Background
As part of its own quality assurance cycle, ENQA is committed to implement cyclical external reviews of the ENQA Agency Reviews, coordinated by an external organisation. The external reviews follow the principle set out in ESG 3.7, that “agencies should undergo an external review at least once every five years in order to demonstrate their compliance with the ESG”. ENQA should be able to demonstrate it meets the same requirement as set for its member agencies. For this reason, ENQA underwent its first external review in 2019, and the second one in 2024.
The purpose of the external review is to evaluate the various activities and procedures of the ENQA Agency Reviews with the intention to support the improvement of its usefulness and fitness-for-purpose. In order to do so, the review process and its final report should assess, on the one hand, how the principles outlined in the standards of ESG Parts 2 and 3 for quality assurance agencies are reflected in the reviews of agencies (while adapting them to the context and work of ENQA) and, on the other hand, how far the ENQA Agency Reviews contribute to the improvement of quality assurance agencies and allow for innovative approaches to quality assurance processes.
2024 external review
The 2024 external review of ENQA Agency Reviews was coordinated by the Knowledge Innovation Centre (KIC).
As a basis for the review, ENQA prepared a self-assessment report. The site visit of the external review panel took place in Brussels, Belgium in December 2024, and the final report was received in March 2025.
Panel
- Jacques Lanarès (Chair) Professor and former vice-rector, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; former EQAR Register Committee member
- Ivana Borošić, Head of QA office at Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb; former Head of Department of Accreditation in Higher Education at ASHE, Croatia
- Peter Maassen, Professor in higher education studies at University of Oslo, Norway
- Nik Heerens, Research and Development Associate, KIC (review coordinator); former ESU director; former chair of VLUHR QA
- Katrina Koppel, former PhD student, Tallinn University, Estonia; former ESU Vice-President
Documents
2019 external review
In 2019, ENQA underwent an external evaluation of its agency review process for the first time. The review was coordinated by NIFU (the Nordic Institute for Studies and Innovation, Research and Education) and conducted by an international expert panel of quality assurance stakeholders.
As a basis for the review, ENQA prepared a self-assessment report. A site visit took place in September 2019, and the final report was published in December 2019.
As a result of the review, ENQA made several changes to the agency reviews:
- Revising the review methodology, including unbundling the review process from the membership decision-making; clarifying the aims and objectives of progress visits; changing the compliance assessment scale and establishing the Agency Review Committee
- Preparing a policy on internal quality assurance of ENQA Agency Reviews
- Improving the visibility of procedures for appeals and complaints.