions either across or within SBSs between a threshold and a typical/modal level of achievement. Which of these two levels seems to map most closely on to the level of skills and attainment outlined in the qualifications framework for the honours award? Why might there be a discrepancy here?

The framework overall has five levels as follows: Certificate (C) level, Intermediate (I) level, Honours (H) level, Masters (M) level and a Doctoral (D) level. Each of these levels has a corresponding set of specifications about what level of knowledge and skills should be associated with successful completion of awards validated at that level.

The system still leaves some anomalies. The Oxbridge MA system, which involves BA (Hons) graduates receiving an MA four years after graduation without the inconvenience of any further study, remains unaltered. A note in the FHEQ helpfully ‘clarifies’ the situation ‘the MAs granted by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are not academic qualifications’.

The full descriptor for each level is made up of:

• a statement of the learning outcomes students for the award would be expected to be able to demonstrate;
• what holders of the qualification would ‘typically’ be able to do;
• the qualities and transferable skills an award holder would normally possess.

It is worth looking at the full descriptor for the level H, the honours degree award. (See Box 1.1.)

Box 1.1

Descriptor for a qualification at level H (honours)

Bachelors degree with Honours

Honours degrees are awarded to students who have demonstrated:

• a systematic understanding of key aspects of their field of study, including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of defined aspects of a discipline;
• an ability to deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry within a discipline;
• conceptual understanding that enables the student:
  • to devise and sustain arguments, and/or to solve problems, using ideas and techniques, some of which are at the forefront of a discipline;
  • to describe and comment upon particular aspects of current research, or equivalent advanced scholarship, in the discipline.
• an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits of knowledge;
• the ability to manage their own learning, and to make use of scholarly reviews and primary sources (eg refereed research articles and/or original materials appropriate to the discipline).

Typically, holders of the qualification will be able to:

• apply the methods and techniques that they have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply their knowledge and understanding, and to initiate and carry out projects;
• critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may be incomplete), to make judgements, and to frame appropriate questions to achieve a solution – or identify a range of solutions – to a problem;
• communicate information, ideas, problems, and solutions to both specialist and non-specialist audiences.

They will also have:

• qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring:
  • the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility;
  • decision making in complex and unpredictable contexts;
  • the learning ability needed to undertake appropriate further training of a professional or equivalent nature.

The FHEQ provides an overview of the relationship between different qualifications (particularly in relation to progression) and other parts of the quality infrastructure of external reference points. It is essential to consider the FHEQ in the context of specific detailed statements identified in the detailed SBSs when constructing programme specifications for a given programme. Together these give an overall framework for the knowledge, understanding and skills that need to be delivered and assessed in specific courses.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE POINTS

What issues does the existence of the FHEQ raise for managing academic quality at the institutional level?

Who is responsible for revising your university’s regulatory framework in the light of the FHEQ?

Who is responsible for ensuring that for validation and review panel chairs are briefed, for example, on the principle that awards need to be defined in terms of positive achievement?

To what extent would you say your validation and review process explicitly checks that new or revised honours programmes have programme specifications that are at least consistent with the level H descriptor?

What mechanisms are there in your institution for revising programmes not due for review in terms of the implications of the FHEQ?

Consider the Certificate level descriptor in the FHEQ. To what extent does this map on to any advice given to module writers at your institution? In your experience are there students failing their year 1 (or equivalent) programme who meet this specification? Are there students who pass year 1 who do not meet this specification? How many students each year leave with a Certificate in Higher Education? What are the criteria at your institution for this award?

USE OF THE FHEQ

The FHEQ is an important part of institutional audit. It should be noted however that the link to review/audit in the original publication refers to the now downgraded ‘academic review’ methodology. Paragraph 82 in the Handbook for Academic Review very much gives an impression of policing of an external standard while the comparable paragraph in the Handbook for Institutional Audit (para 55) presents a more developmental approach. Nevertheless, where programmes have outcomes that do not clearly map on to the descriptors specified in the FHEQ for the level of the programme award, the HEI will have the burden of proof to justify its use of the award: ‘Claims that those outcomes can be achieved from volumes of learning that are significantly below those found necessary by institutions generally, are likely to be tested by reviewers with particular thoroughness.’ It would be interesting if an institution were able to show that students were achieving the aims of the award with a significantly lower volume of study, possibly in the context of a postgraduate programme with a demanding entry requirement. For the issue is not as the example in the Academic Review Handbook might suggest (para 82) that outcomes of an allegedly postgraduate programme would be all at the undergraduate level, but rather that students would have demonstrated postgraduate outcomes possibly very clearly but only over a limited range of modules.

GOOD PRACTICE POINT

Assuming an institution has confidence that its programme specifications map on to the relevant descriptors, and in the case of undergraduate programmes (and some foundation degree programmes) that they also map on to the relevant subject benchmark, there is scope for being more explicit and consistent in the writing of student references after graduation. Indeed it might even be possible for a template for a given course to be produced which lays out the skills and achievements implied by the award of the degree. This would free up time for referees to discuss students’ interpersonal skills, interests and extracurricular activities and contributions.

IMPLEMENTING THE PRECEPTS OF THE FHEQ

In order to clarify the key expectations of the FHEQ and to identify an agenda for good practice, the QAA specify three precepts which institutions are expected to have considered in the construction of their award schemes. These cover award, positioning and naming of qualifications. The small number of precepts here, in what can be a complex topic, co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Preface to this edition Page
• Introduction
• Part 1: The quality infrastructure
• Part 2: Managing quality in the context of the QAA Code of Practice
• Appendix 1: Useful contacts
• Appendix 2: Action planner, Log of key learning and development points
• References
• Further reading
• Index