Academic quality is concerned with how well the learning opportunities made available to students enable them to achieve their award. The Quality Code sets out Expectations that higher education providers are required to meet to ensure: that appropriate and effective teaching, support, assessment and learning resources are provided for students; that the learning opportunities provided are monitored; and that the provider considers how to improve them.

Download Chapters from Part B

Chapter B1: Programme Design, Development and Approval

This Chapter addresses the initial design and development of a programme and the processes which lead to a decision by the degree-awarding body that it may be delivered in the agreed form.

Chapter B2: Recruitment, Selection and Admission to Higher Education

This Chapter focuses on the interconnected policies and procedures related to the recruitment, selection and admission of students to higher education. It offers a framework for assuring quality, and provides guidance to higher education providers and those involved in recruitment, selection and admission.

Chapter B3: Learning and Teaching

This Chapter focuses on the learning opportunities that higher education providers make available to students and on the staff who teach and who support learning, including those staff who are not employees of the higher education provider and/or are not based at the provider.

Chapter B4: Enabling Student Development and Achievement

This Chapter addresses the ways in which higher education providers enable students to develop and achieve their academic, personal and professional potential.

Chapter B5: Student Engagement

This Chapter covers student engagement at undergraduate and postgraduate level, irrespective of location, mode of study, teaching delivery, or discipline. The Chapter focuses on the provision of an inclusive environment for student engagement.

Chapter B6: Assessment of Students and the Recognition of Prior Learning

This Chapter deals with the assessment of student learning, both learning which is achieved as part of a defined programme offered by a higher education provider, and learning at the equivalent level achieved outside the defined programme of study. The Chapter covers all forms of assessment used in the context of taught provision, and for the recognition of prior learning.

Chapter B7: External Examining

This Chapter is designed to ensure that external examining can operate in a way which is transparent, rigorous, and as consistent as possible across all UK higher education institutions, taking into account institutions' autonomy and differences in their mission, size, organisational structures and range of provision.

Chapter B8: Programme Monitoring and Review

This Chapter discusses the mechanisms which higher education providers use to reflect on a programme once it is running, and to determine how it can be improved. This Chapter also addresses matters relating to closure of existing programmes.

Chapter B9: Academic Appeals and Student Complaints

This Chapter sets out principles for addressing academic appeals and complaints about the quality of learning opportunities by students in higher education providers.

Chapter B10: Managing Higher Education Provision with Others

This Chapter is based on the key principle that the delivery of learning opportunities with others, wherever and however organised, should widen learning opportunities without prejudice either to the academic standard of the award or the quality of what is offered to students.

Chapter B11: Research Degrees

This Chapter is about doctorates and research master's degrees. It is informed by a wider context in which UK research degrees are offered, including an environment of continuous improvement and the desire to learn from others' experiences in research education.

Part B: ​Assuring and Enhancing Academic Quality ​