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University of Buckingham
Institutional Audit

November 2003

RG 035 03/04

Summary

Introduction

A team of auditors from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (the Agency) visited the University of Buckingham (the University) from 10 to 14 November 2003 to carry out an institutional audit. The purpose of the audit was to provide public information on the quality of the opportunities available to students and on the academic standards of the University's awards.

To arrive at its conclusions the audit team spoke to members of staff throughout the University and to current students, and read a wide range of documents relating to the way the University manages the academic aspects of its provision.

The words 'academic standards' are used to describe the level of achievement that a student has to reach to gain an academic award (for example, a degree). It should be at a similar level across the UK.

Academic quality is a way of describing how well the learning opportunities available to students help them to achieve their academic award. It is about making sure that appropriate teaching, support, assessment and learning opportunities are provided for them.

In institutional audit, both academic standards and academic quality are reviewed.

Outcome of the audit

As a result of its investigations, the audit team's view of the University is that:

  • broad confidence can be placed in the soundness of the University's current and likely future management of the quality of its programmes and the academic standards of awards. In making this judgement, the audit team has taken account of the way in which the University has engaged enthusiastically at all levels with the national quality agenda over the last two years and the substantial progress that has been made. It will be important for the University to sustain this progress in the future, to embed the new developments, and to take forward its current work in a range of areas, giving careful consideration to the recommendations of the team.

Features of good practice

The audit team identified the following areas as being good practice:

  • the approach to considering and responding to external examiners' reports at all levels of the University;
  • the commitment of staff to providing academic and pastoral support for students;
  • the quality of the documentation and processes underpinning the University's two collaborative partnerships.

Recommendations for action

The audit team also recommends that the University should consider further action in a number of areas to ensure that the academic quality and standards of the awards it offers are maintained. The team advises the University to:

  • consider the ways in which the committee system might be strengthened to provide a more dynamic engagement with, and monitoring of, quality matters and a more strategic role for the Quality Assurance Office;
  • accelerate its plans for the reintroduction of periodic review;
  • revisit its course and programme specifications to ensure that the intended learning outcomes are more explicitly linked to assessment and are consistently applied to all students taking the same courses;
  • adopt an institution-wide policy on the publication of clear, consistent and comprehensive information for students, particularly in relation to assessment criteria, degree classification conventions and associated regulations;
  • develop the capacity for producing readily comprehensible statistics on student progression and achievement, to be used systematically in quality monitoring and academic planning at institutional and subject level;
  • take a more strategic approach to the planning and allocation of resources for learning support;
  • move swiftly to the adoption of a consistent institution-wide approach to the matching of accumulated credits to masters level awards.

It would be desirable for the University to:

  • develop a strategy and policies to ensure that it is able to comply with national requirements and legislation in respect of equality and diversity.

Undergraduate programmes in English Literature and taught postgraduate programmes in business studies

To arrive at these conclusions, the audit team spoke to staff and students, and was given information about the University as a whole. The team also looked in detail at academic provision in the areas above to find out how well the University's systems and procedures were working at that level. The University provided the team with documents, including student work and, here too, the team spoke to staff and students. As well as its findings supporting the overall confidence statement given above, the team was able to state that the standard of student achievement in these areas of provision was appropriate to the titles of the relevant awards and their place in The framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and that the quality of learning opportunities available was, in each case, suitable.

National reference points

To provide further evidence to support its findings, the audit team also investigated the use made by the University of the academic infrastructure which the Agency has developed on behalf of the whole of UK higher education. The academic infrastructure is a set of nationally agreed reference points that help to define both good practice and academic standards. The findings of the audit suggest that the University is responding appropriately to all elements of the infrastructure, although continuing work is required in several areas, particularly in relation to some sections of the Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education, published by the Agency.

From 2004, the Agency's audit teams will comment on the reliability of the information about academic quality and standards that institutions will be required to publish in a standard format. At the time of the audit, the University had made a commitment to meeting the new requirements and was taking steps to ensure that appropriate mechanisms were in place. The audit team found that the information the University was publishing currently about the quality of its programmes and the standards of its awards was broadly reliable, but had some concerns about the comprehensiveness of the provision of key information for students.

ISBN 1 84482 036 X

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