European standards of higher education quality assurance: peculiarities and perspectives of introduction in Ukraine

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Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University

European standards of higher education quality assurance: peculiarities and perspectives of introduction in Ukraine

Ihor Kotsan, Anna Liakisheva

c. Lutsk

In the era of globalization and informatization when the need in knowledge is intensively developed, their quality is especially appreciated. The interest in knowledge quality is developing rapidly from the side of consumers - those who study and acquire vocational education, from the side of the interested in qualified specialists - employers and those who sell and provide educational services - higher educational establishments. It is impossible to manage without quality education in the modern world [5]. That is why Europe that seeks to build the most dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the world aims to make European higher education and provided qualifications of the highest quality. This objective is reflected in all shared documents of the signatory countries of the Bologna Declaration.

European standard of higher education is rather a new phenomenon. The urgent need for their development emerged at the end of XX century, practically with the beginning of the formation of European Higher Education Area. Each meeting of the Ministers of Education of the participating countries of the Bologna Process touched the ways of solving common problems of higher education quality. In fact, already in the first unifying documents that developed strategic perspectives of Europe of Knowledge, it was specified the ways of quality assurance of higher education. Quality education is high quality education that enables providing of successful vital activity of the society. A personality acquires education, and its quality directly affects progressive transformations of the society. That is why the government, taking care of the highest quality of education for its citizens, indirectly affects its own economic and social progress. Before the emergence of common European interests on ensuring the quality of higher education, in each country it was formed their own approaches to understanding of this phenomenon. At the time of signing the Bologna Declaration in June 1999, each of the 29 countries that sought to create European Educational Area had its own mechanisms and models of quality assurance. Development of a common strategy and practical steps became an essential thing, because European partnership is impossible without this.

That is why already in the Bologna Declaration, along with other important tasks; it was set a task “to promote European cooperation in the scope of evaluating the quality of education in the perspective of development of compared criteria and methodologies” [6, 26].

Quality assurance is rather a complex and multi-vector cause in a large and diverse European area. Approval of opinions about what should be the quality of higher education is a long and difficult process. Already at the Ministerial Conference o f the Bologna Process participating countries in Prague (2001) in the communiquй it was stres sed the need in closer cooperation between the structures of recognition and quality assurance of higher education. It was emphasized the need for close European cooperation and mutual trust and recognition of different assessment systems.

The Ministers appealed to universities and other educational institutions to disseminate good practice and develop scenarios for mutual acceptance of mechanisms for accreditation / certification and evaluation. It was also appealed to national agencies and European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) to collaborate with the relevant organizations of countries that are not ENQA members, to establish common norms of adoption of recommendations and dissemination of the best practice in implementing the objectives of higher education [6, p. 32-33].

So, the ENQA launched a vigorous activity of finding the methodological foundations of development of generally accepted standards that would contribute to creation in Europe of common ideas about indicators of quality of higher education. For this it was examined the best practices in quality assurance of education.

At that time ENQA didn't have a long history of its activity. The idea of necessity of existence of European non -profit organization that would constantly monitor current issues of quality of higher education in Europe and searched for the ways of its rise occurred in the mid-90's of 20th century and was checked by a pilot project. And in 2000 it was established as the European network (2004 - Association) for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). The members of the organization were the quality assurance agencies of the countries that signed the Bologna Declaration.

Responsible tasks, given to ENQA by the Ministers of Education the countries that signed the Bologna Declaration, determined the necessity of search and consolidation of partners who would be interested in effective ensuring of higher education. Thus began its fellowship with European organizations which represented the interests of higher educational institutions and students as participants of implementation of tasks of higher education.

ENQA received clear guidelines of activity for further development of quality assurance of higher education during the Berlin Communiquй from the Ministers of higher education (2003). Generally positively estimating the work, the Ministers stressed the need to develop criteria and methodologies for public use in the field of education quality. Actually there were outlined three levels of education quality assurance: institutional, national, European. In this regard the ministers agreed that national quality assurance systems should include:

- Determination of responsibility of authorities and educational establishments that participate in educational activity;

- Evaluation of institutions, which includes internal control, external review, participation of students and publication of results;

- The system of accreditation, certification or similar procedures;

- International participation, cooperation and the creation of unions [6, p. 38].

Having defined the main directions and amounts of activity of agents of institutional and national levels, the Ministers tasked ENQA and its members at the European level with the participation of the European University Association (EUA), the European association of higher education institutions (EURASHE), the National Union of Students in Europe (ESIB, 2007 - ESU) to develop an agreed set of standards, procedures and recommendations for quality assurance. At the same time the second important task was to find ways of ensuring adequate system of external expert examination of quality assurance of accreditation agencies and organizations [6, p. 38].

All organizations that under the guidance of ENQA started to develop standards and recommendations were called Group 4 E. Each organization member of the group is a non-governmental international organization, actually non-profit public formation and presents its goals and interests to find common standards of quality of higher education.

Group 4 E successfully performed the tasks the Berlin Conference. The result of their joint activities became an important document on quality assurance of higher education entitled “Standards and recommendations for quality assurance in the scop e of European Higher Education” [7]. Within two years until the next conference in Bergen (2005). the document was developed and in the joint communiquй - approved and recommended by the Ministers of Education for implementation in national quality assurance system.

It was extremely difficult to develop this volumetric and responsible document in such a short time.

European Higher Education Area, which at that time held 40 countries, was characterized by a variety of political, socio - cultural and educational traditions, languages, needs and expectations.

Understanding of the central notion “standard” resulted some difficulties. Although the word «standard» is translated in most languages unambiguously, its usage is different in different countries.

The term “standard” in Europe is treated in a broad range - from regulatory requirements to broadly generalized descriptions of effective activity. So, in the Anglo-Saxon system of higher education standards of education are defined by educational institutions as an example of “good practice” and quality assurance. But for the many countries of Eastern Europe, standard is is a regulated lowest possible level of quality of students preparation.

The standards can have a quantitative expression (the results of benchmarking are used) or they can have qualitative nature, indicating only specific targets (for example, the effectiveness of the educational process, stability, etc.).

The standards may be aimed at different moments: resources, outcomes and processes may be general or specific, developed for individual educational disciplines. Also, there are such standards of content as the level of basic competence, knowledge, abilities and skills in a particular area.

All interested in the quality of higher education parties were involved in the development of standards at the European level: representatives of educational institutions of different types, university professors, staff of administrative structures, students, employers, experts in the field of accreditation / certification. Each of the participants sought to present and defend their own interests, which are often different for stakeholder groups. So, if education institutions wanted a high level of autonomy and minimum of external regulation and assessment, then students as consumers of educational services, were focused on independent external evaluation of educational institutions. The differences were found among the agents of the same structures. Some agencies that deal with accreditation of educational programs or universities adhere to the idea that the external quality assurance primarily was intended to act a function of “Protection of Consumer Rights”. This leads to observance of certain distance between quality assurance agencies and universities, and the other agencies see the principal role of external quality assurance in the development of recommendations and suggestions to improve the standards of quality educational programs and qualifications assignments. In this case, it is necessary to predict close cooperation between the agency and the evaluated educational institution [1, p. 20-24].

And still the developers of standards and recommendations for quality assurance of higher education in the European scope managed to reach a consensus based on the ideas of internationalization, humanism, democracy and decentralization of management of higher education. They constantly followed the developed in the course of collaboration principles, which were based on:

- interest of students, employers and society as a whole in the high quality of higher education;

- paramount meaning of institutional autonomy and independence of educational institutions under their significant responsibility for provided educational services;

- required conformity of external quality assurance with its objectives, for achievement of which load on educational institutions is adequate and not burdensome [7].

In the presented by Group 4 E document, the standards have descriptive (framework) character, and the document, as similar documents of international networks and associations, is a “code of good practices”.

The document contains European standards for internal and external quality assessment of higher education. Each standard is complemented by recommendations, which, as a rule, in detail describe the nature of the standard and present examples of its use [7].

European standards and recommendations for internal higher education quality assurance are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.