Development and enhancement 

QAA Scotland carries out an integrated range of activities and services to support the development and enhancement of higher education.

Enhancement Themes and international benchmarking

As part of the quality enhancement framework, QAA supports programmes of national Enhancement Themes, and international benchmarking. Our work in these areas aims to enhance the student learning experience through identifying specific areas for development.

Read about Enhancement Themes  

Visit the Enhancement Themes website  

Read about QAA Scotland's international benchmarking work  

Supporting enhancement

We support the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee (SHEEC), which was established to oversee the programmes of Enhancement Themes and international benchmarking, and has taken forward the development of Indicators of Enhancement and work to support the development of Cultures of Quality Enhancement in higher education institutions.

Find out more about other areas of our development and enhancement work

• The European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process: we work with Universities Scotland in supporting the higher education sector in engaging with the Bologna Process.
• Work-based learning: following on from the Employability Enhancement Theme, we support the higher education sector in the development and enhancement of work-based learning. We have also produced an online guidebook to work-based learning, Making it work: a guidebook exploring work-based learning.
• Recognition of prior learning:  we support the higher education sector in Scotland in the recognition of learners' prior formal, informal and non-formal learning, by working closely with practitioners and learning from both national and international practice.  
• Personal development planning: we work with the Higher Education Academy and the Centre for Recording Achievement on personal development planning (PDP).
• Working with professional bodies: we liaise with professional bodies in Scotland, particularly in the areas of work-based learning, practice-based learning and recognition of prior learning.
• Credit, access and lifelong learning: our work includes activities originally coordinated by the Scottish Advisory Committee on Credit and Access (a joint committee with Universities Scotland that no longer meets). We also manage the Scottish Credit Qualifications Framework (SCQF) in partnership with the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Universities Scotland, Scotland's Colleges and the Scottish Government.