QAA Scotland carries out Enhancement-led Institutional Reviews (ELIR) at Scottish higher education institutions. We have provided a list of Scottish institutions who undergo ELIR on our reports page.

ELIR is now in its fourth cycle in Scotland (known as ELIR 4). ELIR 4 places much greater emphasis on contextualising the review than previous versions of the method. This means that, while the institution still carries out a holistic evaluation of its strategy, policy and practice in relation to quality assurance and enhancement, the review will focus on those areas where there is likely to be greatest benefit to the institution.

The institution undergoing ELIR submits a self-evaluation document called a Reflective Analysis (RA). The ELIR team uses this document and initial meetings with staff and students to develop themes for exploration during the review visits. These themes relate to the contextualised areas identified by the institution.

After visiting the institution, the ELIR team writes two reports (an Outcome report and a Technical report) setting out the review findings. We publish the final version of these reports on our website.

At the end of the review visits, the ELIR team produces an Outcome Report, which sets out the threshold judgement, the differentiated commendations and recommendations, and outline information about the nature of the institution. They also produce a more detailed Technical Report, which contains the detailed findings from the review and is written primarily for the institution reviewed. 

We contextualise ELIR reports to the main themes of the review but we structure all Technical Reports to cover five broad areas of institutional activity:

• contextual information about the institution, student population and the review
• approach to enhancing the student learning experience
• strategy and practice for enhancing learning and teaching
• academic standards and quality processes
• collaborative provision.

We also produce Thematic Reports to highlight the findings from a number of ELIRs that we have carried out at different institutions in the same year. The individual Technical Reports will provide an evidence base for those Thematic Reports.

We have produced an ELIR 4 Knowledge Base that includes the content of all 18 Technical Reports published 2018-2022. The Knowledge Base is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet and can be used in any one of three ways: by filtering, by searching or by using the summary table.

This helpful resource allows users to interrogate rich information from reviews of Scottish institutions, and to identify areas of good practice across a wide range of themes.