What is Institutional Audit?

Institutional Audit is a process used by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to review how well a higher education institution manages and maintains its academic standards and quality.

Academic Standards describe the level of achievement that a student has to reach to gain an academic award (for example, a degree).  They should be at a broadly similar basic level across the UK.

Academic Quality describes how well the learning opportunities available to students, help them to achieve their award.  It is about making sure that appropriate and effective teaching, support, assessment and learning opportunities are provided.

Institutional Audit aims to report to the public about whether universities and colleges of higher education have effective means of:

• ensuring that the qualifications they award are of the standards referred to in The framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland .
•  providing and managing learning opportunities for students to help them achieve their award through appropriate and effective teaching, support and assessment.
• enhancing the quality of educational provision, making appropriate use of information gained through monitoring, internal and external reviews, and feedback from stakeholders.

What does an Institutional Audit look at?

An Institutional Audit usually focuses on seven areas:

1. Introduction and background (to the institution)
2. Management of academic standards
3. Management of academic quality
4. Approach to quality enhancement
5. Institutional arrangements for postgraduate research students
6. Collaborative arrangements
7. Published information

In all of these areas, the audit team is interested in how the institution manages its learning and teaching activities.  The audit team wants to find out how the institution knows that it is doing a good job, how it knows when things go wrong, and how it knows what to do to put them right.  Auditors understand that not everything in an institution might be perfect, and that providing imaginative and innovative teaching can be challenging.  Notwithstanding this, auditors will expect an institution to be aware of, and take effective steps, to manage risk.

How can you get involved?

Student Written Submission (SWS)

QAA invites student representatives to submit a report from the student perspective, which focuses on the institutions academic quality and standards.  QAA advises student representatives to structure the SWS around 4 questions:

• How accurate is the information that the institution publishes?
• Do students know what is expected of them?
• What is the student experience as a learner like?
• Do students have a voice in the institution and is it listened to?

Meeting with the audit team

During at least one of its visits to the institution, the audit team will want to meet with key Students' Union representatives (usually the authors of the SWS).  During the briefing visit they will want to ask questions about the SWS and any further questions they have about the institution.  This is an opportunity for students to highlight any academic issues that are important to the student body.

The audit team will also want to meet a wider range of students during the audit visit.  The students they meet will depend on the areas they have decided to explore in detail (for example, postgraduate issues, distance learning, widening participation and student support.)

Working with the institution

Student representatives are encouraged to work with the institution throughout the audit process.  The institution may well have a large amount of evidence that student representatives can use when writing the SWS, such as survey results.  One of the advantages of being honest and open with the institution from the beginning is that you can highlight areas for development that need to be addressed.  This way, the institution can work with the Students' Union afterwards to change things for the better and help spread good practice.

Action Planning

The auditors write a report summarising their conclusions about the institution.  Once a draft report has been agreed, this will be sent to the institution for comment.  Student representatives can ask their institution for a copy of this to help them check through for factual accuracy.  Once the report is finalised, the institution is invited to submit a statement of no more than 500 words which will appear alongside the published report.  This is a good opportunity to work with the institution to communicate with the student body, and also to start planning how the institution tackle any challenges highlighted and spread good practice.