Très SHEEC

The introduction of Scotland's Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework last year established new structures for the support and oversight of quality enhancement approaches, through Scotland’s Tertiary Enhancement Programme (STEP).

This has, of course, been the start of something new and exciting, as we've moved towards working more closely together across our integrated tertiary sector. But it's also worth taking a few moments to celebrate the achievements of our previous collaborative endeavours, as STEP now succeeds, and continues to build upon the work of, the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee (SHEEC). 

I recently had the honour of presiding as chair of SHEEC at its final meeting. Though this was a rather sad moment, in itself, as we witnessed the end of this era, it gave me the opportunity, both then and now, to applaud the valuable work that SHEEC had delivered over the previous two decades, and to consider how its achievements can help to inform the direction of ongoing collaborative quality enhancement across the wider tertiary sector.

SHEEC was established in 2003 to support and promote quality enhancement of the student learning experience within Scottish higher education, and to provide a forum for the discussion of topics impacting on the learning experience across the sector. 

Its membership was drawn from across the breadth of the Scottish HE sector. Each institution was represented by a senior learning and teaching colleague; and it also included representatives from Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland (sparqs), NUS Scotland, Advance HE, the Scottish Funding Council and Universities Scotland. 

SHEEC’s most notable achievements included overseeing the delivery of eight 'Focus On' initiatives, which supported institutions and students’ associations with work in their key priority areas, and twelve 'Enhancement Themes' projects to improve strategy, policy and practice in Scottish HE – as well as a final major evaluation of the impact of this twenty-year programme of activities.

My own first memory of involvement with the committee is from when I was first engaged in an Enhancement Themes project, and had been sent along by my institution to learn about the work of SHEEC. It was my first opportunity to engage with such strategic student experience initiatives at a national level, and it really opened my eyes to the opportunities and benefits offered by such collaborative work, as well as its challenges and complexities.

One of the great benefits I discovered was the opportunity to participate in the long-running series of national and international conferences, convened by SHEEC and QAA, and based around the topics of Enhancement Themes initiatives. These conferences offered an invaluable opportunity for colleagues, like myself, focused on learning and teaching development to share their work with broader audiences, to advance and hone their ideas, to forge new collaborations, and to support the growth of their professional careers.

For more than twenty years, SHEEC was the natural home of cross-collaborative enhancement efforts across Scotland's higher education sector. It was a highly effective and valued forum in which to highlight and share good practice, and to explore the outputs of Scottish quality reviews, the lessons they'd learnt about areas for development and the successful innovations they'd identified. 

This learning fed not only into SHEEC's own reporting, but also went on to inform the topics of our Enhancement Themes programme, targeting a focus on those areas in which the sector would most benefit from developed and enhanced practices. 

Today across our sector we're still feeling the benefits of this work – for example, at my institution an enhancement project as part of the Student Transitions theme (both into and through the levels of higher education) resulted in a series of invaluable toolkits to support students. 

SHEEC's leadership of the Enhancement Themes programme, and the direction and momentum that SHEEC gave to it, had real benefits – not least in terms of the emphasis it placed on the importance of the core involvement of students in this work, grounding such projects in – and dynamizing them through – student engagement, and embedding, promoting and celebrating that engagement in everything SHEEC did.

SHEEC also supported collaborative initiatives that no single institution would have been able to resource on its own, such as key work on the strategic leadership of quality enhancement across the sector.

The success of these efforts is, if you'll forgive me for pointing this out, quite clearly reflected in the number of Scottish institutions whose names have increasingly been seen topping NSS scores and progressing up the league tables with some creditable alacrity. 

SHEEC also bolstered our institutions' positive and respectful relationships with QAA itself – in ways which essentially supported the enhancement of our provision. As it developed new processes and approaches, QAA was able to use SHEEC as a sounding board for the views of the sector – and, likewise, the enhancement focus of SHEEC and its initiatives created a space less formal than that afforded by statutory review protocols through which providers could comfortably approach QAA for constructive conversation, consultation, discussion and advice.

By respecting, celebrating and learning from the diversity of voices which make up Scotland's higher education sector – from its smallest specialist and vocational providers to its largest universities – this space brought institutions together into a strong and productive community for sharing knowledge, practices, opportunities and challenges, one which supported the enhancement of the quality of our provision and repeatedly sought and found solutions to our sector's grassroots issues.

As today we transition towards a more closely integrated tertiary environment – and start to enjoy the benefits which that move brings – it seems vital that we retain the best learning that SHEEC gave us, in supporting an equitable culture of collaboration, a community focused upon the continual enhancement of the whole range of learning journeys which constitute our rich and diverse tertiary sector.